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Welcome to Mae Sa Valley, Thailand
Mae Sa Valley Craft Village
March 16, 2006
After Future Green homestay we travel the 5 hr. taxi ride back to Bangkok to catch a flight to Chiang
Mai in northern Thailand. Chiang Mai gets most of it’s revenue from tourism because it’s in the mountains
(cooler weather), hosts a large university, and is famous for the elephant tours and the hillside villages.
We’re staying at Mae Sa Valley Chiang Mai. It’s gorgeous here. Great pool for the girls and wet bar for the parents.
The cabanas are beautiful. Thatched roof huts, traditional Thai building with tile floors,
hand-held bidets (hey, see the theme...), terraced land with well-maintained flower gardens. Outstanding!
This is a traditional Thai craft center that offers traditional Thai food and crafts like batik,
paper making, parasol/fan painting, Thai cooking, and pottery. The residences are outstanding. We
upgraded to a 2 room suite that cost us $75 per night. We had a great outdoor balcony with a nice
evening breeze. We actually did not turn on the AC the last two days we were there, and it was my idea!
There are a couple people here from Europe and we were introduced to the man-wearing tiny thong
bikini. It’s wonderful to see a 44” waist into a 30” suit. Talk about a wooly mammoth in a rubber
band. Please don’t bend down to pick up that trash!..
Our first morning we decide to tour the Mae Sa Valley Elephant Training Centre. Great fun. We
went to the early 8am show to beat the tourists (quite a touristy place) and also beat the heat.
Elephant Soccer Video
Note: if you can not see the video, download QuickTime and view the movie with it.
It’s true—they get the elephants to paint pictures and you can buy them. Being the practical
person, I’m not sure what good this does anyone. What good is it if you can train an elephant to
paint but they’re too big to fit in your bathroom to help with the renovation?
We also were infested with ants in our bathroom the first night. Good thing that traditional Thai
bathrooms function as a huge shower. The floor is tile and slightly sloped to the shower drain so any
water that gets on the bathroom floor gets funneled to the shower drain. During the evening of our first
night here I noticed that we had a couple of big black ants around the toilet. I grabbed the handheld
bidet sprayer and started to spray the ants off the walls. Then more ants came out and I sprayed some
more. I noticed that they were coming out from behind the toilet tank, so I lifted the tank cover and
thousands of ants spewed out, all carrying small white eggs. They started covering the walls and floors
and toilet and sink. I started to spray the heck out of the entire bathroom and, fortunately, all the
water started to flow to the shower drain and it carried all the ants. Huge bunches of ants started
to flow down the shower drain, about the size of golf balls. After about 15 minutes of this the
population of ants dwindled significantly. I felt like Zeus unleashing my wrath upon the unworthy
humans. I think I'll practice and start to work my way up the food chain--ants, cockroaches, small
lizards, attorneys, etc.
Dominique and Nicky participated in a couple of the crafts offered here. They made batik, which
is traditional Indonesian textile. The word batik is thought to be derived from the word Indonesian
word 'ambatik' which translated means 'a cloth with little dots'. The suffix 'tik' means little dot,
drop, point or to make dots. Which is appropriate because you drop the colors onto the fabric to
create the painting.
The smocks make them look like they know what they're doing, eh?
March 18, 2006
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