The Tet Offensive

Whenever a national holiday comes around in whatever country I happen to be in at the time, I always get a little excited about what might occur.  Hear the word 'festival' and my mind suddenly flashes to images of Carnivale, Mardi Gras and La Tomatina.  The sad truth is that most 'holidays' are simply a period of time when families come together and spend most of their time watching TV and eating.  A bit like Christmas, in fact.  I have experienced a fair number of festivals that fall in to the former category, such as the 'camel festival' in Pushgar, India.  The endless parade of camels being sold and bought sandwiched between numerous events and games between locals and foreigners was all good fun and one of my fondest memories of India.  Scratch that, one of my fondest memories full stop.

The lunar year cycle began again this year at the beginning of February.  Whereas China goes all out with 6 weeks of Spring Festival madness (complete with about a billion fireworks and firecrackers going off day and night), Vietnam is more traditional in its celebrations.  So much so that the whole country shuts down for a week and any foreigners caught out end up paying for it.  So for Tet (the name of the holiday), I decided that the only thing for it was to jump on a plane and head to Thailand.  Obviously, they made me pay for a ticket first.

The southern islands of Thailand don't really hold much appeal for me, to be honest.  I have had the 'drinking ridiculous amounts of alcohol from a bucket' phase of my life and also experienced full moon parties in India (which were a lot of fun, I admit), so I wanted something a bit different from my trip to the 'land of a thousand smiles.'  I had always heard great things about the north of the country, so that is where I decided to check out.  With only 6 days off work for Tet, I knew that I would be short on time and would therefore have to pick only two places.  I chose the two Chiangs; Rai and Mai.

A couple of other teachers, Jody and Damian, arranged to meet me over there a few days later.  Dues to the way our work schedules panned out, I actually ended up finishing a couple of days before them.  My plan therefore was to head to Chiang Rai and explore the countryside and do some sightseeing before relocating to Chiang Mai to be a bit more active.

In Chiang Rai, I hired a local guy to be my motorbike guide.  The distances between 'sights' was such that it was the only way to get around cheaply to see everything.  My guide for the day was an older guy called The Bear (his words).  He certainly looked a bit grizzly, but seeing as he spoke a smidgen of English and possessed and motorbike (two qualities I like in a motorbike guide) I took a chance on him.  The break suffering from a puncture in the middle of nowhere dented my confidence at first, but The Bear proved his worth by quickly and efficiently getting it fixed.  In no time at all, we were off whizzing around the rice fields of northern Thailand and bothering local hill tribes.  One such hill tribe was the (in)famous 'Long-necked Women of Pudaung.'  I didn't exactly feel too comfortable encouraging this form of tourism.  After all, the effects of this practice are pretty horrendous with premature death the outcome.  However, it was something that held a (limited) appeal.  The chance to see something unique is a cruel temptress.

Would you like to have that around your neck for the rest of your life?

 As well as gawping at local oddities, the real highlight of my trip to Chiang Rai was to see the 'White Castle.'  A local artist, whose name I can barely remember without searching for it, started the art project a few years' back and intends to finish it all by the year 2070.  Not sure whether he's only doing it one brick per day, but that doesn't seem like a very ambitious deadline to me.

After a couple of days, it was time to head over to Chiang Mai by bus and meet up with the other two.  Due to a lack of mobile phone in Thailand (couldn't be arsed buying a SIM card for 6 days), we had arranged by email to meet at their hotel.  When I arrived to inquire about their arrival, I was informed that Mr. Damian was due to check-in in about 30 minutes time, but Mr. Jody wasn't booked until the next day!  Despite co-ordinating their efforts, they had still managed to book different dates.  Fortunately, they managed to sort things out without too much cost, unlike a few days later when it turned out Jody had also booked the wrong date for his flight back to Vietnam too!  Usually, he isn't such an idiot and he was destined to be the comedy moment of the trip until fate stepped in.

'Fate' may well have been the name of the 'girl' who tried to molest our other companion a full 5 seconds after entering a bar in the city centre.  The look of horror on a grown man's face with the immortal scream of "I'm not having any of this!" ensured that Jody's multiple errors were quickly forgotten and a new catchphrase was born.  Luckily, we managed to wrestle our way out pretty sharpish and make a mental note to be more careful when choosing a watering-hole.

The next two days in Chiang Mai were spent with a constant rush of adrenaline pumping around our bodies.  We had booked ourselves on the 'Flight of the Gibbon' tour that allowed eager tourists to get harnessed up in the jungle and zip through the trees.  Unfortunately, I managed to knacker both my ankles towards the end after getting too cocky and not paying enough respect to a tree at the other end of one particular line.  Ouch!  On the second day, we hit the water with a spot of rafting.  Neither Jody, Damian nor myself had ever tried white-water rafting before, but it looked like a lot of fun in the pictures, so we signed ourselves up for a go.  Although the level was aimed at absolute beginners, the thrill of paddling furiously while navigating rocks and torrents of water ensured that we came way with aching limbs and a sense of accomplishment.

All in all, the two Chiangs gave me everything I had wanted for my little trip.  I would have loved to have gone back for the Thai New Year (a mass water fight on the streets!), but my teaching contract was coming to an end and there was a whole country I had still yet to explore.