Chiang Mai, Thailand (2)
- Julie-Anne Justus
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
I have been looking forward to writing this post. It's got sticky rocks, plenty of elephants and some seriously interesting food.
Our guide's instructions were to wear shoes that can get wet. Our feet were wet the entire day!
Bua Thong Waterfall (also called the Sticky Waterfall) is about 60 km north of Chiang Mai. It's a beautiful place up in the hills, very popular with tourists because the rocks in the waterfall are 'sticky'. The rocks have a rough surface caused by a mineral deposit that is incredibly grippy. The rocks feel like a hardened sponge, are slightly prickly to the touch and algae doesn't stick to them. This means that you can climb up the waterfall, on the sticky rocks, without sliding down. Some sections are very steep, so there are ropes to help pull yourself up. However, accidents do happen because (a) idiotic people and (b) a bit of algae sometimes sneaks in.
Did we climb the Sticky Waterfall? I think we all felt that maybe our waterfall-climbing days are behind us, particularly as it had started to drizzle, but we did walk down to the lowest level (many, many steps) and walk back up (many, many, many steps). In the course of our walk, Ken rescued one man who slipped off the boardwalk and fell into the jungle. Ken has a knack of rescuing people when we travel.
Slightly wet and muddy, our next stop is the New Elephant Home, an elephant conservation park in the Mae Tang Valley. The sanctuary has 17 elephants, all of which were rescued from logging or riding businesses. These elephants are free to wander around the jungle — there are no enclosures in which they have to stay — but they tend to stay in the sanctuary area because they are fed, and well fed. Wild elephants, males usually, wander around the sanctuary area but stay unattached to the group of 17 elephants. (As is the wont of male elephants generally.)
Some of the elephants have been damaged physically and/or mentally by years of working. One elephant has a trunk almost cut through in one place; another weaves and bobs constantly, a learned movement to facilitate dragging logs through the jungle which has now become automatic. Poor things. But let's face it, they're now benefiting from tourism and they are delightful beasts. Never have we been so close to a herd of ellies.
Did I mention it was raining quite hard by this point?
We have to prepare the food that we will feed to the elephants: we're given a pumpkin, a heap of sugar cane, a cleaver, and we set to chopping. Then we put our food into our pouches, and feed the ellies.
After lunch we mix up (by hand) a heap of rice, overripe tamarind fruit, rock salt, bran and bananas, and roll it into sticky balls. The elephants love these.
It's time for us all to cross the river on a bamboo raft, so that we can hike up into the jungle to find some more elephants. Drenched by now, we get on the bamboo raft ... only to find that one of the ellies is determined to accompany us (well, our food, mainly). It was, um, interesting. I want to say it was adorable but I was also mildly apprehensive that we'd end up in the river.
It's common for Asian elephants to have these orange patches on their skin. Mostly it's natural but sometimes you can see the marks where they have been 'controlled' by a driver/rider with a metal hook above the ears and the hook has left scars.
On the other side of the river, we squelch our way up through mud and trudge uphill on overgrown jungle paths and in streams. Honestly, it's easier to walk in the stream than through the vegetation. We're so wet by now that our feet are just permanently saturated. But we're having fun! Honestly!
There's nothing quite like walking in a jungle with an elephant looking for food (on your person!) next to you.
It's no surprise that I slipped in the mud and fell on my bottom. By this stage I was so wet that a bit of mud all over my dress, shoes, leg, hand and bag were a mere inconvenience. Although my slip in the mud was nothing compared to a baby elephant we saw — he was running after his mom, slipped and did a few somersaults. Now that was adorable.
Back across the river, a bit of a wash (an understatement) and then on to our next adventure: bamboo rafting down the river.*
Our guide Amy was Shan (pronounced shaan). The Shan are the largest minority ethnic group in Myanmar (Burma), about 5 or 6 million people. The Shan have been fighting a war seeking independence from Myanmar for 90 years; it's one of the longest running civil wars in the world. One of the consequences of this war is that the Shan people are often forced out of their villages by conflict and they flee into Thailand or Laos. We heard from a number of guides in northern Thailand that around 3 million Shan and Myanmar men work illegally in Thailand. They typically find low-paid work in construction, while many Shan women end up in domestic work or prostitution. Amy was super-proud to tell us that she now has Thai citizenship (unlike her parents) and that she has been to university in Thailand where she qualified as a tour guide.
We took a bit of drying out that night.
Our food tour of northern Thai cuisine was another adventure. Our guide was called Muay (which means 'fight' in Thai and she was quite punchy, in the best possible way). Our transport between venues was again the ubiquitous red pick-up van. We had some lovely young Canadian women in our food tour group (we were still 'the elderlies').
We started off with pork belly. Pork is very popular in northern Thailand; pigs were introduced by Chinese traders in the 1200s. Prior to that time, the only meat was jungle animals including insects and water buffalo, which people kept as plough animals. Buffalo were only slaughtered twice a year for major festivals, and buffalo meat was eaten raw. I'll come back to this.
But first, the pork belly — marinated overnight and then cooked for hours in these pottery ovens, very similar to Indian tandoors. It was served alongside mushroom soup (straw, ear and oyster mushrooms) and corn salad. Do I need to add that the soup and corn were spicy? Whew. Plenty of chilli in northern Thailand. Oh, and boiled egg. Boiled and/or salted eggs are common in almost every dish.
The focal point of venue number 2 was the larb. Larb is a minced meat salad, from Lao cuisine originally, but super-popular in Thailand. Larb contains minced meat, often pork, chicken, beef, duck or fish, seasoned with lime, fish sauce, chilli and fresh herbs.
Or — here in northern Thailand — water buffalo mince. This is called kwai larb (kwai means water buffalo, as well as luck). The buffalo mince includes all innards and offal, such as heart, liver and tripe. What's more, it's often eaten raw. Our guide told us that the Thai government has issued directives that people should not eat raw meat, but locals scoff at that advice. For tourists, she hastily added, all meat is cooked.
You can see the larb in the first and third photos below. Cooked water buffalo larb. I'm a fan of liver so I particularly enjoyed the bits of liver that I picked out (they look like little rectangles). It was accompanied by rice/chicken balls cooked in banana leaves, beef soup and an Indian-style massaman curry. Plus all the fresh herbs on the side.
By now we were all feeling like we'd eaten dinner, but no! We were just getting started. Off to the local market for a whole lot more tastings. I'll divide up the market experience a bit. First, the local sausage (note the Thai green bowl sign aka 'Michelin star' at the stall). This stallholder sells 300 sausages a day, but during the holiday period she sells 1500 a day.
We tasted a range of local fruit including longan, rambutan, mango (of course), lanzones, mangosteen aka Queen of Fruits, pomelo ... and the highlight for me, fresh dates! Those yellow oval fruits on the plastic bag. None of us on the tour had ever seen fresh dates before. They were crunchy, quite fibrous, but if you chewed long enough, the sweet date taste emerged. I loved them.
We wandered through the market. Look at all the larb options there are! (Many were raw.)
This market chef cooked us a northern Thai specialty — stir-fried greens with egg. We also tried some sticky rice and black beans cooked inside a bamboo stick. To get to the rice, the bamboo is peeled away. It was delicious.
And then there were the dried crickets and silkworms. Unfortunately I was too full to try these delicacies at this point. (I lie.)
Onward, onward, in the red pick-up truck to a Shan restaurant serving traditional Shan vegetarian food. I do wish I'd had a bigger appetite at this point, as it was delicious. The woman who started the restaurant was a Shan refugee, who created a space for Shan people to eat their traditional foods. Her restaurant was so successful that she (or her daughter) now has four restaurants in Chaing Mai. A positive story!
Just when we thought we were going to burst (like Mr Creosote), it was time for another market ... and more slow-cooked pork! This woman is called the Cowboy Hat Lady. She became famous for wearing a cowboy hat when she appeared on Anthony Bourdain's travel show.
Dessert was ube (purple yam) and pandan tapioca balls in creamy coconut sauce with sweet egg. I did not take a photo because even my camera felt like it was over it.
Cheerio while I waddle off for some rest. I don't intend to eat again for seven days.
Next: Ko Samui
*30 years ago, elephant riding and elephant logging demonstrations were par for the course. Now they're frowned upon, and I'm happy that the attitude towards these tourist activities has changed. It's worth mentioning here that Ken and Luke fell off their elephant into the river. The strap holding their seat came loose and in they tumbled.
But bamboo rafting in Chiang Mai in 1997 doesn't look very different to rafting in 2026, apart from the hats being cooler in the past.
This really looks better on a bigger screen, www.julie-anne.online
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