The sound of muffled pounding, like the rhythmic beat of a native drum, woke me from my sleep.
I sat up in my sleeping bag and peered through the thin mosquito netting across to our neighbors’ grass hut. A tiny fire illuminated her workplace, as did half a dozen other huts within sight.
The 13-year-old Thai “woman” was pounding rice for the day’s meals. Her muscular leg stomped down on the log beam that caused a mortar to strike a deep bowl containing unhulled rice.
For an hour she must do this, every day, in order to reap about two quarts of rice. Hard work for a young “woman,” but our guide, Phenta, told us last night on our tour of this hill tribe village, she was just married.
This fact amazed my 11-year-old daughter, Sierra (two more years!), who found the Far East culture of Thailand far different than her own middle-class life in Pennsylvania. But then, nearly everything here in Thailand was amazing.
Thailand isn’t the typical destination to stage a family adventure, I’ll admit, but my girlfriend, Susan, moved here on business and invited our family to visit. Since I love travel, I was naturally intrigued by Thailand and announced that if I were going alone, and traveling around the globe, I was staying much longer than a “long weekend.”
Perhaps they should consider accompanying me. My very cautious husband Todd Gladfelter read the guidebooks, listened to doomsayers and feared the worst when it came to contracting diseases. But we did our homework, ordered a few shots, bought a box of 1,000 alcohol wipes and a few quarts of anti-bacterial no-water hand soap (one-quarter of which came home) and left the rest to trust.
Trust was what I had to call upon when the work elephants with the heavy chains around their necks and feet arrived at our hut a few hours later. The mahout, or elephant driver, with a cloth wrapped loosely around his head, turban-style, the tattoos up and down his arms and the rolled-up smoking leaves between his teeth, made eye contact with me and motioned for my young son. He wanted me to lift 9-year-old Bryce up over the elephant’s head and put him in the basket behind him. We were off for a half-day ride through the jungle.
This was part of our three-day adventure in the deep mountains of northern Thailand, which the guidebook billed as “the most authentic hill tribe adventure you can find.”
Maesot Conservation Tours drives tourists five hours from Mae Sot on the most winding, nauseating mountain road to the village of Umpang in the Tak province. Besides riding elephants, you hike from village to village on ancient dirt foot trails and raft through a lush canyon full of hanging gardens, waterfalls and monkeys.
The mahout bounced on the elephant’s neck and sang to her in an eerie chant as he drove. The elephant’s baby followed close behind, and we occasionally stopped for her to nurse.
We rocked and swayed with the animal’s large purposeful steps. The big leathery ears flapped back and forth across our lower legs while our feet rested on the animal’s great head like a footstool. Orchids hung from the trees and were easily visible at that height. The mahout turned around and, with his stained and missing teeth, smiled at us, unable to communicate in any other way. He took my son from the basket and placed him on the elephant’s head in front of him. Bryce turned around and beamed at me, and I knew I made the right decision to bring my family to this wonderfully strange country.
Months before, I contacted the Thai tourism office in New York City to get some background information. It advised me to study the guidebooks and decide which places and activities most interested our family. The agent would hand over our itinerary to an English-speaking cultural and academic travel service in Thailand, called Trikaya, based in Bangkok, that would arrange everything and charge a blanket fee.
We were met at the airport by a guide, in our own personal rented van (a sign stating “Ms. Cindy Ross” sat on the dashboard, making us feel like diplomats), and were driven all over the country. Hotel reservations were prearranged (including breakfast), tour reservations made, for the lump sum of $3,000 for four people for an entire month. This included not only a guide, but a driver, gas and entrance fees into most attractions. We took care of our own lunches and dinners, but these amounted to literally pennies (the finest buffet lunches in the best hotels cost $1.50). Most of the hotels we stayed at were rated three and four stars.
Even the flights were less expensive than flying to Switzerland. (And we got more flying hours for our money!) The children did not fall apart during the 24 hours of flight time (as we feared) but were constantly entertained by movies, meals in “cute little compartments,” games the flight attendants handed out and their own busywork. This included a month’s worth of schoolwork for one of the best times to visit Thailand is during our winter.
As we entered the Karen village along the Mae Klong River on our elephants, a young girl was fishing, a man was kneading soapy laundry on a flattened log and a pig was rooting in the mud — normal village goings-on. Our guide, Phenta, and his helpers set up camp in Thilosu National Park by the Mae Klong River. We would be sleeping in a tent as opposed to a “guest house,” as in last night’s village. Phenta placed burning incense punks and candles around the perimeter of our dining tarp and proceeded to cut cups and hot chocolate stirrers out of bamboo for each of us, much to the children’s delight.
We watched as they cut up our evening’s vegetables with a machete, the tool of choice here in the bush. After a delicious five-course dinner consisting of soup and a variety of spicy vegetable dishes with rice and noodles, my kids began to play the game “rock, scissors, paper.” Phenta taught them the words in Thai, and they were amazed to learn that all the way around the world, this simple child’s game is also played. This illustrates, even to a child’s mind, that the world is not so big, and we are not so different.
MOVIE STARS
It wasn’t long before word got around that there were guests, and the villagers started arriving for a look. Our fair skin and light hair were oddities to brown-skinned Thais. They love it and strive for it.
In the cities, we saw them wearing long sleeves and long pants in 90-degree weather, even wool balaclavas on their heads to shield them from the sun. They ride their motor bikes with a magazine in an extended hand, attempting to keep off the tanning rays.
They patted our children’s faces and touched their hair. They love Caucasian children so much, many asked for our children’s autograph and to take individual pictures. My kids felt like movie stars.
We walked around the village, watching the pigs and chickens that roam freely and live under the huts on stilts, eager to snag any scrap of food that falls through the bamboo floors. Families cooked supper on open fires, women sat nursing babies, embroidering cloth, winnowing rice. They smiled shyly at us.
At the school play yard we stopped to try a Thai top game. We all fumbled in an attempt to throw and spin the big wooden top, causing the Thai children to giggle good-naturedly. None of us needed to speak Thai or English with the universal language of laughter to share.
Our friend, Susan, had told us that the hill tribe children are very poor, and it would be nice to bring along outgrown sweaters and long pants. (We saw an old man wearing a high school varsity jacket with the words “Cheerleader Coach” embroidered on the back.)
Phenta found a family shivering in the 40-degree evening air, and they stood in line to each gratefully claim an article of clothing. Throughout our visit, the kids recognized their clothing on happy children, and they knew that article would be valued and passed down for many years. Sierra said to me, “I can’t believe how much we have compared to them.”
The next day on our hike, our guide made bamboo hiking sticks for our kids, bamboo pop guns using rolled-up wet newspaper as ammunition, and large thermoses utilizing the two cross sections of the versatile plant. When the kids began to wilt from the heat, he showed them a wide-leafed plant to use as a sun umbrella.
EATING FLOATING LOTUSES
After our three-day back-country adventure, we drove to the Golden Cottage in Mae Sot. Maesot Conservation Tour owners, Boong and Boon Kasomsan, have opened their family farm for a taste of a traditional upper-scale farm life. The large bamboo house has a central eating place at large round tables with wedge-shaped floor pillows.
We ate little balls of sweet potatoes in coconut milk called “floating lotuses,” while wild lizards called chinchooks squeaked in the night. Like every other night spent away from a hotel, whether camping or in a guest house, we slept beneath mosquito netting. We rarely encountered the pests, however, and did not get a single bite, for it was the dry season. So our fear of contracting malaria was nearly nonexistent.
In the month that we traveled in Thailand, we also toured the fascinating remains of ancient cities like Ayutthaya and Sukhothai historical parks, visited Buddhist temples (with the monks in their saffron-colored robes and flip-flops), hiked through their national parks, visited Susan in Chaing Mai and used the centrally located capital city of Bangkok as our regrouping site. Baiyoke Sky Hotel, the tallest hotel in Thailand (88 floors), welcomes children, and the breakfast buffet on the glassed-in 78th floor was always a delightful way to start the day.
There is another whole world in the southern part of this long diverse country — the sun-drenched tropical islands. We flew to the large island of Phuket and took a high-speed boat to the remote Similian Islands off the west coast in the Andaman Sea.
The Similians are considered Thailand’s gems for there is no development and the string of nine islands is owned and operated by the national park system. Only two have camping and bungalows and a tiny restaurant where a few Thai women stir up delicious food in their woks (for about $1 an entree). These islands are popular with divers for the reefs are rated among the ten top dive sites in the world. But most divers charter boats that remain close to the harbor. That leaves the islands virtually deserted.
Our family does not dive, but the snorkeling is unbeatable, so we rented gear from our escort boat for the duration of our three-day visit.
Some say the Similian Islands offer better snorkeling than most diving in the world. The reason for this is the abundant and shallow reefs that allow natural sunlight to penetrate the clear water (with a visibility depth of 30 meters!), so the colors of the fish and coral are lit by natural light.
The reefs and marine life begin only yards from the white sand beaches, so even young children and novice swimmers can enjoy an underwater world usually reserved for only divers. Todd and I kicked through the silent world with the kids, pointing to giant clams, brightly colored parrot fish, eels, huge sea turtles. At one point we swam right through a school of silvery blue fish.
The dozens of hermit crabs on the beach each evening, and giant 5-foot-wide fruit bats hopping around high in the trees, along with the swinging gibbons that hollered in the early morning, caused my son to remark, “This is my favorite place in all of Thailand.”
BIZARRE ISLAND
For Sierra and me, that honor went to our final destination, the Phanga Nga Bay on the east coast of Phuket, made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio’s movie, “The Beach.”
Some 160 islands explode out of the sheltered Phanga Nga Bay. These are not typical islands but limestone pinnacles that look like inverted mountains. They stand like giant sentinels, row upon row, making this one of the most bizarre seascapes on earth..
Many of islands have hidden lagoons, called hongs, that are surrounded by rock cliffs. The only way to get into many of them is through caves that open and close with the tide. Some openings are so narrow you must flatten horizontally in your kayak while the ceiling dramatically passes inches from your nose.
Our tour operator was John Gray’s Sea Canoe, a Thai-owned kayaking company started more than 20 years ago. The company is founded on sound environmental principles. The guides study the radically changing tides and pick the best islands to explore; they are well-rounded naturalists as well.
We spent three days circumnavigating islands with limestone cliffs, overhangs and undercuts. The extreme low tides expose table coral, sponges, giant jellyfish and sea urchins. Endangered white-bellied sea eagles, with their 6-foot wingspans, worked the reef, diving for fish.
We paddled up estuaries and explored wild, rare mangrove forests, we studied rock paintings on 1,000-foot island walls and delighted over mud skippers, a strange terrestrial fish. We overnighted on Ko Panyi, which has a Muslim village with a Thai restaurant and bungalows run by locals.
When we kayaked the perimeter of the islands, we each took a child in our rigid sit-on-top boat. But when we entered the caves, we used inflatable kayaks, and our only job was to shine a flashlight on the glittering stalactites and the thousands of bats on the ceiling. The guides do the paddling so the delicate formations are not harmed.
Inside the hongs, the beautiful songs of the vibrant bird life hushed my children. Then a family of young monkeys hopped down onto the lower branches of a tree, eager to take a closer look while their parents scolded them high on the cliff above us.
One monkey couldn’t judge his own weight and bounced on a flimsy branch, breaking it and plopping him into the water right by our boat. Another curious monkey slowly spread the leaves apart with his little hands and peered down, only a few feet from the kids’ faces.
After the kayaking trip was over, we sped across the Phanga Nga Bay. The islands receded in the mint green light; the full moon rose orange over the water. The kids hung over the bow, squealing when they saw flying fish alongside our boat — a parting gift from amazing Thailand.
