Batik

The day after Christmas, Jenna and I were taught batik by Mrs Ann. Jenna went to a batik factory in the Caribbean and told me how cool it was. Once she saw there was a class, we decided we had to check it out! Mrs Ann came to pick us up from the Eagle House. Once we got there we had some coffee and croissants, then got to work. The first thing we did was practice drawing designs on stretched out fabric with hot wax, a 50:50 mixture of paraffin and beeswax.

Next we picked our fabric and traced a design. Unfortunately I did not take any photos of this step.

After tracing the design with a pencil, we moved on to tracing with wax. On the table to the left of Mrs Ann, you can see the tools that we used to hold the wax and dispense it onto the fabric. It is a copper container attached to a wooden handle.

After waiting for the wax to cool, the next step is painting! This was by far my favorite part :)

My batik painting is the elephant on the left. At this point, I am getting ready to do the crack technique.  This involves heating up paraffin only and painting it over the parts I want technique to take place. I painted it along the background of the elephant and then scrunched up the fabric. Jenna is helping to speed up drying her painting. Joy, on the far right, is fixing her batik painting.

Then the fixing agent is applied to the entire painting to ensure the colors will no fade. After the fixing agent is dry all that is left is washing the fabric in hot water.

Here is Jenna doing exactly that.

The finished product!

So colorful and beautiful!

A big thanks to Mrs Ann of the Chiang Mai Batik School! We had such a great time learning batik from you! You are awesome! Keep up the great work :) Jenna, I am so glad you saw this in one of the many folders of activities to do in Ciang Mai at the Eagle House.

Chiang Mai

We got to Chiang Mai around 7:15 after taking the night train from Ayutthaya. We had our own bunks and slept decently well. 

We checked into the New Mitrapap Hotel outside of old Chiang Mai city. We headed to a cute guesthouse and cafe for breakfast.

From there, we headed to Wat Phra Singh. This temple complex is fairly big and we wandered around for a little over an hour.

There was a nice meditation garden that had a bunch of signs similar to the one above and below.

This was our fist tuk tuk ride!!!! We took it to a mall called Maya so we could see the new Star Wars movie! Jenna was a great sport and the movie theater was quite fancy.

Taking a selfie in a tuk tuk was not one of our greatest ideas but we should master it by the end of our trip.

After spending two nights in Chiang Mai, we moved to the guesthouse Eagle House I. So far this has been my favorite guesthouse. The staff is incredibly friendly, especially Miss Tom. Annette, the owner, is friendly and helpful. Anyway, we took a cooking class at Eagle House. I learned how to make Pad Thai, sticky rice with mango and coconut milk soup. Jenna learned how to make Chiang Mai noodles, spring rolls and sweet corn bites. Soooo yummy! 

First we went to buy our ingredients at a market nearby. These markets are open daily during the morning and evening. We described to Wisoot, our teacher, how farmer's markets work in the US. It is very different.

We had so much food leftover that I ate all of it for breakfast the next day. It was just as tasty!

This is a small ruin from the old city that is about 50 meters from Eagle House.

One afternoon, I wandered around Chiang Mai and got to see the Pae Gate. There are five old gates that used to be the way a person would enter Chiang Mai city.

This is the base of Doi Suthep. It is in the mountains overlooking Chiang Mai and about a 17 km drive from the University of Chiang Mai. It is considered the holiest shrine in the north because of a magic relic of the Buddha, which resides within the chedi of Doi Suthep.

There are depictions of the King and Queen of Thailand all over. Within temples, along the highway, in rural areas, everywhere. This just happens to be one of the hundreds that we have seen while being in Thailand. The King is much beloved here and before we saw The Force Awakens we stood, to show respect, during a song dedicated to the King of Thailand.

The city of Chiang Mai is off in the distance from Doi Suthep.

The Doi Suthep was undergoing some renovations while we were there. They had replacement roof tiles that you could donate money to the temple and then write on the back of the tile. Jenna and I both both did :) 

I am sure you guys have noticed, but in case you have not yet, this is one of my favorite photos to take.

We headed zip lining on the day of Christmas Eve. The company that we went with is called Flight of the Gibbon and it is about an hour outside of Chiang Mai.

There are actually gibbons that live within the jungle where this zip lines are. There are only four that live in this particular area. Two parents and their sons. The decrease in habitat for the gibbons is having many negative effects on them. They live in trees and though they can walk, they are only seen on the ground if they are sick. If they cannot move around the tree canopy of the jungle, not only is their habitat reduced but a further issue compounding the small population sizes is they much less likely to find a mate.

There were some really cool structures that we got to walk along like this tree platform/house. When I was zip lining to this I could not help but think of the ewok village on Endor that David, Ben and I would have loved to explore when we were kids. Well honestly, I am sure we would still love to ;)

We absailed down from this platform, which was about 40 meters off of the jungle floor.

We stopped at a temple near to the office of the Flight of the Gibbon. The orange cloth that is hanging is the garment that Buddhist monks wear. It was neat to see one such garment drying. I have been periodically washing my clothes and hanging them up to dry too. Even though this is a small thing, it is a tiny example of the shared human experience. 

Once I took a yoga class in Chula Vista, California and I saw a quote that said 'we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.' These words could not be more true.

I posted this before Jenna and I went to the Sunday Walking Street, so I had to add these! The Sunday before, we attempted to make it to the special Sunday market but we got to an everyday evening market mistaking it for the former. We got to the proper Sunday Walking Street around 4:30 and it was quite obvious we made it this time ;)

I got some mochi ice cream, which was absolutely delicious on a hot Sunday afternoon :)

I snapped this as we were leaving the market. You can already see that more people have set up to sell their wares and the street is starting to fill with people. It was really nice walking around and looking at all of the different things that were being sold.

This is one of my favorites!!!! The best part is, we did not even plan this! At The Pae Gate we found these cute little monkey heads. There was live music and a bunch of food! Overall we had a spectacular time in Chiang Mai! I am looking forward to going back :)

Tong Bai Elephant Foundation

While Jenna and I were in Bangkok, we heard about the Elephant Nature Park, which is run by a government organization that is about an hour outside of Chiang Mai. We tried to sign up to volunteer for a week, feeding elephants, maintaining gardens for their food, etc, but found out there is not an opening to volunteer until June! Instead we heard about the Tong Bai Elephant Foundation, which is close to the Elephant Nature Park. I am so glad we did this because not only did each of us get to spend the day with our 'own' elephant, but we also helped contribute to an organization that is working to take captive, work elephants and provide them enriched and leisurely lives.

Here we are greeting our elephants for the first time. My elephant's name is Mae Gaeo. Mae, means mother. Jenna's elephant's name is Mae Kaphat. Mae Gaeo is in her fifties and has been with TBEF for a little less than a decade. She was a work elephant that used to walk in circles bearing people on her back. Unfortunately, this is the common life of an elephant in captivity. They are expensive to own and to take care of especially with all of the food that they eat. With the cessation of the logging industry in Thailand, elephants are used predominately for carting tourists around cities, which is an insult to their intelligence, to generate money for those that care for them and to feed the elephants.

Before we went on our walk, we took to elephants to get some water. They drank it straight from the spiket, actually pulling the PVC pipe off at one point in their eagerness to drink more water. Man were they thirsty! Mae Gaeo would fill up her trunk with water, maybe for about 45 seconds, and then dump the water from her trunk into her mouth. One of the girl's that was with us found out that not all of the water ends up in each of the elephant's mouth.

Mae Gaeo is such a sweetie! Mae Gaeo and the rest of the elephants periodically stopped to nom on some delicious vegetation on our walk to the river.

Mae Gaeo got her trunk on a plump-looking gourd. It took her a couple of tries to get it into her mouth, but once she did she munched it happily. Elephant trunks are composed only of lots of muscle and some fat. A fun little fact is that the closest relative to the Asian elephant is the Mamoth. The African and Asian elephant are within the same family but are in genus Elephas and Loxodonta, respectively.

Mae Kaphat, Jenna's elephant, loved rubbing and scratching her body on trees that we walked past.

Here is a little meadow that we passed.

Here is the line of us. Mae Gaeo was the last of the four elephants. The guy in the blue hat is Mae Gaeo's mahout, Dela. Mahouts are the people that care for elephants though it is much more than that. Each elephant has one mahout that it recognizes and respects. This is not only a relationship of necessity but also an emotionally intimate one. It used to be that an elephant and a mahout would spend their whole lives together, but that is no longer a reality. Mahouts tend to be younger men that stay with an elephant for a while, a decade or so, until they get married and are ready to start a family. Elephants take a lot of money to support and caring for them takes time. Now it is difficult to be a mahout and to support a family.

Once we got to the river, the batheing began! The elephants are bathed everyday by the mahouts to scrub away parasites.

I am making a ridiculous face in this photo but I just had to share. When Mae Gaeo was lying down in the river, Dela and Melanie (in the hat) helped me climb up on Mae Gaeo. I sat right behind her ears for only a couple of minutes. I was up so high and felt a bit unsteady when she stared walking around. I am so glad I did it though!

Here is the whole group with our elephants. Jenna's elephant wandered off during this photo shoot ;)

We had such a lovely time with these beautiful ladies!

Great job Tong Bai Elephant Foundation! If anyone is or will be in Chaing Mai, Thailand on a Saturday or Wednesday, I ABSOLUTELY recommend going and checking out the awesome things TBEF is doing!