Mae Chaem and Doi Inthanon

For basically the first week of February, I was very fortunate in that I got to visit with my dear friend and occasional roommate Julia in the town of Mae Chaem. I guess in theory I should not even be writing about Mae Chaem, or should change the name of town for this blog to keep this beautiful place as anonymous as possible. I am just kidding, but Mae Chaem has been largely fortunate in that it has remained off of the tourist radar and many people are worried that things could change. In Thailand (and this region in general) once a town gains the interest of tourists, it changes almost overnight. Clearly this is a two-way street because tourism brings a lot of money into an area, but it also changes a place often beyond recognition. But I am not writing a blog to lecture about the effects of tourism, just a happy little update about what I have been up to and where I have been.

Mae Chaem sits in a beautiful valley at the base of Thailand’s tallest mountain, Doi Inthanon (over 2500 meters above sea level). Julia is doing her dissertation research in Mae Chaem, so I have always been curious about it through her stories, but also because Mae Chaem is quite famous for its cotton textiles, specifically the intricately woven hempiece that is integral to a traditional northern Thai skirt. There are quite a few weavers in the Mae Chaem valley which helped draw me in – and on the weekend I went to Mae Chaem, the town was having its annual festival celebrating the weaving. I was able to stay with Julia and her Thai family, “Mae” and “Phi Oi” and I am very grateful for that. Her Thai family is very thoughtful and generous, and for that matter, so is Julia, who took me around to nearly all of the wats in the Mae Chaem area looking for banners. As many of you must know from reading my blog, I do not feel like I have truly visited an area until I have seen the majority of its wats. There are some beautiful wats in Mae Chaem, and many exciting banners. And, from what I can tell, many friendly weavers very happy to talk with a strange farang or two about the banners that they weave and give to the wat (always a good thing for a doctoral student working on banners to know).

Julia, showing her serious side

The cloth festival was not the only thing happening in Mae Chaem over the week that I was there; a festival at one of the wats overlapped with the cloth festival to make the town even more exciting. I can never get my fill of wat festivals and the one in Mae Chaem did not disappoint. Everyone was very excited, drinking and dancing and carrying their offerings to the wat to gain the ever-needed merit to ensure a better life for a practicing Buddhist. It was a lot of fun and Julia and I both got swept up into the procession (Julia numerous times as an honorary “Mae Chaem-ian”).
On Sunday morning, there was a beautiful (and long) parade to commemorate the cloth festival. Local Thai and “hilltribe” (Karen, Hmong, etc.) participated in the parade, wearing their best traditional clothes. I enjoyed every minute of it. Special note: in fact Julia has two families hosting here in the Mae Chaem area, her Thai family and a Karen family in a village nearby. When I was in Mae Chaem I got to visit her Karen family/village twice and was very touched by their kindness and generosity. Attending the parade, Julia actually wore a traditional Karen dress – handwoven for her just that week – and Duansri, the women she lives with in the Karen village, came to watch the parade with her.

When I was in Mae Chaem, I spent one of the days riding my motorcycle to the top of Doi Inthanon.. It was exciting to finally visit the highest point in Thailand, which is famous for the variety of birds which live in its vicinity. However, unlike some members of my family, I know nothing about birds or birdwatching so I cannot really tell you much else about that subject. Doi Inthanon was beautiful though, and it was very nice to be out in nature and breathing the super-fresh air.

I recognize that it has been a very long time since I have written anything for my blog – over a month! Thus, I am trying to remedy the situation by including something new before I head east once again, to the province of Nan in northern Thailand and then a two week stint back in Laos. I am not entirely sure why it has taken me so long to include something new on this blog. I have been busy and seeing new things that I am enjoying. I think I am also getting a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do, or else I am just getting more focused. Really, to be frank, I have no idea. But what I do know is that I have spent the last month focused on exploring northern Thailand, visiting with my mom and stepdad Richard, and catching up on other things I have been needing to do, like updating my research records and photographs.
For about 2 weeks in January, I had the pleasure of showing my mom and Richard around on their first trip to Thailand. We spent a day in Bangkok, taking in sights such as the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, the Chao Phraya River and canals, and the Skytrain. We also spent 3 days and 3 nights in Mae Hong Son, a beautiful area in northwestern Thailand not far from the border with Burma. Mae Hong Son is a mountainous area whose dominant ethnic groups are the Shan, or Tai Yai, and the Karen. It was very beautiful and we really enjoyed our “resort” where we stayed. It’s called the Fern Resort and I happily recommend it to anyone traveling through Mae Hong Son willing to spend more than they would at the average guesthouse in town. The food in Mae Hong Son was fantastic and I can say we thoroughly enjoyed the indulgence of eating it. We did a lot of walking in Mae Hong Son, up hills to see a wat and on a trail in the forest surrounding our resort.


However, perhaps the most memorable part of our trip to Mae Hong Son, especially for my mom and Richard, was our return to Chiang Mai. We woke up on the day of our departure to the news that the plane that Thai Airways uses for the route between Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son was broken. As there is only one plane used for that route, there was an extremely high possibility that we would not be able to fly home that day. I couldn’t believe it, nor did I want to believe it, but it was true. Once we figured out that flying back that day was truly not a possibility, we headed straight to the airport to try to figure out how to get a ride back to Chiang Mai. Thai Airways was providing mini buses for the passengers, so we got on the first one we could. I have always heard about the windiness of the road between Mae Hong Son and Chiang Mai and thus had avoided it until that point. However, I didn’t realize how bad it was until it was too late to take the dramamine I had in my backpack, tucked away in the back of the van. I do think part of the horror was the driving and not just the road, because our driver was taking the road quite quickly. In fact we made it to Chiang Mai in about half the time it takes on a bus. Needless to say, both my mom and I felt quite sick and I was totally unable to enjoy the beautiful scenery we passed through. Oh well.

It took me a couple of days to recover from the departure of my mom and Richard, but after that I headed north to Chiang Rai, Doi Tung, and Chiang Saen. Although Nan was higher on my priority list this area in the far north, I had found myself in sudden need of a new visa and thus had to make plans to cross the Burmese border at Mae Sai. This is a common thing for people to do, and only required me to be in Burma for a couple of hours. I really wanted to head to the town of Kengtung about 150 kilometers north of the border, but I got started a day later than planned and had to be back in Chiang Mai about 5 or 6 days after that to meet up with Julia.

In fact I really enjoyed the far north, and getting to visit Doi Tung was particularly exciting for me. The “tung” in the name “Doi Tung” is a reference to the northern Thai banners that I am studying, and the name “Doi Tung” means (roughly) “banner mountain.” The 2 stupas built on the top of Doi Tung are frequently woven into banners here in northern Thailand as well. Thus visiting Doi Tung was a great experience and felt rather like a pilgrimage for me. I was not disappointed; the stupas are wonderful, as were the banners hanging around them.

I look forward to getting back to explore the region in further depth. However, as always seems to be the case, I had time constraints and could only do a superficial overview. I am not complaining though, because the next place I was scheduled to visit was Mae Chaem, a jewel of a region in northern Thailand that is quite famous for its cotton textiles. Luckily for me, Mae Chaem just so happens to be the place where my friend Julia is doing her fieldwork for her dissertation, thus I was scheduled to visit there with her and found out (again from Julia) about the upcoming cloth festival being held there (which is why I had to go at the very beginning of February – for the festival)…

In Mae Chaem