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	---> MORE Destinations: _________________________________ New Perspective of Chiang Rai at Latitude 19 VISITING A BORDER TOWN: Mae Sot – then and now The Poy Sang Long Festival in Mae Hong Son The Samoeng Strawberry Festival Far Out and Cool in Fang District PICTURE PERFECT Mon Jaem Chiang Mai Reflections and a Night Safari Adventure Wat Palad: The Temple below the Temple The Bua Tong Waterfall Park The Cave and Hot Springs of the Mae On Area A DAY TRIP TO DOI INTHANON Two wheels good four wheels…er… The Sino-Thai Dragon Temple of Wat Tha Ton Doi Inthanon - Thailand’s Highest Mountain Kad Mua - an all-you-need market Chiang Dao High! Chiang Mai’s Red Cross and Winter Fair Loy Krathong at Tak A RETREAT TO... Kwan Yin Bodhisattva Hall Living with nature: Galyani Vadhana District Treasures of Myanmar A Journey to Shangri-La Pha Wing Choo – A Lover's Cliff Wiangtakan – The Past Remains Rural Life and Natural Mystery in Chaiprakarn Taking Aim at Chiang Mai's Shooting Gallery Chiang Mai - Maerim - Samoeng Route Hot Springs (and eggs) Ratchaphruek Festival 2009 The 5th Lanna - Japan Festival 2009 Make a Day of it at the New Look Night Safari Mae Sa Snake Farm Marine Lives in a Mountainous Zoo X-Centre Mae Hong Son, Pang Oong and much more along the way... Mae Kampong Village Tiger Kingdom Pai: The Hub of Joy Flower Festival Annual Bo Sang Umbrella Festival at Bo Sang Village Wiang Kum Kam: The Underground Ancient City Loy Kratong: The Town's Joyful Festival Monkey Centre Maerim, Chiang Mai Baankwai Thai Maerim Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden THE ROYAL PALACE ON DOI SUTHEP The Night Safari Ban Saonak Chae Son National Park Lamphun's Wat Chamathevi Doi Tao Lake Mae Sai Bai the Beautiful Wieng Kum Kam Mae Klang Luang Village Doi Pui - Hmong Tribal Village Nan Province Wat Suan Dok Chiang Saen: a city in myth and reality One Night in Chiang Rai and a day across the border A trip full of tour guides Two Days and a Night in the Country The Sumptuous Angkhang Gourmet Tour AWAY FROM IT ALL IN NEARBY MAE WANG Children's Day at the Westernmost Point of Thailand To Lamphun Along the Road of Histories ESCAPING TO PAI A WINTER TRIP ON THE PING RIVER To the Back of Beyond, right on your doorstep Visiting the Shrine of the Elephant-Headed God Visiting Samui Back to Nature at Opkhan National Park Lost in the Chiang Mai Zoo Three Days through the Northern Countryside DOING A NINE-TEMPLE KARMA TRIP - Right Here in Chiang Mai An Early Summer Trip to the Thi Lo Su Falls Nan: Forest, Temples and the Salt of the Earth TREKKING AND TUCKING IN: Wawee Coffee Plantation Mai Long Yee - Lovely Whatever Else You Call It Magnificent Creatures at Wat Changkham Off to See Some Mural Paintings in Lampang The Salawin and the People of Tha Tafang A Hike in the Forest A Journey back in time A Long Night of Luxury in the Chiang Dao Valley Ice-cold in Omkoy A Quick Visit to a Karen Wedding Strawberry Fields Forever A quick ride to Jaesorn National Park A Journey to Wawee A Birding Trip for Newbies Nam Bor Phi Cave A Breath of Sea Air Shopping With a Difference: Kad Luang Airport ELEPHANTS AND ORCHIDS AND THE SNACKS IN BETWEEN Monsoon Miscellany MAE RIM LAGOON AN IMPRESSIVE TRIP - to the Sukantara Resort Visiting Luang Prabang, the Pearl on the Mekong River Phrae: refreshing trip, auspicious visits Up on the Mountain (again) at Khun Wang UP THE MOUNTAIN TO THUNG LUANG SINGAPORE - City of Parks A Short Sight-Seeing Trip to the Monkey Centre GIVE PAI A TRY! You won’t regret it A BUSY DAY’S VISIT TO SANKAMPAENG A Rainy Day Outing to Phrao Monsoon Miscellany TRIPPING AND TASTING ALONG THE HANDICRAFT HIGHWAYS

A trip full of tour guides

Let me introduce myself. My name is Anne. I started the tour guide training course authorized by the Tourism Authority of Thailand a few months ago at Chiang Mai University, and am on my way to gaining an official license to be your guide anywhere in Thailand.

I believe you all know what a tour guide is, isn't that right? It's always fun to have one accompanying you on your trip, with their exotic charm, good humour, wittiness, impeccably reliable information. And so on. There with you not just to amuse and instruct you but also discourage you from making those faux pas that are liable to dog the most well-intending visitor. So as well as showing you round, stopping you getting lost, we guides also lead you here and there, providing reliable historical and social back-up, and making sure you're introduced into only the best of shops and restaurants in and out of town.

Well, as learner-guides, eager to get into the real thing ourselves, we find it's not all fun. Our studies involve quite a lot of late afternoon lectures (napping included), and those real visits to historical sites, which are naturally more entertaining. These trips are also thrilling, us students often required to take practical tests: like giving info about places in English in front of class-mates pretending to be naive tourists who have lots of really silly questions.

Here's an interesting example of the latter.

"Who are all those guys wearing yellow robes?" To this, one of us trainees (not me, I swear it) answered, "Oh... they are just monks living in the temple."

"What about those kids who are wearing the same yellow clothes?"

"Them? Um...they are the monks' sons."

Actually, what happened here was a small but fairly common breakdown in communications. This guide wannabe couldn't explain or didn't know the word "novice". In real life, if he or she ever passes the final exam, you'll go back home with a somewhat cock-eyed impression of Chiang Mai, and are likely to communicate it to your friends as the real thing. Like, "Oh my dear, monks in Thailand - they have lots of kids who live in the same sanctuary with them." This is the kind of problem that arises when you encounter an unqualified tour guide.

No-one wants that to happen, and thus the intensive training I've been talking about here includes not only the major and most obvious cultural points, but a lot of extremely arcane ones. I mean, do you want me to give you the business on the architecture of everything from the design of the Grand Palace down in Bangkok to the significance of the intricate stucco work you can see in some minor Chiang Mai temple? I can do it. You wanna lecture on the difference between an apse and an architrave. I can give you one. (Just give me a little bit of a warning, and so long as I've got my detailed notes with me. Now, where did I put them?) I mean, we're talking here about someone whose gone through three months - 90 days - of indoctrination, and not forgetting all those trips that almost drove us crazy.

My last one - training trip, I mean - was here in Chiang Mai, in which we tried to visit nine temples in one day. (At least, it should have been nine - khau in Thai, which means progress and is therefore doubly meritorious. I suspect one or two might have dropped off the list as we went along, because we were in a bit of a hurry to get through with it. Understandably, because although the forecast was for a sunny day and lotsa blue sky, it didn't quite turn out that way.)

First off was Wat Chedi Liam or Wat Gu Kam in Wieng Kum Kam, Chiang Mai's old city. My teacher was giving us the info in a rapid fire-speech for fear that we couldn't make it to nine temples in a day. What we students had to do was take it all in, and at the same time do multi-tasking - writing stuff down, taking photos, making sketches and the like. And the 'everything' that was being thrown at us included the first few years of the foundation of the Lanna Kingdom until the conqueror king - what's his name? Mengrai, no? - relocated the city away from what turned out to be a seriously flood-prone plain.

So there we were and suddenly - Ka-boom! Rain was pouring down. Eighty people were high-tailing it back to our bus-transport, looking like drowning rats. It seems clear to me now that weather forecasting is useless in Thailand. So, a word of advice from your guide. Do remember at all times during the rainy season to carry your umbrella with you - whatever the weather forecasters tell you.

At the second temple we regrouped, and our morale really wasn't that bad at all. We shook the rain out of our notebooks, squeezed our sleeves and got back to work just as if we'd been born to it. The sun was shining again, a cool breeze was blowing, the sky was blue once more. Who cares if we were wet through and shivering?

Actually, if you'd asked us, we'd have told you walking around half-drowned was fun.

That was it, in minature - from 7.30 am. until 7.30 pm, twelve hours of temples, soaking wet from the rain and burnt bloody from the sun...Wat Chedi Liam, Wat Suan Dok (formerly Wat Bupparam), Doi Suthep, Wat Jet Yod (the most beautiful temple in Chiang Mai), Wat Chedi Luang, Wat Chiang Man, and the popular Wat Prasingh. Er, how many was that, exactly?

Anyway, it was all educational. Apart from the historical particulars of Chiang Mai and the fact that it regularly rains at irregular intervals in the rainy season, there were many things that we guide students learned. For an example, we were at Chiang Man Temple, and nearly had a fight with the local drivers over there. It was because we had to practice before our oral exam and the good way to do that was to explain the Wat to friends and tourists that passed by. It turned out that some of those local drivers had valid guide licenses and they were just a little bit bothered by us. Their thinking was they could have profitted from these tourists or even sold them some tour programs. So some of the tougher guys thought that beating us up would partly compensate for the losses we caused them.

Luckily, someone in our group was able to reason with them.

As our studies, or to be more precise, our speaking out loud in half-broken English, attracted quite a number of tourists who wanted to get free lessons, it was a little unfortunate for them to listen and get quite unbelievable stories. One of us said the mural paintings in the Lai Kham Chapel represented the story of Ramayana, an epic from India, when in fact it was to do with the Suwanna Hong. Anyway, the story they told didn't fit the pictures, whatever they were.

Also, one of us joked that, King Khamfu, the father of King Phayu who built Wat Phrasingh, died because he swam in a crocodile pool in one of the temples. Anyone with only a half a brain should understand that no one in their right mind would have desported himself in such a fatal and improper activity.

In fact the king was devoured by crocodiles swimming in a river in Phayao. And yes, a few hundred years ago crocodiles were plentiful in our waters. Even in the Chiang Mai city moat, it is assumed that they were put in there to keep the enemies from easily crossing it. Lucky we don't have any now. Just piranhas. (OK, that's just a joke. Don't get excited. And don't go spreading misleading stories when you get back home. Remember, like everyone else, we tourist guides like to lighten up once in a while).

There are yet more incidents that, if known to you foreigners, tour guides might not have any job to do. So, I have to be discrete about certain things.

Anyway, after three months of studying, I will be a tour guide soon. So if you see a talkative, chubby, friendly Thai woman surrounded by tourists... that'll probably be me.

Text: Anne, Terryl
Photos: Anne