National Parks
In the US, we have a little bit of a different idea of what a national park should be than they do in Thailand. Yesterday, we went to a park next to a big temple (Doi Sutep) in Chiang Mai. From the temple, we tried to find the park and asked numerous people, including a policeman, and no one seemed to get what we wanted. People don't really walk in Thailand and I think that they were confused about us wanting to walk. Finally, a nice man (he has got some good karma headed his way) helped us out and gave us directions. We found it, and to our surprise, well not really, there wasn't anyone at the information booth. We kept walking, looked at a really confusing map, and then started out on what we thought was the trail. Around the time that we saw the burning piles of garbage, we decided that this may not be the trail. Yes, piles of garbage bags, smoking. I don't know what kind of national parks you have been to, but I definitely haven't found one with flaming garbage before. We gingerly walked past the garbage, some rusted shells of trucks (which looked like they had been a part of the burning garbage pile at one point in time), and a lot of empty beer bottles. Not knowing where the real trail might be, we continued on the path. We were looking for a summit or some waterfalls. Really we just wanted some exercise and to be out of the city, but waterfalls would have been nice. We saw the signs for waterfalls, but definitely didn't find any. They were suppsoed to be 3 km away, but after walking ~5 km, we decided to turn back. We met some nice Germans who also had not found the waterfalls. On the way back we found a nice fig tree and the real trail. We did make it back to the temple and safely out of the jungle before dark. Oh yeah, the best part was the trail markers. I have seen a lot of trail markers, but this was the first time that I ever followed pink confetti...