ARAB TIMES, THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 2017

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Early planning may pay off

Opulent temples, elephant tours and upscale food court

Beauty pageant of sea coming to Quebec City

2 weeks, 1 country and a world of wonders in ThailandBy Courtney Bonnell

Trudging up a lush mountainside to a remote village, plunging through a swift-

moving river in the footsteps of elephants and cruising Bangkok’s gleaming luxury malls — with each step, I walked into different worlds, each one beautiful, all in Thailand.

Don’t forget glittering temples, bustling night markets and world-famous Thai mas-sages to soothe weary muscles.

The capital’s malls and markets are endless, from Siam Paragon, filled with designer brands and an upscale food court, to stands of cheap goods where souvenir-seekers haggle over the price of utensils, bracelets and trinkets. After dark, the night markets come alive, bustling with shoppers grabbing cheap sunglasses and shoes while families and friends enjoy soups and curries in more bearable heat.

Bangkok is also famous for its opulent temples, including Wat Pho, Temple of the Re-clining Buddha, with its stair-step monuments to royalty called chedis, similar to stupas. The centerpiece is a massive horizontal Buddha, its gold girth touching the temple walls from end to end.

Next door at the white-walled Grand

Palace complex, black-clad mourners waited in snaking lines to pay their respects to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The beloved leader died in October after a 70-year reign — his image ubiquitous on billboards and shrines.

The complex also houses Thailand’s most sacred temple, Wat Phra Kaew, or Temple of the Emerald Buddha, with sparkling, gold-decked buildings. The surprise was the size of the famed Buddha figure, carved from jade and dressed in gold, but just 26 inches high.

Chiang Mai’s walled old city houses more famous temples, including Wat Chedi Luang. Its towering red brick is worn to black, its steps have all but crumbled, but stone dragons still stand guard.

My favorite temple, moss-covered Wat Pha Lat, is tucked in a forest just outside Chiang Mai. From the university, I got there by hiking Monks Trail, which is marked by strips of orange fabric. Head farther up the mountain to popular Doi Suthep temple or hail a songth-aew, a shared taxi.

Hungry after hiking? Hit the street vendors and restaurant options that abound back in the tourist center: vegetarian-friendly green curried rice, fried mushrooms and pad thai, plus plenty

of beef speared on sticks for meat-eaters. To cool off from the heat or spice, try fresh-cranked pomegranate juice or coconut ice cream.

Chiang Mai is the jumping-off point for trekking, elephant tours and other outdoor adventure. A friend and I booked an ecotour trek and overnight home stay in a village some 4- hours away in the Mae Hong Son region. The Karen ethnic group lives there, farming rice and cabbage on vibrant green hillsides. Our guides cut down wild passion fruit for us to sample, pointed out spiders as big as a hand and chopped bamboo to whittle into cups. After reaching the mountaintops near the Myanmar border and making it to the village, we used those cups to slug homemade rice liquor.

We set up a bed of blankets on the wooden floor and rested between bags of rice as our hosts cooked dinner in a hearth built into the floor. Sleeping in a home open to the elements was the only time I got cold on the trip, and the only place I skipped a shower, passing up a tub of chilly water in an outhouse with a squat toilet.

I wanted to enjoy these majestic creatures, iconic in Thailand but often exploited, in an ethical way. The Elephant Nature Park allowed us to travel alongside them, not on their backs.

We kept them moving through the jungle by thrusting bananas and melon into their eagerly outstretched trunks. It was surreal and a bit unnerving as we led four mostly blind and elderly female elephants on a muddy, uneven path, trying to keep our balance while avoiding their feet. In another part of the sanctuary, we got a peek at a baby elephant.

After trekking, we looked forward to de-compressing on an otherworldly beach on the Phi Phi Islands — pronounced “pee pee.” But rain was falling as we arrived and promised not to let up.

Instead of the party-hearty main town on Ko Phi Phi Don, the largest island, we opted for a secluded resort. A long-tail boat plowed through choppy waters to get us there, leaving us windblown and wet from ocean spray and rain as we tried to photograph the green-topped rock rising from the Andaman Sea.

The weather cooperated enough the next day for a group tour to the smaller island, Koh Phi Phi Leh, and its hotspot, Maya Bay, which is breathtaking but overrun after the movie “The Beach” made it famous. Even early in the day, it was tough to find a spot free of people posing with selfie sticks. (AP)

By Calvin Woodward

As the story goes, the training ship Amerigo Vespucci was sailing the Mediterranean in

1962 when the U.S. aircraft carrier Indepen-dence spotted it and radioed: “Who are you?” Came the reply: “School ship Amerigo Ves-pucci, the Italian Navy.” The Independence answered: “You are the most beautiful ship in the world.”

Tall ships sometimes come with tall tales, and whether that one is true may be lost to history. What’s not in dispute is that the venerable three-masted frigate is a hand-some piece of work and just one of dozens of majestic ships that will be sailing North Atlantic waters this summer, visiting ports along the St. Lawrence River for weeks and gathering en masse in Quebec City July 18-23.

It’s a beauty pageant from the age of sail, a spectacle that brings to mind the parade of “cathedrals of the sea” in New York harbor for America’s bicentennial in 1976.

HistoryEarly planning may pay off because hotel

rooms are likely to be hard to come by close to the event. The gathering will bring a wallop of European seafaring history to a city already steeped in it. Stone-walled Old Quebec, with its cobbled streets, commanding cliffs and fortifications from the British-French struggle over New France, is the only place the entire fleet of more than 40 ships will rendezvous. The event is a highlight of Canada’s 150th birthday, which is also being celebrated with free entry to all national parks for the year and festivals of every flavor.

Even in normal times, Quebec City vi-brantly lives up to its claim, “So Europe, so close,” and it knows how to party.

During the tall ship festivities, the water-front will be alive with music, street perform-ers and visitors clambering aboard the ships for free tours. Also free: arena performances by the Spanish troupe Xarxa Teatre, a parade of more than 3,000 sailors and even more fireworks than Quebec City usually puts on during the summer.

The bulk of the fleet will be engaged in a five-month-long trans-Atlantic race from Brit-ain to North America to France. Joining them in Quebec City will be more tall ships, based in Boston and the Great Lakes.

Among superstars of Rendez-vous 2017: the US Coast Guard’s Eagle, a cutter built by Nazi Germany and seized by the US as a war prize. It’s the sixth Coast Guard ship to be named Eagle in a line dating to 1792. Germany’s graceful Alexander von Humboldt II, distin-guished by 24 green sails, is also on tap. So are El Galeon, replica of the Spanish galleons that for three centuries linked Asia, the Americas and Spain; the reconstructed War of 1812 warship Niagara; the 1928-built Picton Castle barque; and the Peruvian Navy’s four-masted BAP Union.

Both the Eagle and Amerigo Vespucci, built in 1931, were among the 16 or so tall ships that sailed into New York harbor with a vast array of spectator vessels on July 4, 1976. Both returned for the Statue of Liberty centen-nial in 1986 and the millennium celebrations of 2000.

From Gaspesie inland, the St. Lawrence provides plenty of opportunities to see scat-tered contingents of the fleet under sail and at anchor. July 7 and July 9 are the dates to see the fleet under sail from the cliffs of Land’s End in Forillon National Park. Their schedule: April 29-May 1, Sines, Portugal; June 1-5, Bermuda; June 17-22, Boston; and more than 30 Canadian ports, June 30-Aug. 20.

As for the main rendezvous point, Paule Bergeron, speaking for Quebec City Tourism, says the city’s hotels could well be full for the event. With flexible hotel cancellation policies the norms, she said, “you can hardly go wrong by booking early.” (AP)

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If You Go...Old Quebec: http://www.quebecregion.

com/en/old-quebec-summer/?manual-change=1

Tall ship events: http://www.rdv2017.com/en/programmation/

(Left): Ornate buildings at Wat Phra Kaew, or the Temple of the Emerald Bud-dha. (Right): Long-tail boats sit near a small beach on Ko Phil Phi Leh, in

Thailand. (AP)

(Left): Elephants cross a river at the Elephant Nature Park. (Right): A colorful temple marks the entrance to Wat Pha Lat Temple outside Chiang Mai, Thai-

land. (AP)

In this Aug 5, 2015 photo, a schooner sails against the backdrop of Quebec City and iconic Chateau Frontenac overlooking the port. (AP)