Golden Cupids Hotel's Blog: Blog

A Day With The Elephants

Wed, 21 May 2008 04:59:47 GMT

A DAY WITH THE ELEPHANTS

(By Barbara McGaffey)

Jan, the Golden Cupids Hotel office manager (and jack of all trades)

arranged a day trip for us to the Elephant Nature Park. It's a several hundred acre

elephant sanctuary established and run by a small Thai lady named Lek

(with grants and donations from several philanthropists and groups).

The Park rescues and provides a haven for these disappearing Asian elephants,

many of whom have been injured or abused.

They're doctored, fed and provided lifelong, humane treatment and shelter.

Once back in this more natural habitat, many of them are able to once again

bear live little ones who are reared by mother & devoted "aunties".

This rare "white" elephant has found a home at Lek's safe haven.

Camp volunteers speak and answer questions about the Park and its giant residents as the elephants gather around the visitor platform in anticipation of lunch.

Visitors are taught to feed them from large hampers full of fruits and vegetables.

Then we enjoyed a delicious native Thai luncheon on the 2^nd floor of the building.

After lunch, the mahouts (elephant handlers) began the procession to the river—them leading the elephants, the guests parallel but apart from the animals. Once there, the gentler giants were separated from the more boisterous youngsters, and we were able to wade in and gently scrub their backs and pour water over them, which they seemed to enjoy. We sure did!

It was another amazing day to remember—thanks to the caring and knowledgeable staff at the Golden Cupids Hotel in Chiang Mai. (April 2007)

Doi Suthep at night

Mon, 19 May 2008 15:32:21 GMT

Yesterday evening we asked Toon to drive and drop us at the begining of the Doi Suthep mountain. We planned to walk up to Doi Suthep temple!!

Every year, on the day before Visakha Puja Day, Chiang Mai people have tradition of walking up to Doi Suthep temple. There are 2 reasons of doing this :- first, to offer our strength, our good intention, our believe to the Lord Buddha. Second, is to recall Kru Ba Sri Wichai, the most important monk in Lanna, who led people in building the road up to Doi Suthep temple.

After gave our respects to Kru Ba Sri Wichai statue, we started walking up at 17:30, before the parades, which started around 20:00

We walked up and free ourselves from worry, we wondered how long it will take for this 12 KM distance.

On the way, there are many cars parked beside the road, some sold drink and food, some offered them for free. We are very proud of being Thai, Thai people always kind and generous.

We arrived at Doi Suthep temple at 20:30, we made it in 3 hours!! Wow, far better than we expected.

Here are some picture, maybe you want to see Doi Suthep temple at night time, it was really beautiful.

In the garden

Fri, 16 May 2008 04:16:01 GMT

Good morning. Hope you have a lovely morning …..

Received an email from Andy, the No. 1 brother asked where is my blog, well, actually I aimed to update this several times, but before I started I have to jump to do something else…. (very good excuse!! Ha ha)

This morning Lala and I accompanied Peppe to the Village Headman house to give the kings sculptures to put into the village’s new public building.

Then, Peppe off to Don Chan temple, she promised to take some pictures back so I can put in here.

Grandpa’s second book is nearly complete; he needs another 2-3 chapters to close the story.

Picture bellows is Moon and our guests from French, who left yesterday, very lovely family, hope they have a good time for the rest of their holiday.

And next….. are pictures of our garden, we have quite a lot of beautiful flowers during summer – rainy seasons :-

Songkran Festival

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:22:30 GMT

Hello everyone . It is a sunny day after a refreshing rain last night. Very cool and lovely.

It is a time to update the blog!

I owed you the Songkran festival's picture, so here you are :-

But, but, but, first of all, let's read brief details about the festival, thank you to Tourism Authority of Thailand for this useful information :

While the water splashing will flourish, the traditional values of Songkran are the focus of the 2008 celebrations.

Songkran is without doubt the most popular of all Thai festivals and rightly so.
It marks the beginning of a new astrological year and its exact dates are determined by the old lunar calendar of Siam. This year the three-day festival falls on 13 to 15 April.

Traditionally, April 13 is known as “Maha Songkran Day” and marks the end of the old year, April 14 is “Wan Nao”, while April 15 is “Wan Thaloeng Sok” when the New Year begins.

While the festival has its roots in Buddhist heritage, the washing of Buddha images, merit making, traditional family values and the sprinkling of water in respect for elders, it is best known for the fun and “sanuk” everyone gains from splashing copious quantities of water on all who happen to pass by.

Songkran is celebrated with gusto by young and old, throughout the country. City communities and villages in rural Thailand forget their troubles and concentrate on the serious of business of having fun as well as cooling off, during the height of the summer’s scorching tropical temperatures.

Probably of all the national festivals, this is the one that foreigners love to experience the most. They will come across water splashing festivities wherever they travel giving them an opportunity to share in a festival that is immensely popular, while still retaining a link to its traditional roots and values.

One of the traditional values points to the Thai family and the opportunity for family members to express their respect for their elders. Younger members of the family pour scented water on the hands of their parents, and grandparents. They may present them with gifts or tokens of their love. In return, elders wish youngsters good luck and prosperity.

In temples, elder members of the family gather to make merit, offering alms to the monks. They may help clean the temple courtyard, or perform bathing rites for Buddha images

In by-gone days, the fun of splashing water on friends or strangers had to wait until the late afternoon when the religious duties and ceremonies were over.

Today, the lines are often blurred with the younger generation making the most of the three-day opportunity to splash water on everyone in sight.

Possibly the most famous of the Songkran celebrations takes place in Chiang Mai. It attracts thousands of visitors, from all over Thailand as well as international tourists determined to share in the fun.

Often simply called the Chiang Mai Water Festival, the core of the celebrations will be held, 13 to 15 April, at the city’s main irrigation canal, with parades and cultural performances as well as arts demonstrations. The actual opening ceremony will be held 12 April, at the Royal Flora complex when the Minister of Tourism and Sports will declare the festival open.

There are other opportunities to join in Songkran festivities regardless of where you are travelling.

On the 13th, we went for water fighting in Chiang Mai city

Our team

In Chiang Mai centre

14th, the day for carrying sand into nearby temple. For Thai, we believe in 3 good things about this activity, which are:

1. For hamony - the family get together, help one another carrying sand from river, etc. to the temple. This give the feeling of harmoniously.

2. Monks can use those sand for building and maintaining the temple.

3. Buddhist believes that taking out something from temple to your home is a sin, even a grain of sand, so whenever we go to temple, it must be grain of sand, stick in your shoes, and be taken away from the temple, so this activity give you a chance to return sand to the temple.

We also bath Buddha images with perfume water:-

The last and most important activity is pouring scented water into elderly hands, to give respect and apologize if in the past year children had upset the elderly.

Peppe, and her mother, our Granny

If you would like to join us for the next Song Kran on 13th - 15th April 2009 please write to us at contact@goldencupids.com

See you next time, bye. Jan

Loy Krathong Festival.

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:46:30 GMT

Good evening everyone. It's nearly Songkran (water festival). Andy bought us several colourful shirts to wear at this coming fun festival. We are looking forward to these days because it is so hot. Well, suppose we going to have a very good time. I will take some pictures to show you here.

Today, with a great help from our old guest, who now turn to be our very good friend, Barbara McGaffey. Kindly suggested and send some information about Loy Krathong festival, which I found very useful for us and for readers who interested in joining us in this wonderful festival. Thank you again Barbarra . Let's come and read :-

LOI KRATHONG is CELEBRATED MAGNIFICENTLY

in CHIANG MAI at the GOLDEN CUPIDS HOTEL

A visit to Thailand is not complete until you've celebrated the Loi Krathong holiday in Chiang Mai with Golden Cupids Hotel Hostess Peppe Stokes and her Staff.

The official 2008 celebration begins the night of the full moon on Wednesday, 12 November 2008. However, this year's stunning Buddhist ceremonial close to nearby Mae Jo University will occur on Saturday, 8 November. This is the famous Chiang Mai event attended by thousands, which ends with the famous release of thousands of traditional hot-air balloons. The following Loy Krathong weekend abounds in beautiful parades, hot-air balloon releases and fireworks, with the famous Chiang Mai good will, fun and happiness overflowing.

Thailand for Visitors.com says,

"The nearly week-long Loi Krathong celebrations held in Chiang Mai are by far the most interesting. Several streets in the Old City are closed at night for a huge market featuring several stage shows. On the night of Loy Krathong, there's a parade of giant krathongs along with contestants for the title Miss Nopomas. The procession starts at the Tapae Gate and ends at the riverside, where giant krathongs are floated.

Loy Krathong in Chiang Mai has the added feature of a parallel festival called Yi Peng. Yi Peng is celebrated by launching hot-air balloons made of rice paper into the night sky. The night sky is literally filled with thousands of these bright lights

shining like a moving river of stars. It's a truly magical sight that can't really be captured in a picture."

At Chiang Mai's Golden Cupids Hotel, guests are treated to the works by the fun and efficient staff. Arrangements are made for Cupids guests to participate in all the holiday's celebration events, from the Yi Peng ceremony at a nearby University to many downtown events and parades.

Don't miss the Loy Krathong week at the Golden Cupids Hotel in Chiang Mai.

November 8 – 16, 2008

It will be a week you'll never forget!

Make reservations early—both hotel and transportation!

Emaill to contact@goldencupids.com

With time off, planes and hotels fill up early with tourists and Thais going home for the holiday.

(To read good native descriptions and see more photos of the Loy Krathong celebration,

see http://www.thaiworldview.com/feast/kratong.htm.)

Golden Cupids Guests Share Some of Their Loy Krathong Experiences

Those interested can learn how to make krathongs. Moon, La, Took & Beam patiently taught us how to create lovely krathongs, the candle-lit discs of flowers that are floated on rivers, lakes and pools on this National Holiday.

In November 2007, rooms were full, as usual, for this holiday period. Cupids' lovely hostess, Peppe Stokes, and her fun staff provided transportation and accompanied all the guests to the Yi Peng ceremony at a nearby university. The hot-air balloon release after the ceremony was truly spectacular!

Cupids staff even hosted a mini-balloon release one evening after dinner at the Hotel so the younger guests could enjoy this special treat first-hand.

The Friday downtown festivities were exciting and beautiful. The Old City Tapae gate corner was cobwebbed with Krathong lanterns, as were most of the Temples, buildings and streets in Chiang Mai. After dark, floats in the parade vied with each other for color and magnificence.

29th March 2008

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:15:27 GMT

Good morning, it's 6:21. I came down to office, turned on my computer, opened windows to let morning fresh air in, birds singing, the sky on the east looked pink! Look like we going to have another good day.

We have been quite busy since last week, mainly on maintaining our garden and surrounding, we have cleaned our Water Garden, it took 3 days. Really that was a lot quicker than last time which took about a week, here are some pictures ....

This was the hardest part, cleaned filtered gravel which was about 2 metres deep.

Finally finished! Look at those happy fish.

Put water lilly into this corner as well.

Also have our cupids re-painted

Put deep water - water lillies in for experiment, they love sunshine, but this area has little bit sun in the afternoon, so will see if this going to work, but as far as we can see, they looked quite happy.

Two flowers are coming up!!

Orchids are blooming.

Yesterday Tuung and Mr. Sri trimmed Grandpa's lovers tree...

Peppe taught cooking lesson to Ally & Karen

Sun Beam, Calum and Angus at the pool.

Hope you have a nice day also, I'm off to help Moon preparing breakfast.

Bye for now.

16th March

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:23:20 GMT

It's 22:40, not to long to go before Monday (again!)

Today is a very hot day, not too bad during the night time like this, but this afternoon, the temperature came up to about 36C. Our gardens need a lot of water, and we, of course, need a lot of sunblock!!

Today we have guests from Malaysia, they staying with us to 3 nights. Again, very lovely family.

In the evening, after cooking dinner for Peppe, Moon and I drove to Central Airport Plaza to see movie : The Spiderwick Chronicles. Unfortunately, we missed the 17:10 round, so we decided to have Japanese dinner instead, then came back home because Moon have to look after Keith at night, I am also going to keep them companies!

Our guests just came back from Sunnday market, they said they have had a good time. We like Sunday Market too, there are so many to see, to eat, and to enjoy. Usually when we go there, we will walk around for about an hour, then have a lovely foot massage for half an hour.

Yesterday, we moved 2 big ferns from our house to the spa areas, they looked quite good there. I climbed up the trees to cut some dead branches, also to remove parts of a fire balloon, which have been stuck on the tree.

The trees by swimming pool are begining to have flower, purple one, very excited, I will take some photos of them when they ready which should be about 2 weeks.

If we have time tommorrow, we will go to Kham Teang market (garden centre) to buy some more water lilly and check price for Cannas flower, we need quite a lot, so if we lucky we can get them at 45-50 baht each.

Just be informed that our hotel was advertised in Amazing Thailand by TAT website, which I will show to Grandpa tomorrow, we need to send them some wordings and pictures.

Grandpa enjoying his writing, Keith is recovering, Peppe have appointment for health-check tomorrow, the girls are happy.

Have a goodnight / good day.

Bye - Jan.

14th March 2008

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:50:44 GMT

Good morning. It is another good day.

I started my morning with backwashed the swimmingpool filter, watered all the flower around the pool, borrowed Tuung's sprinkles for our new plant area. Moon & I grew some ferns by the wall near swimming pool, hopefully they will look stronger next month by the time all yellow and white-purple flower bust out from the trees in the same area.

The guests are checking out today, the Manstrip family from Denmark, very lovely family. They're leaving for Phuket and Krabi, hope they have a good time.

Checked emails, have booking from our old guests, coming next month. Looking forward to meeting them.

Two websites have asked for link exchanged, ....done.

Peppe went out to collect Keith and Moon from the hospital.

Tuum, Tuun & Beam are just leaving for Bangkok, Tuun have to go back to work. They will come back in a week time.

Tuung and Sri (the garden man) are digging small channels for us to grow Cannas Flower instead of the old bougainvillaea.

Lala, Tuuk and Pond are cleaning the room, they are going to help the boys after finish with the rooms.

Grandpa is starting his new book!!! William's women. Quite romantic one. So I'm off to find him some information about Lilly Langtree (?) and type some pages that he have written. See you - have a nice day -Jan.

Hello

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:14:12 GMT

Hello, and welcome to Golden Cupids Hotel's blog. The reason we added this blog to our website is because today I went to the seminar about e-marketing for tourism launded by Tourism Authority of Thailand, Tourism Technology Association, Kasikorn Bank, Globlet, and Chiyo Web Hosting. I have learned a lot from this seminar, thank you all experts who have been so helpful. So what I'm doing now is just a start! Well, I do hope this will help adding more traffic into our website. Also, I can update you on what we are doing, quite fun, isn't it? See you.... bye. Jan.

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