Clever! I must marinate on that…

Chimon said, “A lotus blossom.”

The monk pursued, “After it has come out of the water, what is it?”

Chimon replied, “Lotus leaves.”

Christopher Wynter

Anyway, the train ride was pretty cool. We had a whole seat each – to ourselves. I kept waiting for people to get on and squish in beside us like they do in India and it took me a while to get my head around having the whole thing to myself. The window beside us was huge and across from us was a really nice young English couple who are travelling the world at the moment. She was lovely and the guy was really funny, so a whole lot more giggling went on throughout the ride.

We left Bangkok as the sun was setting. We went through several shanty towns made largely of corrugated iron and a few sticks and they were literally inches away from the track. It was kind of like driving through people’s living rooms, they were so close. We also drove through posh suburbs, past awesome looking temples and enormous billboards. It was raining and lots of lightening was happening, so it was a pretty cool visual send-off. Our waiter was a really funny guy and there was also a woman, who we named ‘Scary Bed Lady’ who came along and made all the beds up with frightening efficiency. Her smile had obviously been removed at birth, in direct contrast to the funny waiter guy, so we all found her a little intimidating. But the beds were comfortable and the ride was interesting. The food was the Thai version of railway food, but it kept our ribs from sticking together.

Our guesthouse in Chiang Mai is just inside the old part of the city. We’re in a budget place, surrounded by quite flash places, but we have a fan, a small bathroom and a roof over our mouths, so we’re quite happy. We also have a balcony overlooking our little street which is way cool. I got in touch with my inner idiot after we booked in and hung out on the balcony blowing bubbles. Good fun, and got a few smiles from it as well. Across the road is an artist guy who, as it turns out, is from the same family that runs our guesthouse, so we’re allowed to go and sit in his garden whenever we like. Nice place for birdwatching. He showed us around his little garden then drove off on his motorbike, leaving us – complete strangers – sitting in his garden and his shop wide open. Pretty trusting sort of area, aye what? We have a food market at the end of our street, so we have a glut of street stalls to choose from for dinner. Including some live fish swimming around in half-barrels. Yum. I think.

It might be up north here, but it’s still hot – around 35 degrees. So we’re fan-hugging and balcony sitting, waiting for the evening to come so we can go visit the night market and perhaps murder our wallets in the process.

Sawadee kha

It took aaaaages to get to our hotel. Every traffic light here seems to stay red for about 10 minutes. When we got to the hotel – feeling absolutely knackered, the receptionist proved my theory on the snootiness of the night reception staff being in direct proportion with the poshness of the hotel. And this one had a huge lobby lined in black marble and several floors of balconies above us. When you’re feeling that tired and it’s 5 o’clock in the morning at your place in NZ, it’s amazing how uncivilized you can suddenly feel. I began to have visions of leaping across the counter and slapping her face by the time she gave us our room cards. We tried to find out what floor room 2327 was on, but by the time she repeated it a third time and we still didn’t understand, we removed ourselves (before she slapped us) and bluffed it until we made it. (Yes, it was on the 23rd floor. But hey, we’re two blondes and that doesn’t make life easy you know.)

We dropped our bags and braved the lift again to sit at the pool and break open our duty-free grog (again, purely as a soporative…). The palms by the pool were pretty cool – lights wrapped around the trunks, all the way up.

We got to sleep finally, then at 4.30am we got up and had a coffee, because of course it was 9.30 am in NZ. The usual time/body clock adjustment thing kicking in.

Day 2. Off to the train station to book our tickets to Chiang Mai (up north). It’s Songkran in a few days here – the Thai New Year. Otherwise known as the water-soaking festival. Our tuk-tuk driver was a really nice guy, but we had to do the obligatory stop at his brother’s uncle’s daughter’s cousin’s shop, which turned out to be a frighteningly expensive jewelry manufacturer’s and shop. We were taken out into the manufacturing part, which was quite interesting. We then went through the showroom, where we were shadowed to within an inch of our lives by the staff. Usual story – white equals rich. Trying to explain to them this is not the case with us – no go. Resistance is futile. Never mind, it was all glittery and shiny and it’s nice to see what the rich people wear. And we did get a free lemonade out of it.

We also went to (insert relatives names here) food place, where we dined at a decadent rate – and that’s having chosen about the cheapest meals on the menu. Gill asked about one of their fresh shrimps, which they were selling at 300 baht per 100 grams. This one weighted 200 grams. That was a $30.00NZ shrimp! Granted it was a big one (at first I took it for a peeled crayfish) but we managed to beat things down to a $15.00 meal and took vows at the same time that from here on out we will eat street food.

When the tuk-tuk’s stop at the traffic lights they turn their ignition off to wait for the lights to turn green. On the way to the food place, this guy halted on top of a railway line and stopped his motor. Gill and I looked at each other. ‘Okay, this must be a disused railway line.’ we said. We then started joking about if a train came she would push me out of the tuk tuk then jump out and land on top of me, as it would be a fairly soft landing for her. After a few minutes, Gill pointed to a light approaching some distance down the track. There really was a train coming! And we were sitting in a stationery, turned off tuk tuk right smack in the middle of the lines. But did we panic? No we did not. We started laughing. And laughing. Then we laughed so hard that tears rolled down our faces. I managed to gasp to the driver ‘you can move now’ and thankfully he started his motor and shifted so our tail was inches from where the train would pass. Then the traffic was piling up behind us honking madly because they were on the lines, the crossing bells were going off and a traffic police guy was trying to pull a barrier across the road.  I think our driver thought we were totally mad, laughing like we did. But it was such a mad, typical Asian scenario that we just couldn’t help ourselves. It was well worth the entertainment and, thank God, we didn’t die before having our first fantastic Thai meal.

On to Khao San road – the main backpackers ‘cool place to be’, where there was a band making a racket and stalls all over the road, etc. We walked past the sign ‘Fucking Good Beer’ on the side of a trolley that I had taken a photo of in 2005. (Sorry about the language Dad.) Good to see some things stay the same. Wandered round looking accommodation to come back to when we return from up North, then finally took a tuk-tuk back to Pratunam, to our hotel. The driver (different guy this time) drove faster than a speeding bullet – he was pretty unhappy because I had bartered the price down so much, then on the way he found out that we were staying at a highly expensive hotel. I’m sure when he turned into our hotel driveway, which is curved, he was trying to throw us out of the tuk-tuk by utilizing it like a slingshot. However, we disappointed him by hanging on. But when we got out and walked into the lobby, we felt really alive!!! What a great first day in Thailand! We felt like we’d just lived through a real-life Jackie Chan movie. So out came the duty free grog once more – this time not for the purposes of sleeping, but to celebrate triumphantly the fact we were still alive. Take that, Bangkok! You can’t kill weeds you know.

Okay, day 3 now and we’re passing the time waiting for our train to Chiang Mai. We go well prepared – we are both equipped with water guns and plastic bags for cameras, ready for the inevitable soaking of everyone within range that apparently goes on for 3-5 days up there.

Yesterday we stayed in our room most the time, as the HEAT is back. At around 4ish in the avo we hired a tuk-tuk and got the driver to take us right around the outside of Chiang Mai wall. We were total, unabashed tourists, stopping him here and there so we could take photos of things. He also took us to a Wat that was incredibly ornate – probably took about fifty photos there.

Gill’s getting pretty soft on Mama cat and buying her fish, etc, at the market down the road. Mama cat of course thinks that this is pretty alright and is slowly moving her kittens closer to us so she can eat and watch them at the same time. The kittens look to be about six weeks old now and the three of them can make a fish disappear in less than 15 minutes.

Artist guy is still making dunnos. I wonder what they are for?

I gave Chow an English lesson this morning. Considering he’s learned everything he knows so far out of a book, he’s doing darned well. A couple of French people turned up while we were at it and I made the mistake of greeting them a la Francais. They gabbled on for quite a while before I could say (in French) that I don’t speak French (well, very little anyway). It was nice to listen to though. They didn’t have much English and it took us all a while to sort out that the guy – who wanted to fly from here to India – had been booked onto Royal Nepal airlines by Chow. Chow gets his R’s and L’s around the wrong way, so it came out sounding pretty something like Loyor Enpar. I can’t read Thai so I couldn’t tell anything by what he had written down, but we managed to untangle things after ten minutes or so. I hope the guy gets on the right plane.

Tonight is our last night in Chiang Mai. Tomorrow we take the overnight train again to Bangkok, then spend three nights there before coming home to NZ. Cross fingers for us that nobody does any protesting in the next few days.

Come evening, we went off to the night market and did the rounds there for something to do. While we sat in the food hall a Traditional Thai Dancing show started in front of us. It’s amazing what these people can do with their fingers! They bend them backwards and make amazing, graceful shapes with them. Chow told us later than he was a kid, he’d hold his fingers under hot water then bend his fingers backwards until they were very strong and pliable. I’m not sure if I really want to try thai dancing that badly…

Yesterday, we played tourists again and went on a trip out to Maeteman to an elephant camp. We woke up to thunderstorms and lightening and were a little worried that the trip would be cancelled, but it was still on. We jumped into a van around the corner and found we were sharing the trip with an Israeli couple on their honeymoon and a couple of young Danish guys. The elephant show was pretty cool. Elephants play football really well. They’re not bad at basketball either. I got to sit on top of one – they are so tall and broad and bristly! No wonder tigers think twice before bothering them. Their trunks are incredibly agile. Picture a strong, intelligent, hairy snake and you’re getting the idea of a close-up of an elephant’s nose.

After the show we were shuttled onto ox-carts and taken for a ride up to a hill-tribe camp where some of their crafts were for sale. Once again, I was told how to look at a t-shirt (made by a tribal person?), that the boxes I was looking at were boxes, I really couldn’t live without a puppet and it was good luck for me to have a wooden roughly built cowbell or some such device in my home. I got fed up pretty quickly and not one of them made a baht out of me. They may look poor, but there were tourists teeming around this place and I’d lay bets that these ‘tribals’ have a Rolls Royce or two parked out the back of their straw huts somewhere. I saw plenty of satellite dishes too. Reminiscent of a Flintstones movie it was – rustic living with all the bells and whistles. After that, onto howdahs and an elephant ride down into the river and back to the main camp. They have great big ramps dotted around, with many steps up them to get onto the elephants backs. Man those things are tall! The ride is a bit like surfing sitting on your bum. It feels pretty safe though, except when the elephant walks up the steps from the river. It was about then I was praying to whatever rope God there may be around here that everything was tied on and checked for fraying…

After a buffet lunch (where they had the mortal cheek to charge us for a drink of water and a can of Sprite!) we were shepherded down to the river rafts. We had to run the gauntlet through a bunch of Thai guys who took rather a fancy to the young Danish fellas. One of them approached the dark-haired one in a very flirtatious manner and the poor man had to duck and dodge while the Thai guys cracked up laughing. The river rafts consisted of two layers of bamboo, one on top of the other, and small benches thrown on top for sitting on. There were two drivers (or captains?) poling the raft all the way downriver. It was a really nice trip that went on for two kilometers, taking us past elephants, trees dripping with fruit, waterfalls, funky treehouses, and other visual delights. The front captain, an oldish but very spritely fellow, and I kept making crocodile jokes and the cheeky bugger told us he’d take us all the way to Bangkok for 200 baht each. When he threw water at my foot with his pole I told him he’d only get 180 baht if he didn’t behave himself (having honed my bartering skills nicely with all my market-going) but I have to say, I actually could have easily sat on that raft for hours and gone to Bangkok – to hell with our train tickets. It would’ve have been even nicer if the Danish guys hadn’t chattered and yakked and scared all signs of nature away all the way down. I think the honeymooners felt the same, but were too polite to say so. But what the heck, they were really nice guys, and they’ve recently been to New Zealand, so they obviously have discerning taste.

Next stop was a Karen tribe camp (where the long-necked women live – them that have metal coils around their necks), but Gill and I sat outside and chilled while the others went in. We couldn’t bring ourselves to go and stare at a people zoo. We feel bad enough about doing it to animals. Then, onto the part I was really looking forward to, apart from the elephants – the Butterfly, Orchid and SNAKE FARM! This has been my personal challenge – to go to a snake farm and touch a snake. There were only three of us at the show – me and the Israeli couple. I sat right in the back of the stands in case any escapism went on (yep, fraidy cat, that’s me). The show was short but pretty cool. It started off with a guy versus two cobras. The guy was very quick with his movements, but I noticed the snakes weren’t striking as quick as I thought they would, so I’m guessing they make sure they’re well fed first. After playing with his pets for a while, he milked one of its venom and showed us the fangs at close quarters. Then he brought one of the cobras up to where we were, blast him, and the emcee said that in Thailand if you touch a cobra, it brings good luck to you for the rest of your life. What to do? So I actually touched my first snake. The skin is very beautiful, I admit, but I’m not in any hurry to do that again. He played with a few more snakes, then the emcee announced the last part of the show – the jumping snakes. The guys reached into a box very gingerly, ducking and diving, then one of them got hold of a snake and threw it into the audience! I realised as he was doing it that it was a joke, but the Israeli guy kicked his bag off the stand in fright and his wife leapt behind him so quickly she was just a blur of movement. I nearly wet my pants laughing. Once the Israelis got over their fright they took the whole thing in good spirits, but the snake guys must have apologised about six times before they realised we were okay about it.

Finally, they played around with a ‘young’ python, who, as a wee fella, was only six feet long or so. Then they challenged us to wear him around our shoulders. This I had to do. If once only in my life, I had to try it. It was about as creepy as I thought it would be. The snake was really heavy, I could feel it’s muscles constricting and moving along my back, and they were holding it’s face rather close to mine. Never will I forget the feeling of having a set of long muscles with fangs at one end on the back of my neck. The Israeli guy took a couple of photos of me and Mr Python and in the first one you can see the look of ‘eucchh’ on my face quite clearly. So I’ve decided to cancel my trek down the Amazon River as I just couldn’t handle one of those or an anaconda falling on me from out of a tree. I’m sure if that happened, they’d find me frozen stiff with a look of sheer horror permanently stamped on my face, should they manage to do an autopsy on said miscreant serpent. Blecchh.

The final leg of the journey was to an elephant poo paper-making place. Enough said.

Last night, back to the Sunday market. I now knew what I was after and what prices to pay, so I covered everything I needed to do and hied off back to the guesthouse. I sat around with the locals for a while and discovered that one of the guesthouse guys who’s an effeminate sort of a chap has just graduated from university (majoring in Tourism). He’s cut his long hair and fingernails short, as the King was at the graduation ceremony, and I gather it’s just not the done thing to turn up as a Ladyboy. For the rest of the evening, he alternately crowed about graduating and mourned the loss of his locks and claws. One of the guys from down the Rabbit Hole was there and we got chatting about snakes and lizards and things. He told me that when he was a boy (in Louisianna, U.S.A.), tomboy girls would catch the smallish lizards around the place and wear them as earrings. Apparently they hang on until you press the back of their jaws then you can take them off again. He told me this with a perfectly straight face and I figure it’s either one hell of a good story or one hell of a tall tale. Either way, it’s a pretty funky fashion idea. I put it to him that perhaps you could also use these lizards as clothes pegs to hang your washing out. but he seemed to think this was a pretty way out idea. I was thinking of all the plastic the world could save…

Anyway, for the first time in ages, we were actually almost cold last night. The rain cooled everything down really nicely and it was rather odd not to be super hot. The frogs were croaking all over the neighbourhood – love songs apparently, as they have to mate really quickly while the temperature is down. I reckon there’s a few million tadpoles going to be born shortly, from what I could hear.

It was cooler again today – only 36 degrees. Hanging out on our verandah as usual, we saw our cooking school teacher go by. Today is her 25th birthday. A guy from a few doors away walked past with his poodle, who thinks he’s a rottweiler, on a piece of string. Fat dog actually ran down the road this morning (we wiped our eyes and took another look!), so we figured there must have been some sort of emergency, i.e. free food being handed out. Little dog followed after her, little legs blurring as he tried to keep up. Mama cat went by with a mouse flopping out of her mouth. Another successful family meal going down. Ratty Norvegicus (our chubby little neighbourhood rat) darted in and out of the art gallery pot plants then disappeared. Artist guy has been sawing and hammering all day. Twice I’ve asked him what he was making and twice the answer has been ‘dunno’. For a guy that doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s pretty industrious about it. Mind you, we saw him watering his plants in the rain yesterday, so we’ve started to wonder about the state of his cerebral health. Tonight I watched a little frog hop across the road, have his leg stood on by an unaware pedestrian, just miss being squashed by a motorbike/sidecar and make it to the other side to be almost stood on again by artist guy. Then it turned around and started back across the road! Little dog spotted it and played with it right in the middle of the traffic, and then finally it found a hole and leapt down it, out of sight. Talk about nerve racking!

Gill has just been feeding Mama cat and kittens secretly, over the side of the verandah, and it sounds like a party is starting up down the Rabbit Hole across the road. I’m off to find some liquid of some sort, as our respite from the heat is feeling like it’s over.

More observations:

It takes exactly 5 minutes for ice to melt in a glass of water here.

Serviettes (napkins) in Chiang Mai cafes are either really tiny or they put toilet rolls into kitsch plastic dispensers and them on the tables.

Okay, stepping down off my soapbox, last night we went for food in our favourite cafe again, where you can get a nice Thai meal for about $1.25NZ. At cafes here, they serve their food takeaway in cellophane bags, which are then puffed up a bit with air trapped in them and rubber bands are put around the top. Many Thai people buy their dinner this way and a lot of snacks, like potato chips and nuts are sold this way also. Across the road from us was a traffic light. When the light goes green for pedestrians, the light counts down from ten to zero, which doesn’t take long at all. You have to scuttle across the road rather than walk.

Last night we went in search of the Pinte Blues club which is mentioned in our second-hand Rough Guide to Thailand that I bought in Bangkok. (We never take this with us – we consult it in our room then take notes in a tiny notebook. There’s nothing like a falang with a guidebook to yell to the locals ‘I’m new here and I don’t have a clue. Come and rip me off!’) Nobody around our area had any idea about this blues bar, which has been here since 1985! We kept walking along Moonmaung Road (just round the corner from our guesthouse) until we found it – not actually very far away, close to a piece of Old Chiang Mai Wall. First we spotted the neon sign, then we saw an awesome Harley Davidson sitting at the curb outside it. This Harley had 4 saddlebags, a large American flag hanging off the back and every part of it that didn’t consist of steel had studs in it. We stopped, gawping like idiots, then spoke to the owner who sat beside it. At first we couldn’t make out whether it was a he or a she, as he/she’s voice was very deep, and was dressed in black t-shirt and shorts, white socks and sandshoes and a fuzzy white hairstyle. Considering some of the falangs we see around here, this gave us no clues whatsoever. It wasn’t till we sat down and watched for a while that we figured out, due to anthropological observation, that this was indeed a She.

After a few drinks, and many times fending off Hill-tribe women with – yes, wooden frogs – and flower sellers, our Laughing Tuk-tuk driver pulled up close by (we seem to be a magnet to this guy – and no, he hadn’t seen us yet) and I sent Gill home with him. I then went and had a chat with the Harley Davidson Rideress. I was dying to know what her story was. Turns out, was was a chief engineer for Hilton Hotels for many years, then adopted a Thai daughter and has retired here in Thailand.  It took her every day for 5 years to decorate this huge bike, which she rides all over Thailand on. We sat on the street chatting (I love how they just put chairs and tables out on the road here and the traffic just roars past, weaving around you) and then she started her bike, which as it turned out was lit up with LED lights more busily that your average christmas tree, her dog leapt up onto the back seat, she turned her stereo on so it blasted out George Thoroughgood and off she blasted.

As you do.

Observations:

• If you sit still long enough around here, everything will come to you. Flower leis, alcohol, food vendors with entire shops hanging off the side of their scooters, wooden frogs, beautiful Thai women in skyscraper shoes, lizards, dogs, etc.
• Thai dogs are very good at riding on scooters. They have terrific balance and ride like naturals.
• There are no parking meters. You just squeeze in wherever you can. Somehow it works.
• There are little sprayjets of water hanging down over the streets and sometimes rows of fans spurting out larger sprays to keep people cool.
• Bridges here have cool statues of elephants or whatever on them.
• Traffic police somehow manage to blow whistles even thought they wear masks over their mouths.
• Thai people love fish and the vendors keep them swimming around live then chop their heads off and cook them for you.
• They also love loud music and kitchy dancing groups doing strange jerky movements on television.

Today we hired Chow and the guesthouse car for the day and went outside the city to Sunkompang Village. This cost us 300 baht ($15NZ), which when split between us, worked out a darned sight cheaper than a tuk-tuk would have. We felt like royalty having an actual car and a driver to ourselves. We went out to an umbrella-making factory and watched how the process is done. When we got to the umbrella painters, Gill got her handbag painted with butterflies and I got a Ganesha (elephant god) and an Om sign painted on my camera case. They wanted to paint my bag, but I explained to them that it was made in India and would last a lot less longer than the painting on it.

We then went to a silk-making factory where you can watch the entire process from the moths mating, to the worms eating mulberry leaves, to them making cocoons to the cocoons being boiled (ugghh) to the silk bobbin winding and weaving on the looms. We were then led into a shop in which the prices nearly made me eat my tongue in fright. I went back out to the factory and played with a pop-ball with a boy in there who had to stick around his mum, who works one of the looms, all day. He was a nice young guy, aged about 11, and I gave him the pop-ball so he had something to do while he was hanging around. He loved it, and his mum was pretty pleased too, so that, as well as seeing the silk-making process made the visit worthwhile for me.

Next, we walked over to a factory next door where they made jade products and jewellery. There was a multitude of women there to serve us and no other  customers. Once again, we were shadowed so closely they were almost tripping over us. So far, these factory/shops were charging like wounded bulls for their products – by our experience, about four times what you could buy the same stuff for in the markets. But then you see huge, flash tourist buses full of falang pull up outside and you see how they get away with it. They had a lot less luck with the two part-scottish kiwis who wandered around taking photos and drinking their nice cold FREE water.

Chow then took us to a Thai Antique place. Yeah right! It was run by Kashmiri guys who featured mostly Kashmiri carpets and stuff from Rajasthan and other parts of India who I think were a little put out that I recognised a lot of it for what it was. However, the guy running that particular show had promised Chow 400 Baht just for taking us to the door, so we were happy to go through the motions to help our Thai mate out.

Finally, a wood-carving factory. We got herded through there like cows late for milking because it was nearly closing time for the workers. Out the back they had a huge teak trunk and another huge rosewood trunk drying ready for carving and various and sundry bits of furniture and carvings, once again with terrifying prices. When we were pushed back out the front to the showroom, I was looking for something small enough to afford and found myself once again being followed around. By this stage, I was in a ‘Get Mad or Get Even’ sort of a state and Get Even won out. So every time I felt the serving girl behind me and heard her draw a breath to give me a selling spiel, I’d move forward a few steps then stop. She would do the same thing, then just as she was about to speak, I’d move forward again. I don’t know about her, but I was actually starting to enjoy this game and started to quietly get the giggles. It was like going shopping with Inspector Clouseau (enter Pink Panther music). Childish, I know, but it was either that or tell her where to go and how to get there, so I was just taking the politest option.

Finally, we went back home, via the train station to buy our ticket back to Bangkok in a few days time, and staggered back to our room. Gill is now asleep and I’ve imbibed in two very warm gin and Sprites (my left arm for some ice!) and am thinking about a nice cheap dinner. Yay for living in cheap neighbourhoods.