Sunday church social, Thai style

Every Sunday evening in Chiang Mai, hundreds of artisans, musicians, food vendors and other street merchants take over a long stretch of Ratchadomnoen Road to peddle their wares at Sunday Market. In high season this pedestrian gauntlet is jammed with tourists and marketeers, but in late June it's a pleasant stroll. My destination is nearby Wat Pan On, to graze among the food vendors before the golden statue in the temple courtyard. Many locals come straight to Wat Pan On for supper, as the prices are especially reasonable and the selection varied.

Walking the two miles to and from Sunday Market is as ambitious as I've gotten this week; several days of cocooning have been relaxing and much-needed, but it's time to get out and see some non-food-related sights.

A Room with a View

At 300 bucks a month, I don't exactly hate gazing down from my apartment balcony onto a scene like this.

After three weeks on the guest house circuit in Chiang Mai's tourist zone, it is a pleasure to put away the day pack and set up housekeeping in a furnished one-bedroom unit, complete with pool, fitness facility, basic cable TV and complimentary weekly cleaning service. Suddenly I feel not like a visitor but a for-real resident. Now when the local tuk-tuk drivers see me walk by, they don't even bother asking if I want a ride.

I am falling into a placid little routine: cut-up fruit for breakfast,  work as I need to (I had DSL installed), wander down to the coffee shop for iced cappuccino, hit a noodle stand midday for soup, sleep in the afternoon, then go out in search of something interesting for supper among the nearby street vendors.

My 2010 adventure was "Back to School" mashed up with "The Year of Living Dangerously."  This time around, my story line is too boring even for a Merchant-Ivory film.

Expat new-pal Nick makes up for my lack of exciting escapades: I get word from our common friend in Bangkok, Pan, that Nick got in an accident on Saturday night and is in the hospital. Tuesday I go to visit him in the ICU at Chiang Mai Ram, where he is surrounded by distraught family fresh off the plane from the States. Nick looks terrible, his head swollen and heavily bandaged, but he is conscious. I give him a "Hey, what's goin' on?" Nick waves me in and replies: "Bet you did not expect that this is where we'd meet next!" His family cringes and his father glares at me -- turns out that physicians have just removed his breathing tube and everyone is under express orders not to engage him in conversation or get him excited. I beat a hasty retreat to the corridor.

Outside, his sister fills me in: the "accident" was in fact a nasty bar fight in which Nick took a devastating gun butt to the head. Doctors removed a section of his skull to ease the swelling and save his life. Nick never even threw a punch.

Note to self: on Saturday nights, don't go out drinking with Nick.

Another Mac attack

A "Groundhog Day" moment: Wednesday morning I reach over to boot up the MacBook. Click -- nothing. Click -- nothing. Back to the local Mac Zone we go. And back there my newly clean but still non-functioning laptop remains for going on four days. The beauty part is,now it's covered under Apple's repair warranty.

So ... I wait. Specifically, I wait by the guesthouse pool.

Hobo with a FILTHY laptop

Monday morning I reach to the nightstand and boot up my MacBook. Not 30 seconds into the NY Times it plinks off and will not restart.

I rush the poor dead thing to the local Mac Zone in hopes of salvaging its hard drive, dismayed that I might have to pungle up for a whole new laptop. The technicians pinpoint the trouble almost instantly:

I recognize the cat hair, and even some of the crumbs. Clearly my computer died of embarrassment. It costs me 1,000 baht (around $33) to have it rehabilitated. Thank you, Chiang Mai Genius Bar.

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Sunday evening I finally get to meet up with Nick Egert, an American who has lived and worked in northern Thailand for five years. Nick is a trove of useful information about places in northern Thailand I might want to consider for my expat adventure; more on that in a future post. After beers at a faux Irish pub (what other kind could there be in southeast Asia?), Nick tests my sense of culinary adventure: we catch a ride to Chiang Mai's biggest moo ka tha, a buffet barbecue like nothing I've ever seen.

Nick Egert, my new role model.

Every night hundreds of working-class Thais gather under this immense shelter to gorge on table after table of raw meat and fish, which they cook themselves over fire pots at every table. Each fire pot is crowned with a metal dome for searing meat; the dome is ringed by a moat of boiling water for wilting greens and cooking noodles. And there are ready-cooked satays and curries and salads and sushi and desserts and ... but you get the idea. All you can eat for 189 baht, a little over $6.

Nick and I lay waste to plate after plate of chicken, pork, shrimp, squid, mystery cuts (to me) and much more, and probably don't even see most of what's available. But we are pikers compared to these thin Asians all around us, the girls especially, Hoovering up enough food to gag a competitive eater.

Also amazing to watch are the young men carrying fresh fire pots through the crowd, and reaching across diners to swap out dying pots; they must have replaced our fire at least twice. A scene like this would never play in America; too "dangerous." Ditto for the tons of raw meat just sitting out in the open air.

Hours later we stagger up to the street and flag down a tuk-tuk. Not two minutes down the road I realize that I left my reading glasses on our table at the moo ka tha. Nick, who speaks fluent Thai, quickly tells the driver what happened and instructs him to head back. I recover my specs, happy ending.

And ... lesson learned. This small hiccup illustrates perfectly how much my success in this foreign land will depend on acquiring real language skills -- not just assembling a toolbox of useful phrases. Without Nick here, I would be reduced to waving my arms and gibbering. And not for the first time.

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Charming local commerce.

An open letter of apology

Dear tuk-tuk driver:

Last Friday I contracted your services to transport me north to Lam Duan restaurant, for khao soi. You knew my destination and my purpose.

When we arrived at somewhere-or-other next to Wat Fa Ham and I expressed confusion, you replied: "Lam Duan closed. I take you another place." I reacted rashly and now regret my behavior.

Other foods at Khao Soi Smir Jai

What I did not realize until yesterday, when I returned to the area, is that you had brought me to an even better restaurant, Khao Soi Smir Jai, just up the road from Lam Duan. I ate at both places and Smir Jai, a local favorite, was easily superior.

You tried to do the right thing, which will get you drummed out of the tuk-tuk collective. For your good intentions, which I misinterpreted, you have my word that I will not kill you after all.

Kind regards,

William J. Landers


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After three days in the tourist barrio of Chiang Mai's northeast inner moat, I've seen all I care to see and am ready to move on. This comes as a terrible blow to the Tri Gong Residence owner, a kindly old gent who wants me to stay with him forever. He knows that I was looking at apartments yesterday and is already insecure about our relationship.

"I give you good deal on special bigger room," he pleads, looking up at me so hopefully. "10,000 baht a month." I shake my head, smiling, and thank him for his hospitality as I ease toward the door. Best to end these things quick and clean.

The guest house I'm sweet on now is up near Wat Fa Ham, a mile or so outside the moat, called Hollanda Montri. It sounds like the name of a femme fatale in a Bogart mystery, and indeed this Hollanda Montri is soon exposed as a cruel deceiver hiding a black heart: the nicely cropped photos on its website tell one story, the tatty reality quite another. And now that I think of it, the website never really showed pictures of the rooms, which turn out to have all the charm of a medium-security lockup. One night and I am outathere.

This is like online dating: never trust the pictures.

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I encounter this intrepid Euro family on a street outside the moat. Kudos to them for taking on such an adventure with two small kidlets. The boy is chattering away and seems to be having the time of his life. But the dad looks and sounds a little frazzled.

This evening I will meet up with Expat Nick, the friend of a friend who has lived in Chiang Mai for some time, to learn more about living in Thailand.

There has got to be a comedy bit in this setup.

My Thailand

I adore these hole-in-the-wall places, usually family-run, where you can enjoy straight-up Thai home-style cooking. Nothing fancy, usually just noodle soups, and rice dishes topped with awesomely spiced vegetables, maybe some BBQ chicken or pork. These folks tonight were very accommodating and I spent a while after supper with them, waiting out the rain and watching the cute little tyke in the Garfield hoodie whom the whole family was ga-ga over.

There's the Disney-fied, tourist Thailand, and then there's the real deal. This is that.

'Planet' of the Oops!

Monday night finds me in a $5 flophouse in Chiang Mai’s backpacker ghetto. My room consists of a mattress on a bare plank floor, an electric fan, and … not much else. Shared bathroom somewhere downstairs, where the never-ending party rages on. Hoots and laughter and thumping bass continue long into the night.

I sit cross-legged on the mattress, gazing around the bare-walled room, and marvel: Was I really once a middle-class husband and father living in a West Linn cul-de-sac, with a nice home and suburban-type stuff to go inside it? What happened?

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Monday begins with so much promise: I bid adieu to my poolside digs at the Riverside Guest House to experience life on the west side of town, near Chiang Mai University. The pleasant middle-aged lady who runs the Riverside advises me where to catch a songthaew, one of the covered red pickups that serve as taxis, which will take me to CMU.

Located well away from the tourist district, the university neighborhood is greener, quieter and more upscale. I hop out of the songthaew and go eagerly in search of the place that is recommended in my Lonely Planet book … the 2006 edition.

I should think about buying a newer book. Turns out my target guest house closed two years ago.

The remaining choices up this way are pretty grim: plain cubicles up a dirty concrete staircase, with shared bathrooms on the ground floor, for half again what I was paying at the wonderful Riverside.

Discouraged, I walk back toward the tourist-friendly inner moat area. Walking and walking, and now it’s starting to rain. I am at loose ends for what to do next, so I return to the guidance of my Lonely Planet book, which says wonderful things about the Julie Guest House, way down at the opposite corner of the moat. The price looks right, so I cinch up my shoulder straps and soldier on.

Laid-back Julie Guest House reception area.

Lonely Planet describes the Julie Guest House as “funky,” and it’s certainly that: Catering to young farang vagabonds traveling Asia’s Banana Pancake Trail, the Julie is a rat’s maze of staircases and corridors, as if the builders made it up as they went along. Its reception area is a patchwork of corrugated roofing and tarps that shelter rattan lounging decks with tie-dye throws and blankets, a wi-fi zone, and tables for the in-house restaurant (which is actually decent, and cheap). The clientele is pure Oregon Country Fair, circa 1974. The dreadlocked horde ignores the frazzled-looking old sweat-bomb who drags in about midday clutching his stupid ancient Lonely Planet book.

One night sets the low-end limit of my guest house expectations. Early the next morning I bug out for -- yes -- another Lonely Planet thumbs-up establishment, Tri Gong Residence, at the northeast corner of the moat, about a mile off. By this time I am pretty damned sick of carrying this daypack, which actually seems to be getting heavier.

Fast-forward two hours. No, three -- I'll spare you the searching and inquiring and swearing and more searching. Turns out the map location for Tri Gong was all wrong in ... you guessed it. Damn you, out-of-date Lonely Planet!

So I'm parked here for the next few days of air-conditioned R&R. I need to recharge.

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Here is a common, pathetic sight in Thailand: an aging, usually dumpy farang man on holiday, accompanied by a much younger Thai rent-a-sweetie. At lunch today these two plop down across from me. No smiles, no words. The woman orders (in Thai) fried rice for the both of them; he gets a beer. Then they proceed to utterly ignore each other.

In retrospect, maybe coming to Chiang Mai principally to eat khao soi isn't such a goofy idea.

Typical Thai breakfast: chicken & rice soup.