New adventures begin November 1

Cook up some khao soi and clean up the kii maa, Chiang Mai: I am coming back!

Music up, roll credits

If the locals were to vote on an official Chiang Mai theme song, I’m guessing they’d choose this northern Thai folk tune that I hear constantly around town. As background music in shops and restaurant, from street musicians, on local-music CDs, it seems to be everywhere. One evening at Sunday Walking Market I count three different renditions within 10 minutes by performers young and old alike. Some nights I awake to the sound of my idiot neighbor upstairs tootling out the melody, terribly, on his wooden flute.

Curious to learn more about the song, I run a Google video search of “Thai folk music” and instantly strike pay dirt – all kinds of performances, from teeth-gritting single-chord traditional instrument ensembles to modern soft-pop vocals, and everything in between.

I still don’t know who wrote it or when, although Lian thinks it might be the musician who produced this simple and headphone-worthy version that I first heard in her spa when we met. She tells me he’s been dead and gone for a good many years.

All I know is, it’s the perfect melody to play me out of Chiang Mai once again – for how long this time, who can say? Final post for now. See everybody soon.

Oh, I do know one more thing: the song is called Long Mae Ping.

Old Man Funky and the Monks

Every day is trick-or-treat for the monks of Wat Rampoeng

Buddhist temple Wat Rampoeng, on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, offers meditation retreats of up to 26 days where white-clad spiritual seekers can immerse themselves in mindfulness training to guide them in their quest for higher planes of personal insight. By the way, everywhere it says “insight,” please read “zombification.” And, for all instances of “mindfulness,” you can substitute “self-lobotomy.”

Intending to mock, intending to mock ...

Early Saturday morning Lian and I get into costume and call for a Red Car to transport us to our 10-day reprogramming. We stop first at the sidewalk flower stalls beside the Mae Ping River for our requisite temple offerings of 11 lotus blossoms, 11 yellow candles and 11 sticks of incense each. Thirty minutes later, toting double-armfuls of luggage and swag, we present our matching white selves at the foliaged entrance to Wat Rampoeng.

Shopping for temple offerings

Lian and I are promptly separated – she is led off with the other Thai women visitors for religious instruction and meditation, while I hike up to the far end of the temple grounds to check in at the foreign office. After processing, the dour little teacher-monk on duty shows me to my modest private room, which he condescendingly demonstrates how to clean, as though I’d never seen a broom or mop before.

Back at the foreign office entrance, where other farang students are now waiting inside, our relationship goes south in a hurry.

“You have timer?” he asks. (Meditation exercises are self-timed.) I produce my iPhone and am about to point out its stopwatch function when he cuts me off.

“No phone. I keep,” he demands, palm extended. I explain that it’s in Airplane Mode and cannot function as a telephone in Thailand and that it’s a clock now, darn it, a clock. I hand it over to show him.

“What is this?” he says, holding it up.

“An iPhone,” I reply.

“Aha! Phone!” he says, pivoting on a bare heel and disappearing into his office.

I gape in astonishment. “The son of a bitch just stole my cell phone!” I sputter to myself, following right behind him. “Give it back now.”

“No phone! Do you read rules?” he shouts back. Well, as a matter of fact I did, and here is what it says: “Please switch off mobile phones during the course.” Nothing about confiscation. I pick up the rulebook on his desk and shove the page under his nose – but now we are WAY beyond debating the letter of the law.

“You want me teach you, no phone!” he hisses. “Or else you can stay in your room and teach yourself.” I consider the prospect of explaining to Lian how I got myself banished from a Buddhist meditation retreat on the very first morning. So I relent.

The other students, who watch this exchange in horror, meekly surrender their mobile devices like good little lambies. And then we all march off to begin our mental tranquility training.

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Covering perhaps 20 acres, Wat Rampoeng comprises a temple or two, library, meditation exercise room, dining hall, and lots of housing for monks and visitors alike, all built around an immense and ancient stone stupa. I should mention, participating in the retreat is entirely on a donation basis – you pay what you feel it’s worth and what you can afford.

It really is a calming and beautiful setting, and I should be enjoying this … except that the whole proposition seems designed to deny or suppress everything that humans are engineered to like and do:

*  We are sexual creatures, so they impose gender separation. And no touching!

*  We are social animals, so chit-chat is discouraged. Even in the dining hall silence is strictly enforced, lest anyone's mindfulness process be disturbed.

*  We are blessed with tastebuds, so the mealtme prayer admonishes that our food is not for enjoyment or fun, only to sustain our bodies for a while longer. (So why do they bother adding salt and spices? Good question!)

*  We value individual expression, so we must wear only white, even in the room, even in bed. And white is SO NOT my color.

*  We crave intellectual engagement, so naturally they prohibit diversions of any kind: no reading, writing, music, none of it.

*  We appreciate visual beauty, so our mindfulness exercises call for the eyes to be closed or cast downward.

Throw in low-level hunger and sleep deprivation – no meals past noon, no sleeping before 10 p.m., and a 4 a.m. wake-up bell – and you’ve got a population primed for mind control.

But I promised to give meditation a fair shot, so I go along with the program.

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“Standing, standing …” the teacher-monk directs in a low monotone as we all stand side by side, barefoot on mossy garden stones on this lovely Monday morning. This is the walking exercise, but we are not yet walking.

“Intending to walk, intending to walk …” he continues slowly. “Now walking, walking …”

We move forward in deliberate half-steps. “Right goes thus, left goes thus, right goes thus, left goes thus …”

Midway across the garden we stop, with deliberation. “Stopping, stopping … now intending to turn, intending to turn … now turning, turning … now intending to walk, intending to walk … now walking, walking …”

Then we do the standing exercise, which consists of, uh, standing. That's it. We stand there with our eyes closed for 15 minutes envisioning our own breathing. “Rising, falling …” goes the teacher. Then it’s back to the walking exercise.

We do this for two hours, until the 10:30 lunch bell. And then again, on our own, into the afternoon and night.

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Every day the farang students report to his eminence the abbot and/or his young translator, who records how many hours of exercise we put in, answers questions, and generally makes sure we’re sticking with the program. The universal complaint is the lotus position: “My legs are killing me!” The (to me) shocking response: “Everyone’s legs hurt always. You must work through the pain.” Or … change positions? But I guess if they can get us to accept the other indignities, hell, why not throw in a little agony?

Every day they ratchet up the target number of hours and the complexity of the exercises. On Day 5, I am sad to report that I could not put in my required 10 hours, only eight. (Really less than three.) The monk smiles benignly and says: “You are not perfect and it's in the past now.”

Married friends, if ever your spouse catches you in bed with someone else, I hope you'll think to use this line: “Honey, I am not perfect and it’s in the past now.”

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Girls-only section of the dining hall.

My fellow white-boy meditators are a hoot, and I'm not the only one who thinks so.

“Why farang so serious?” Lian asks over coffee after breakfast. (We consistently scandalize the congregation by talking in the outdoor public area by the wat’s convenience store.) Slowly and oh-so deliberately these western novitiate wanna-bes pace the grounds with heads bowed and hands locked behind them, Prince Charles style. Working on the look.

A few of them are actually horrified by the most basic overtures of social courtesy. Leaving the dining hall one day, I hold the door for a hippie chick-looking woman behind me. She visibly shivers in horror at my gaucherie.

Has mindfulness training damaged these people or did they arrive that way? Lian tells me about a woman she met who has been studying at the temple for four months. “Is Level 6!” she marvels. “She hardly eat, don’t shower, her mind is very calm. Why you smile?”

I smile because … really? “Hardly eat, don’t shower?” Isn’t that what junkies do?

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By Day 5, I am the Randle P. McMurphy of Wat Rampoeng.

The 4 a.m. wake-up bell tolls and I hear the chirp-chirp of my next-door neighbor’s digital timer as he begins his day’s mindfulness exercises. I roll over and go back to sleep until the 6:30 breakfast bell.

The room.

Every once in a while I put in an appearance at the library or the stupa courtyard for a little walking practice. I argle-bargle, yabber-jabber my way through the spoken prayers at breakfast and lunch. But by now I am spending most of my time in my cell – I mean, my room – napping, writing blog notes and doing push-ups and crunches.

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On Saturday morning after breakfast, Lian smiles weakly and in a small voice concedes: “I think seven day enough.” Yesssss!!!

Before she changes her mind I race to the foreign office and arrange for early release, which the abbot grants. But this is Buddha Day in Thailand and the temple is bustling, so they cannot arrange a closing ceremony for us until the next morning. No problem-o! I spend my final day scouring my room and striding purposefully around the grounds, eyes up. Because it really is a gorgeous place.

Happy Buddha Day

As I am kicking back outside the library contemplating the retreat experience, up walks my old buddy the teacher-monk. “Abbot say you can go?” he asks. I nod. He thrusts my iPhone at me and says: “Next time, TEN day!” A little prick to the end.

That night I am happy to join the monks and worshipers in their ceremonial candlelight walk around the stupa. If only the rest of the retreat could have been this congenial.

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Flash back to the very first day of walking practice, when I realize: “I know this. This is like plowing the Island.”

The back 50 acres of my grandparents’ farm along the McKenzie River we always called the Island. Every spring, back and forth the tractors would go – plowing, disking, grooming the soil for planting. Later in the summer would come driving the harvester. And you absolutely had to remain focused and in the moment, keeping your speed just right, your tool on the line, your work-side front wheel aligned just so. Even the “intending to turn, intending to turn” part: you had to plan your turnaround ahead of time, and know when to raise or drop your plow. You’d be surprised at how quickly the time would go, and you actually accomplished something useful.

The moment I make that connection, I am ruined for the rest of this wankery.

But it gives me an idea for my farming friends: rebrand your operation as an “Insight Retreat.” Take out an ad in the new age-y magazines, get city folks to actually pay you for the “mindfulness therapy” of driving tractor, setting irrigation, picking crops.

I will even provide a testimonial: it sure worked for me.

Coming soon: 'Flub Med 2'

I promised Lian that we would take another shot at the meditation retreat at the Buddhist temple outside town, and come Sunday I get to make good on my word.

Our first attempt in January was cut short by poor planning: although Thai people can just show up unannounced, we arrived to learn that foreigners need advance notice and documentation. But this time we are prepared! I already own the white duds and I've cleared my work schedule for three Internet-free days of blissful enlightenment.

"Ten days," Lian corrects.

"Huh? What happened to three?" I want to know. Turns out that three days might be fine for Thai people, the monks tell her, but my polluted Western brain will require the extra-heavy wash cycle, maybe even a pre-soak. So I'm down for ten.

I know little about what's in store -- why spoil the surprise? -- but from what I've gathered, I'm pretty sure that my favorite day will be the last one. For starters, each day begins with the ringing of the big gong at 4:30 a.m. "Is call to prayers," Lian explains.

"OK, stop right there. I want to be polite, but please understand," I warn. "If anyone tries to tell me 'here's your chant book, now you pray,' there WILL be an awkward moment." She thinks that maybe I can go do some independent study during the Buddha parts.

Also: no meals after 12 (as in noon!), only liquids. So I'll be power-loading on the monk-gruel they serve up at breakfast and lunch, and afterward I'll have my smuggled stash of whatever meal-replacement powders I can find at Rimping Market today.

I should mention, the temple offers this carefree getaway on a donation-only basis ... but no one is giving me a clue as to what would be appropriate. "Up to you," the monks tell her. So, fine -- I'm bringing a one-thousand baht note for each of us. But I'm also bring hundreds and twenties, depending on how blissed-out I'm feeling at the end. Results, guys, show me results!

Step aerobics, Thai style

Here is a rare and amazing sight in Chiang Mai: a stretch of even, unbroken, obstacle-free sidewalk. People come from all around northern Thailand to behold this marvel, and to walk a few steps on it with their eyes closed without fear of breaking an ankle (or worse).

Now look at a typical Chiang Mai sidewalk: the crumbling concrete drain covers you dare not test your weight on, the oddball utility poles and outdoor advertising and whatever that leaning metal pipe is supposed to be ... and this is a pretty tame example. For extra obstacle-course points, throw in parked motor-bikes, vendor carts, crazy up-and-down curbs, feral dogs and, when it hasn't rained in awhile, the minefield of kii maa they excrete everywhere. You don't dare let your feet fall out of your peripheral vision, ever, or you will get hurt.

Last year Lian gave me a Buddhist tract on the topic of "mindfulness" -- the notion of being vigilant and deliberate as you do whatever you're doing. I think about that little book every single moment that I am on foot in this town, and it has saved my aging bones more times than I can remember.

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Sunday is Mother Day in Thailand. The temples, the shops, the streets, all full of sons and daughters taking their maternal units for an outing.

At noon the checkout lines at Rimping Market are overflowing with multigenerational customers. So I guess it's the one day you can honestly say that everybody and their mother is there.

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I'm not sure what exactly happens in this place and I hate to ask, for fear of looking dumb.

Southbound trains, northbound planes

Friday afternoon we board a second-class sleeper out of Chiang Mai to begin our nine-day trip to the south -- first a few days' R&R among the farang tourist villages that line the island of Koh Samui; then it's on to Lian's hometown of Na San, just an hour inland, to visit her aged mother.

Here's a helpful tip when planning your train connections in this country: don't even try. Unlike, say, any northern European railway system where civilized folks care about schedules, their Thai counterparts are extremely mai bpen rai ("no worries!") about that stuff. And so your train will arrive in Bangkok two hours late; you will spend most of a day staring morosely at insipid sitcoms and pop videos on the big screen in Hualamphong railway station waiting for your next train, which is also late; and it will take you a day longer than you planned to get wherever you're going. So take a deep breath and just go with it.

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Hot afternoon in Bophut, Koh Samui.

Two trains, one shuttle bus, a high-speed ferry and a taxi ride later, we arrive in the coastal village of Bophut and at Eden Bungalows, the hotel where I stayed five years earlier on my first trip to Thailand. Maybe I should have gone back and re-read the TripAdvisor review I wrote at the time before booking a reservation: I had forgotten how the owner personifies and perpetuates the stereotype of the arrogant snotbag Frenchmen. As we approach the reception counter, he is slumped over the adjacent bar, his beardy puss buried deep in an issue of Le Monde. Not so much as a "bienvenue" or a simple grunt of acknowledgment from our host; instead, it falls to his Thai counter girl standing nearby to see this latest riff-raff up to their room.

Later in the afternoon we return from a long stroll. But now the owner is animated and jovial: he is joined at the entrance bar by a clutch of his expat countrymen, who occupy every stool -- same as five years earlier, I remember. We scurry past quickly so as not to disturb their private party; it feels as though we're tramping through a stranger's living room.

"We go another place, maybe?" Lian suggests; I'm thinking the same thing. So we self-banish from Eden after just one night (we reserved for two) and find a much more congenial place just two doors down for a less money and a lot more amenities. Another Thailand traveler tip: unless you're visiting on a special holiday in high season, don't bother with online reservations -- just show up and see what looks good, because Koh Samui is stinko with hotels and guest houses.

By the way, a big thumbs-up to Smile House Resort and its two fine pools, jungle-themed landscape and beachside restaurant with complimentary buffet breakfast. Bonus satisfaction points: I am even able to pirate Internet from neighboring Eden Bungalows -- the owner is a big merde-face, but they do have killer wi-fi.

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Gotta say, I am no fan of resort towns, whether in Thailand, Mexico or anywhere else under the tropical sun. Despite their boost to the local economy, the local power structures debase the indigenous culture, defile the landscape and siphon dollars to the white owners who call the shots. In fact, the only reason we are here is because Lian grew up close by and never once had an opportunity (or the wherewithal) to cross the water and visit.

So we kick back by the pool, stroll the waterfront row of tailor shops, pubs, jewelry stores and other standard-issue tourist town commerce, and hike inland twice a day for real Thai food. (The natives who work in the hotels and restaurants have to eat and live somewhere.)

If this all sounds extravagant, it's really not: the nice, mid-priced Smile House Resort runs me all of $58 a night, and that includes a generous buffet breakfast. I'll give them this, they keep things affordable.

Sunday morning we catch the ferry back to the mainland ... and back to the real Thailand. If Koh Samui is the disease, Lian's hometown of Na San is the cure.

A scrubby little farming community an hour south of Surat Thani, Na San has no shopping malls, no fast-food joints, apparently no bars, and not much in the way of diversion. But the local produce markets and food carts are superb and we go crazy on southern Thai flavors: fresh durian and homemade durian chips, curries, rambutan fresh off the tree, and other fruits from Lian's family gardens.

A brother-in-law takes us for a drive to a Buddhist temple built flush against this sheer, crumbling cliff that overlooks the town. Standing at its base is terrifying -- its craggy face rises up and out, obliterating the sky overhead. Pictures cannot to it justice.

One night we (meaning I) host Lian's family at a local restaurant that serves Issan food, the notoriously fiery northern Thai cuisine. Our party of 13 keeps the kitchen hopping, and I suspect that someone handed the menu back to the waitress and said: "Yeah, this all looks fine. Two of everything." The check, including tip, comes in at eighty bucks -- about what I'm paying for four nights in the nice room at the local hotel. But I score points with the fam, so that's fine.

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Two days to roll down south, two hours to fly home to Chiang Mai. God, I love air travel!

Old auntie under the rambutan tree.

'I think long time my god hate me.'

“Will you have dinner with me?” asks my new massage therapist before our session even begins.

“Uh, absolutely!” I reply, flattered at the invitation but a little taken aback. So we set a date for 9-ish the following Thursday evening.

“Mr. Tong wants us to join him for dinner,” I later tell Lian.

“I think he want friend for drink whiskey,” she figures. Lian knows that Tong indulges alone most every night after work, so it’s a special treat for him to have a new drinking buddy. And sure enough, come Thursday night when we meet up at the open-air family style restaurant near his shop, a smiling Tong arrives packing a tall bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label.

This is a hardcore Thai establishment, no English translations on the menu, so Lian and Tong handle the ordering. My job is to sit there and eat whatever’s put in front of me (no problem – well, except for maybe the steaming pig intestines), and to keep pace with Mr. Tong’s bottomless scotch and soda. Tong himself eats little and consumes mostly Johnny Walker and the occasional smoke. (Luckily, Chiang Mai eating places are largely smoke-free, and smoking at the table is considered "not polite," so he steps outside.)

Fed, watered and feeling no pain.

Many plates and pours later we close the place down. The bill arrives and it’s Tong’s treat, for all of 459 baht – a little over fifteen bucks. As we part ways, Tong gives me the Thai version of the backslapping man-hug and we agree to do this again real soon.

I am just whiskey-buzzed enough to try riding home on the back of Lian’s motor-bike even after last week's spill, and together enough to jump off after one block and walk the rest of the way home.

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"Delicious"? Maybe not so much.

Chiang Mai probably has scores of truly delicious restaurants. Optimistic signage to the contrary, this new place around the corner is not one of them.

Saturday night we give The Delicious Restaurant a try. Ominously, we are the only customers. The menu offers an unlikely mash-up of Italian and Thai cuisine: “spaghettis” with green curry? Or with tom yum? Weird. We play it safe and order a chicken dish off the Thai side of the menu; what arrives is this pile of freezer-case breaded chick-fingers with sweet chili sauce glugged over vegetables on the side. We look down at the red mess and then at each other.

I remark: “This sauce is …”

“Bottled,” Lian finishes. Which is almost a felony in the foodie heaven that is Chiang Mai, where every roadside wok-jockey can at least throw together soy sauce, nam pla, sugar, lime juice, chilies and whatnot.

I’ll be surprised if this place doesn’t fold before I fly back to America in seven weeks.

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“Wang tan”? “Hang dong”? Do these people have ANY IDEA how awesome their language is to a filthy-minded adolescent like me?

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Several times a day we walk along the tiny soi that connects our neighborhood to the road into town. Halfway down the path sits this ramshackle wooden shanty, its dirt yard littered with all manner of junk for the family’s laundry business – plastic buckets, hoses, clotheslines and such. Most mornings an elderly woman is squatting in the dirt, scrubbing and slapping away at the bucketfuls of laundry that surround her.

One night on the way home we pause to look in at the darkened dwelling. Through an unscreened window, its canvas drape pulled back, we can make out the old mama-san seated inside, just visible in the lifeless grey light of a bare LED bulb.

I ask Lian: “Are these poor people?”

“Yes, poor,” she replies somberly, staring in at the dark dwelling for the longest time. Finally we move on in silence.

At home, Lian motions for me to sit with her. She picks up my clipboard and a scrap of paper and starts to draw: first a rectangle, then diagonal cross-hatching inside. Staring down at the paper, she explains:

“Many years ago when I am married I live in the garden with Dao father. We have no …” and she gestures to the light.

“Electricity?” I guess.

"Electricity, yes. And window cover is this,” she says, pointing to her scrawled rectangle, which I realize is not a window screen but a rattan panel. Now I get it: living with a newborn in a hovel on her husband’s farm in the sticks, her choices at night were either fresh air and 10 million tropical mosquitoes, or suffocation. “Dao is baby, and so hot!” she recalls. “Every night quiet and dark. Many time Dao and I alone. And when Dao father come home, he drink whiskey and talk-talk-talk, not make sense.

“Then I understand: we are poor people! Cannot tell my family, not tell my mother, or she worry me. I think long time my god hate me.

“Now when I see poor lady who work hard, I want to give her money, touch her arm,” she continues, her eyes misting. “Because I know her. I know.”