You better watch your step

In this land you take your life in your hands every time you walk out the door.

"Maybe another country cars look out for you. In Thailand, you look out for cars," Lian warns me about local drivers. "People go-go-go, not safety." Pedestrian injuries (and worse) are a brutal fact of life here, but no one seems to do very much about it -- certainly not the local government that's supposedly charged with building and maintaining sidewalks, which are almost universally half-assed, crumbling death traps cluttered with commerce. And dog poop.

I was so encouraged to see brand-new concrete walkways being built on either side of the street leading to Rimping Market, the western-style grocery store nearby. Awright! No more slogging through the roadside muck, constantly glancing back to avoid getting whomped from behind. Because now I would have a smooth, safe, unobstructed path to-- wha?

Rude sign, you are going down!

I mean, just look at this stupid darn thing! What kind of horse's patoot posts a freestanding advertisement that actually blocks the entire sidewalk? I am lugging two bags of groceries, otherwise I would simply chuck it off to one side. (But next time ...)

Grumbling, I step down to the street and make my way past a pack of not-friendly dogs, yet another pedestrian hazard in Thailand. A shopkeeper comes out and shoos away the growling curs as I continue on.

Head-bangin' sign.

Eyes on my footing, I step back up to the sidewalk and BAM! gouge my forehead into the sharp metal corner of a sign that some other pedestrian-hating entrepreneur has mounted with a 5-1/2 foot clearance. Amazingly I make it home without any further calamity or bodily harm. But I am a bloody, perspiring mess.

Nurse Lian breaks out the alcohol and iodine, ouch-ouch-ouch. "Isn't there someone I can complain to about this?" I ask as she treats the gash. "Maybe the city, or the police, or ..."

"Police don't care," she shrugs. "Nobody care."

---

This is what passes for construction scaffolding in these parts. It looks like something Gilligan and the Skipper might have lashed together. Maybe it's safer than it looks, but I kind of doubt it.

---

Sorry, this is as much excitement as I've had since we got back from the south. Basically it's been work, eat, sleep and not much else.  Hmm, maybe I need to get out for a walk ...

Soap opera twist

In our Nasan hotel room the day before we leave, Lian and I are surfing online for accommodations farther north. But Hua Hin is crazy-busy in high season and Lian phones hotel after hotel. Same story every time: "Is full," she says yet again, hanging up. But our train tickets are nonrefundable and we've both seen enough of the old home town. (MUCH MORE than enough, in my case.) So we really don't have much choice but to hope for the best once we step off the train in Hua Hin in the dead of night. At least we know we won't be cold.

---

Hua Hin railway station.

By 2:30 a.m. we've had enough of the mosquitos in Hua Hin's beautifully restored antique railway station. Lian ventures down to the dark street and approaches the driver of a songthaew, the covered pickup that serves as public transit in many Thai towns. They talk at length and she reports back. "He know a hotel still open, not expensive. Can take us, 150 baht."

Our ridiculously excessive baggage fills the back of the songthaew as we wheel away from the train station, winding down side streets and alleyways to arrive at a nasty little hole that thankfully has no vacancies.

"I think we can looking another?" Lian offers. So off we fly to a nicer part of the tourist zone, where the night manager of a midrange hotel agrees to let us crash in the lobby until the next day, when their single vacancy opens up. But he won't let me access their wi-fi until noon check-in, the prick.

A single night at the Thipurai City Hotel is our punishment for poor planning. Our room would have to be three notches better even to be called "nondescript." The bedding reeks of cloying floral deodorizer, the air conditioner produces more noise than cold air, and a staff phone mounted on the wall opposite our door rings incessantly. Within minutes of our Thipurai check-in, we go in search of better digs and find them for our next and final night. Thipurai will be shedding bitter tears at my tartly worded TripAdvisor review!

---

Hua Hin tourist chic.

Not only is Hua Hin stinko with elderly German and Dutch tourists, their expat countrymen run the show in countless guest houses, bierstubes, ristorantes, bistros and other Euro-storefronts that crowd out the indigenous commerce. You wonder why these sweaty Aryans even bother leaving home in the first place. Oh, and guess the skin color of the folks who do the crap jobs in those white-owned businesses.

The only reason we've ventured into this occupied territory is for Lian to visit her 20-year-old niece, Eve, with whom she is very close. Eve calls Lian Meh, the Thai word for mother. As Lian related to me last year, she cared for Eve since infancy after her sister died; several years later, Eve went to live with her father. Now Eve studies accounting at the university, specializing in the hotel industry. She sure as heck chose the right place to start a career.

Eve and Lian on the loose in Hua Hin.

In the afternoon when classes are finished, Eve meets us in front of a nearby McDonald's (ugh) and we stroll around the tourist zone, the ladies chattering and window shopping as I lumber dutifully behind. It sure helps to have a local guide who knows the good places: Eve leads us to a modest-looking outdoor restaurant on the pier that serves up amazingly fresh Thai seafood and lots of it, for a non-gouging price. And I am intrigued to watch as the waif-like young girl takes command of the party from the moment we walk in: Eve wants, and gets, THAT table (which is marked "reserved"), and the wait staff continually look to her, not the elders, for their next orders. And yet later in our hotel room she curls up and falls asleep on Lian's shoulder like a small child.

---

Pimped-out bus.

The next day at the Hua Hin railway station, we are chagrined to learn that all northbound trains are once again fully booked for several days in advance. So we opt for alternative travel: a luxury coach with a whorehouse-gaudy interior and comfy reclining seats. We sleep for most of the trip, but I wake up an hour out of Chiang Mai and realize that our driver is a maniac who cannot bear the sight of any tail lights in front of him, no matter how fast they're moving. And so we slalom around dump trucks, 18-wheelers, other buses and every other moving obstacle, barreling down the mountain without ever touching the brakes. Thrilling!

---

Flash back to the final night in our Nasan hotel room. Lian wants to massage my scalp and shoulders, and who am I to say no? I settle back and enjoy the pampering, sultan-like. Lian is unusually quiet. And then:

"You remember I tell you Eve is my niece?" A pause. "Eve is ... my daughter."

Breasts of the Southern Wild

Days before I return to Thailand, my "bring" list grows to Costco-size proportions, literally, after a customer gives Lian a hot tip on American healthcare supplements.  "Kirk-Land Vitamin C she say really good!" Lian enthuses. So I try to explain how private-label marketing works, and how Costco puts its house brand on everything from batteries to men's boxers but doesn't really make anything, and blah blah blah. Silence. Then, "You can bring Kirk-Land OK?  Five bottle?"

So, one Costco expedition later, I pack five enormous pill bottles into my luggage, along with the usual supply of moisturizers and other girl-glop, leaving me space for a change of clothes and not much else. My rolling bag rattles like maracas through the airport terminal, attracting "what the ...?" looks from other travelers.

---

Thai Yoko Ono goes the extra mile.

I am in Bangkok this time, not Chiang Mai. The plan is to meet up with Lian in the next day or two down in her hometown of Nasan, where she is caring for her elderly mother while other family members are out of town. After a few days we will wend our way north, getting home in time for Chinese New Year the following weekend.

I arrive very late at La Residence, my favorite hotel located in the Silom district where I got my English teaching certificate two years ago. The next morning its proprietor, Thai Yoko Ono, solves a huge problem for me: my credit union is having online banking issues and I cannot use my debit card to secure a flight down to Surat Thani. Yoko's solution: she puts my ticket on the hotel account and I pay her back in cash. Now this is how you build customer loyalty!

My flight south isn't until early evening, so I have lots of time to visit the enormous Chattuchak Weekend Market to acquire jewels for my sister's craft work. After hours of meandering through the labyrinthine market I finally track down the shop I was looking for ... right next to the entrance I came in. D'oh!

At La Residence I somehow manage to pack the jewels into my tight-as-a-drum roller bag by cramming my single change of clothes into my also-tight day pack. After thanking Thai Yoko Ono profusely and pledging to return again and again forever, I flag down an honest taxi driver (it takes three attempts) to connect with my domestic flight south.

I am met in Surat Thani by Lian and her brother, who has been roped yet again into chauffeur duty and looks none to thrilled about it. Halfway along on the 50-minute drive back to Nasan, he pulls into a gas station and tells the attendant to put in 500 baht worth ... which I guess is my cue to reach into my wallet. But I am happy to accommodate.

---

Nasan Botanical Garden

The next morning we go walking. Nasan is just as sleepy and Marcola-like as I remember it. Children and old people gape with astonishment to see a big, sweating farang lumber through the open-air market with that girl who used to live here. Some sights are picturesque in a not-good way and Lian is not happy when I snap photos. "Not beautifoon!" she objects.

Durian chips, cooked old-school

But this is a farming community and the local produce is spectacular, and so are the foods they make from it. My absolute favorite is young fried durian -- what we would call durian chips. Slightly sweet, with a complex aftertaste, fried young durian is highly addictive. A number of squalid-looking storefronts are small-batch durian frying operations.

We visit one and I buy a half-kilo bag for 200 baht; the next day we come back for a full kilo. The equivalent of $17 for 2.2 pounds of chips might sound extravagant, but those same chips would fetch twice that price up north ... and much more outside Thailand. And we are buying them still-warm from the cauldron.

---

Lian's mother must be almost 90, but that's only a guess: according to Lian, Thai people are not big on remembering birthdays, including their own. The mother is largely housebound -- she lives with Lian's sister and her family -- and is only vaguely aware that Lian lives in Chiang Mai, hundreds of miles north, so that she imagines that Lian is angry with her "because she never comes to visit." My presence must baffle the heck out of her.

That afternoon as other family members are away and Lian is busy with laundry, it's just me and Meh (the Thai word for mother) sitting across from each other on wood benches in the living room. Social turd that I am, I keep my eyes focused on my laptop as Meh just sort of looks around. After a bit, she rises to her bare feet and shuffles slowly into an adjacent bedroom, closing the door behind her. I continue working. The door re-opens and out comes Meh, naked from the waist up. She pays me no mind but continues on to the bathroom. Then I hear running water.

Dramatic re-creation.

"Uhhh ... Lian?" I call out, slightly panicked. "Your mother? No clothes?"

In a while the running water stops and Meh totters back through the room, paps a-swinging.

Lian states the blindingly obvious: "She old. She don' care."

---

Not only is it high season in Thailand, the Chinese New Year is nigh and many people, tourists and Thais alike, are traveling. Lian and I make a last-minute decision to head north to visit her daughter-niece in the coastal resort town of Hua Hin. At the railway ticket office we learn that all the trains are booked, except for one first-class compartment on the next day's evening train that arrives in Hua Hin at 2 in the morning. We book it and say to ourselves: "It'll be an adventure." I mean, a train stops there at 2 every night, so they MUST have somebody or something on hand to greet late-night arrivals. Wouldn't you think?

Before we leave Nasan, we go say good-bye to Meh. Smiling and making the prayer-hands-under-the-chin display of respect, I tell her in English: "Thank you for showing me your tits yesterday. Please don't ever do it again." She nods and smiles, not quite looking at me.

Lian's brother loads us up with produce from his orchard: a huge bag of longan fruit and a whole ripe durian the size of a pineapple. Add this to the 1.5 kilos of durian chips, the kilo of southern curry we bought at the open-air market, the jewels, the vitamins and Lian's own luggage and we literally cannot carry one more thing.

As it happens, Lian's brother lives behind the Nasan railway station, which is where he drops us. So we must be a sight, toting double-armfuls of suitcases and grocery bags across four sets of tracks and up onto the platform. Before we board our train, Lian buys fried chicken and sticky rice from the open-air market across the street -- early dinner before catching what sleep we can. Eight hours later comes a rap on our compartment door, the 10-minute warning for our 2 a.m. arrival in Hua Hin. We drag our belongings to the front of the rail car and wait.

But the engineer overshoots the station and we must disembark into weeds and darkness beside the tracks. Still half-asleep, we lug our belongings back toward the lights of the platform, 100 yards distant.

The Hua Hin railway station is brightly lit but almost vacant. No sign anywhere of an open cafe or hotel lobby. Across the darkened street we can make out a few tuk-tuk drivers smoking and eyeing us back. And it is almost five hours until sunup.

Lian sets her bags on a bench and looks at me. "Adventure you say. Now what we do?"

Hello I must be going

A mere 6-1/2 weeks after stepping off a plane from Chiang Mai, it's back to Thailand once more. New adventures, this time down south, begin in February.

Really? Another post about haircuts?

So there's this tiny neighborhood barber shop around the corner that Lian and I pass on our way to the good duck soup & noodle shop on Thapae Road. The owner waits expectantly at the door, casting puppy-dog eyes on passers-by. His eyes are all we can see of his face, as he wears a white surgical mask on the job. He and Lian chat briefly and the price sounds pretty decent -- did I hear him say 150 baht? What the heck, all I need is a quick clipper-cut, so I decide to give him a try.

Awaiting my turn in the chair.

After selecting my style preference from the gallery of male celebrity photos clipped from magazines and taped to the wall (I go for the close-cropped Sam Worthington look), I plop down in the chair and he sets to work. Ever ... so ... slowly. He seems to be progressing hair by hair, always asking after every snip: "Is this OK? Is this OK?" At last we are finished. Or not: this barber then proceeds to give me a scalp massage, followed by a shoulder massage. And then he breaks out the shears again for a few finicky touches.

Rising, I pull out my wallet and ask how much. He replies almost apologetically: "Ha-sip baht, khrep?" Fifty baht, roughly a buck-sixty. In other words, ten times less than a Super Cuts slash job back in Oregon. I hand him a 100-baht note and signal to keep the change. He is overcome with astonished gratitude and will not let me leave the shop until he can do more for me -- "Shampoo? I give you shampoo!" So it's into the reclining sink-chair for a long, luxurious wash-and-rinse, followed by yet another scalp massage.

Lian watches this extended pampering and announces: "I have a wash hair, too." So then it's my turn to wait and wait.

---

A haircut reminder for Lian's son.

In the Thai school system, when a teacher is dissatisfied with the length of a male students hair, he informs the parents not with a written note or a phone call, but by shaving a divot into the student's scalp! One night Dao comes home with these mangy-looking gashes cut into his hair, and I ask Lian if she is OK with this. She has no idea what I'm getting at. "Every secondary school in Thailand, children cannot long hair," she says. "Is not polite."

Thai parents do not see it as a personal violation the way most American moms and dads would. Thais simply have a different relationship to authority and it's always fascinating to note how it manifests itself, from deference to teachers to reverence for their king.

---

For the longest time I've stuck (pretty much) to a "when in Rome ..." policy about food, eschewing western cuisine in favor of noodle joints and open-air markets. I would stroll smugly past the sidewalk diners at the fancy American restaurant, The Duke's, and think: "Just look at those wide load farang in there scarfing on ribs and burgers and pizza," while on my way for a steaming, spicy bowl of tom yum or som tam or whatever Thai food name I'm forever mispronouncing. 

A dessert so huge, it requires two utensils.

But you can deny who you are and what you're made of for only so long. And lately my thoughts about The Duke's have taken on a Homer Simpson voice: "Mmm, ribs and burgers and pizza ..." Finally I relent and drag poor Lian along for a mid-afternoon American-style dessert.

Keep in mind, a Thai "dessert" comes in a small dish and might include kidney beans, water chestnuts, squash and other such salad-bar detritus, only modestly sweetened. So Lian is unprepared for the massive sugar-bomb apple pie and softball-size scoop of vanilla ice cream set before her. She gamely picks at it but prefers my carrot cake, also mega-portioned.

Am I satisfied? Not yet! A few nights later I up the ante.

Lian has a two-hour customer in the evening, so I promise to take charge of dinner. After she leaves, I ask Dao: "Ghin pizza, dai mai?" He grins and nods. I know that his mother has never tasted the stuff, but she's about to get her first opportunity.

Before ...

Waiting in the bar at The Duke's for my pie -- large pepperoni, Italian sausage and garlic chicken pizza, to go -- I bask in the Stanford's-like vibe, watching the parade of comfort food float by: medium-rare steaks and mashed potatoes, ginormous burgers and fries, racks of ribs from the real smoker out back, spaghetti and meatballs, all my favorite culinary porn. Twenty minutes later my pizza arrives and it is ridiculously huge but beautiful.

... and after.

"Oh boy, lots of leftovers for me," I think. But no: the pizza, which I doctor with sauteed onions, Thai peppers and tomatoes, is enthusiastically received. The 100-pound Thai lady and the skinny child manage to consume all but two slices; OK, I helped a little.

---

That's it for another episode. Tomorrow evening I enter the big silver cocoon once again to begin my 24-hour transformation from sweaty farang into freezing Oregonian. Sawat dii khrep, Merry Christmas and see you soon.

Festive Christmas attire from sidewalk vendor.

Dude looks like a lady-boy

One day after lunch I follow Lian to her haircut appointment -- she arrives on her motor-bike and I come huffing along on foot a few minutes later. I walk in and Lian is talking to what I think are two people at the back of the shop: a fetching young woman with flowing dark hair in a delightfully short dress, and some fellow with a booming baritone voice, just out of sight.

Uh, my mistake: the girl and the guy turn out to be one and the same individual.

Thailand has a warm and tolerant place in its heart for its kathoey, the Thai word for transgendered or effeminate gay men, better known in English as lady-boys. Many Thais consider kathoey to be a sort of third gender.

On Thai TV, most sitcom casts include at least one screamingly flamboyant gay/cross-dressing comic-relief character. Night after night at Anusan Market, farang male tourists pose nervously with the gaudily costumed Thai lady-boys outside their nightly revue. Kathoey use the feminine polite particle of speech, ending sentences with "kaa" instead of the male "khrep," and they often work in occupations dominated by women.  Lian herself uses the pronoun "she" when referring to her lady-boy stylist.

Sure, we farang come from the land of clean drinking water at the tap, not-treacherous sidewalks and artisan bakeries. But I might not live to see red-state America ever catch up to the so-called developing world in this one cultural attitude.

---

Carrot cake and vanilla ice cream. The fifth season of "Breaking Bad." Really good pizza. Driving my own car with my kick-ass sound system reinstalled. Cooking in my own kitchen. Blu-Ray on a 92" projection screen. 21st century broadband. Conversance in the written and spoken language around me.

I am ready to come home. Home.

Fire, I'll take you to burn

Not stars -- lanterns

My iPhone camera cannot possibly capture the trippy theatricality of a night sky dotted with Thai fire lanterns – especially as they rise into the burst zone of a tremendous fireworks display alarmingly close overhead. For the hundreds of revelers packed onto the narrow Iron Bridge at the climax of Loi Krathong, there is no lag time between flash and boom as cinders rain down our upturned faces. "Gangnam Style" blasting from the Bus Bar next door totally works for this spectacle.

Everyone else is playing with fire, so we join in the fun: I buy a 40-baht paper lantern from a street vendor – there’s one every 10 feet, and they’re all mobbed with customers. He assembles the contraption for me: each lantern includes a solid fuel ring suspended by cross-wires at the base of a flame-resistant fabric hood. You ignite the fuel ring, wait for the hot air to fully inflate the hood, and then let go. The important word is “wait” – Lian and I launch our lantern off the bridge too soon and it plummets into the river, fizzling out. A while later we try our hand at the small floral Loi Krathong candle boats that people set adrift on the river to honor the water spirits. But our candles sputter out before we can even get our boats to the river’s edge. We would suck as pyromaniacs.

Awwww!

Lian is intent on not missing “the profession” and for the longest time I have no idea what she is talking about. Once again our very dog-eared Thai-English dictionary clears things up: proCESsion, i.e., parade. But she still calls it the profession.

Loi Krathong rocks Chiang Mai long into the evening, but after four days of music and pyrotechnics we can pretty much tune it out, like living near train tracks. By Friday the entire town looks like The Morning After, a landscape of fallen fire lantern carcasses strewn everywhere.

The Mae Ping River is clogged with banana-leaf floral boats. Serf-class street sweepers with their twig brooms are scraping spent bottle rockets and firecracker remains into loose piles that someone eventually will pick up, or maybe the rains will wash them away.

---

Amazing crispy fish, one of many courses.

Friday evening we meet up with our old friend Mr. Tong at the terrific open-air restaurant he turned us onto a few months back. We feast with abandon over beers and scotch. This time it’s my treat and the entire evening, including tip, comes to $24. We get home around 11 and I check email before turning in. Surprise! A client has scheduled a last-minute phone conference that begins 3:30 a.m., Thailand time, which I force myself to stay up for. I predict that there’s an afternoon nap in my future.