I can't handle the truth!

The Iron Bridge: in technicolor!

Another 24-hour gauntlet, another late-night arrival at Chiang Mai International Airport. On the taxi ride to Lian's place, I notice that the city has pimped out the Iron Bridge over the Mae Ping river with theatrical lighting that cycles continually through the color spectrum. Flashy!

As Lian watches me unpack my usual assortment of ratty t-shirts and wrinkled short pants, she asks what I'll be wearing to her niece's wedding in three weeks. Only then do I realize: I forgot to bring the single pair of big-boy slacks that I own. D'oh! Even I cannot rationalize showing up at the sacred nuptials in faded plaid shorts from Old Navy -- the nicest apparel I brought -- so a few days later we're off to the bargain bins at Panthip Plaza.

Rummaging through the piles of hideous Arrow slacks for what I know is my correct size, I feel two arms encircling me from behind. I smile and reach down to acknowledge the embrace ... and touch man-hands! I am being sized up by a skinny young male clerk with a tape measure. He then produces a pair of ridiculous clown pants that cannot possibly fit me.

"No, no, this size number is much too big," I assure him, "I wear a smaller size." And to prove it, I agree to try them on.

The ugly-ass slacks are a spot-on fit, and for the rest of the day I am despondent.

Damn these primitives anyway, don't they understand the finer points of ly-- I mean, marketing? You don't label clothes for the customer's actual size, you label them for what the customer wants to believe. And I really, really want to believe that my hated new tent-pants are incorrectly labeled.

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It's a Buddhist holiday in Thailand ... which is like saying it's Monday. Honestly, you could throw a dart at a calendar and stand a better-than-even chance of nailing a holy celebration.

Immortalized in terra cotta. (Click to enlarge)

So I tag along with Lian to a nearby temple and hold her purse while she goes inside to pray. This particular wat, alongside the river, offers all manner of ways to make donation (besides cashola): you can purchase small birds, fish and turtles to release by the water. You can present prepackaged gift baskets to the leader-monk, who will bless you with a spritz of water that he flicks at you from a big brush. Or, you can write special messages on terra cotta tiles that will be used in the temple's constant structural repairs. Lian and I opt for the tile graffiti.

"Write your name and name your mother," Lian instructs, which I do, respectfully. So, Mom, together we are now a permanent fixture in a Buddhist holy place on the other side of the world. See?

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One argument against overly affordable healthcare is that some hypochondriacs might go rushing off to the emergency room every time they have a tummy ache. A silly concern, right?

Hospital food, Thai style

"Am sore my stomach, want to go to hospital," complains Lian one morning, and not exactly in the doubled-over-in-pain voice that should indicate a medical emergency. So O.K., we catch a Red Car to Rajavej Hospital and Lian checks in upstairs while I hang out in the hospital cafeteria. I am still charmed at finding tasty, fresh-made Thai food in the unlikeliest places. Hospitals? Train stations? Who'da thunk?

In the time it takes for me to enjoy a plate of grapow gai (chicken and holy basil) and an iced cappuccino, Lian is seen by a physician and fills her prescription -- all covered by medical insurance that costs her the equivalent of just over $11 per month.

I look at how Thai healthcare works (and "works" is the operative word) and am embarrassed for America's broken, corrupt joke of a system. What do these people know that we don't?

This is the end again

I have this genius for staying in Thailand exactly one week longer than I should have.

Consequently, my Thai buzz wears off too soon and I start to grump about the half-assedness of day-to-day life here: the sooty-grimy exterior surfaces, hazardous walkways, crapping dogs, crummy products, indifferent workmanship ... man, this stuff is getting old.

One night walking to dinner, Lian and I navigate the too-narrow, crumbling sidewalk along Charonpratet Road near Anusan Market. In the dark we happen upon a tumbleweed-like tangle of thick, black wire that a utility crew simply left on the ground by a utility pole. Was it electrified? Who could tell? In America someone might get in big trouble for leaving a (possibly dangerous) mess like like that lying around. But Thais have a very different take, Lian informs me.

"Thai people think, 'You got two eye, why you not careful?'" she says, stepping around the tangle and over a broken concrete drain cover while avoiding the barbed-wire fence next to the sidewalk. "You can see have not safety."

Yeah, well ... I guess I'm tired of having to be super-ultra-extra cautious every time I step out the door, deliberating every footfall so as to avoid my own Kevin Ware moment.

I am ready to be back in the place where, if bad stuff happens, it really might be someone else's fault --someone who could be held legally liable. So people make an honest effort to do the right thing, the right way. Being a litigious society might have its upside.

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Sorry for not blogging more this time around, but the adventure has sort of decelerated into domestic comedy. (Satisfying for me, lousy for pageviews.) BUT: I'm pretty sure that the next trip, sometime in the summer, will take us on the road again to Nasan and points south. Until then, I'll leave you with a happy shot from early February, on the beach at Hua Hin. We do have a good time.

Better run for the border

Before returning to Thailand back in January, I promised Lian that I would arrive in time for us to meet up in her hometown of Nasan, where she was caring for her mother, the flasher. I also promised that I would still be here for her birthday in early April. Consequently, this puts me one week over my 60-day visa limit. To avoid a steep fine at departure and possible banishment from the country, I make my very first visa run.

It's a simple thing, really, and a whole industry is built up around it: a van or coach takes me up to the border town of Mae Sai, where I step across into Myanmar, immediately return to Thailand and collect a new visa stamp, good for 15 days. (Arriving by air, the limit is 30 days, don't ask me why.)

So I buy van passage at the nearby Riverside guest house, where everyone knows "Mr. William." Thursday morning I am the second pickup as the silver 10-passenger van makes its rounds of nearby backpacker hotels to collect the day's runners. The driver turns out to be yet another maniac who cannot abide the presence of any vehicle in front of him. So for the next five hours we are passing on blind curves, passing with oncoming vehicles barreling down on us, and getting passed by even crazier drivers. Why everybody in this country doesn't die in a head-on collision every single day is beyond me.

Cucumbers on their way to market.

On the highway I watch farm produce go by. Cukes are a big deal over here. Most every plate of food, especially spicy dishes, includes a generous garnish of raw cucumber slices to quench the fire. Lian and I go through about 10 cukes a week ourselves. So it's a very popular crop for northern farmers.

After a harrowing four hours over mountainous terrain we arrive in Mae Sai, where our driver lets us off at a crossing station. "One hour!" he shouts, and that's about how long it takes to exit Thailand, pay our 500-baht entry fee into Myanmar, and then fight our way back through the filthy, despicable little beggar-boys who tug at our clothing and plead loudly for coins to distract us as their accomplices behind probe for our wallets. Rotten little bastards.

The Marlboro Monk.

Passport freshly stamped, I make my way back to the van and settle into my seat for the trip back. Glancing over to the door of a nearby 7-Eleven, I see something I have never seen before in all my trips to Thailand: a Buddhist monk pulling out a pack of cigarettes and lighting up. Those guys have rules about that sort of behavior!

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Here's what $89,000 buys you in a gated community outside Chiang Mai.

The owner is an acquaintance of Lian's who wants to move back to her hometown in the south. So just for fun we go have a look. "Only looking!" I caution.

We take a Red Car down to the suburb of Hang Dong. (Snicker, snort.)  After some difficulty we track down the correct address in a maze of identical-looking houses.  We tour the place and I will admit, it looks very clean and comfortable. But Lian instantly loves the place and wants to move in this minute. "Maybe we can ask for discount, you think?" she whispers eagerly in my ear.

I patiently explain that the short answer is: no. And that the long answer is also no.

Ghost town

Tourists? What tourists?

At the tail-end of high season, Chiang Mai is strangely quiet. Streets that should be packed with tourists are only sparsely populated even in late afternoon. Often I see shopkeepers resting their head on a countertop, as if it were nap time in preschool. Street vendors and tuk-tuk drivers laze in the shade reading newspapers. And some days Lian's phone never rings -- not a single spa customer. "I talk to my friends and everywhere quiet. Have a few work," she reports.

Smoky day, not a soul around.

It doesn't help that the city is blanketed in orange-gray smoke from slash burning in the mountains near Myanmar, so eye-wateringly thick that no one cares to venture outdoors. So, on this Sunday morning we hunker down in the room with a mindless Dwayne Johnson action/revenge movie, online Sudoku, and only one of us doing anything that could remotely be called "productive."

My exotic life in Thailand.

'Ghin khao ti-nai?'

Here's how uncomplicated my life has become: answering the above question -- literally, "eat food where?" -- is usually the hardest decision I face all day.

Except for breakfast (typically PBJ toast, cold cereal and coffee), we prepare meals at home only occasionally and on the sly. Lian's single-burner propane stove is a huge no-no for the apartment owner, who busted her once already when he caught her smuggling in a fresh tank. And anyway our dinky little kitchenette is too cramped for any serious culinary action. So most of the time we eat out or bring back takeaway.

Here in no particular order are a few of our favorite chomping grounds:

Busy lunch hour at Ghuttiokamwan

'That place where we always eat lunch'
Actual name: Ghuttiokamwan
Frequency: 2-3 times a week
Attraction: Clean, fast, tasty
Must-have: Spicy and sour fruit salad

Crispy catfish

An easy five-minute walk from home, Ghuttiokamwan (Thai for "noodle soup") does a bustling noontime trade yet manages to serve up beautiful, freshly prepared dishes with the speed of a NASCAR pit crew. It will be the first place we take any American visitors to Chiang Mai. The storefront sign and menu are in Thai and no one who works there speaks English.

Spicy and sour fruit salad, soup.

Lunch for two, including an appetizer plate of fruit salad or spring rolls: maybe five bucks.

Tab Tim Krob: the restaurant ...

'The place with the bees'
Actual name: Tab Tim Krob
Frequency: 2 or 3 times a week
Attraction: Like their sign says, "Clean food, good taste."
Must-haves: Pad thai, tab tim krob

... and the dessert.

Tab Tim Krob is the restaurant with the swarm of honeybees in the streetside cooking station that I stumbled across two years ago. Situated on the outer reaches of the tourist zone, it's an easy walk for a casual evening meal after the gym.

Happy pad thai customer.

The restaurant is named for a Thai dessert consisting of coconut milk and sweet syrup, crushed ice and all sorts of oddball elements: tapioca, kidney beans, water chestnuts, squash ... but it works. Dinner for two, including dessert, around six or seven bucks.

Khao Soi Palaa

'The khao soi place'
  Actual name: Khao Soi Palaa
  Frequency: Once a week
  Attraction: Delicious khao soi, if you can get past the grunge
  Must-have: Khao soi, duh!

Khao soi.

This was my first taste of authentic khao soi in northern Thailand, and their take on the famous curried noodle stew is still among the best. But this hole-in-the-wall restaurant itself is not for the squeamish: birds fly through the open-air space, sometimes dining on (or possibly pooping in) the open jars of crushed peanuts in the condiment trays. The occasional rat scurries across the dirty blacktop floor. And Lian still shudders at the memory of their restroom. But DAMN do they serve a mean khao soi!  Lunch for two, a little over two bucks.

VT Namnueng

'The Vietnamese place'
Actual name: VT Namnueng
Frequency: Maybe once a week
Attraction: A break from Thai
Must-have: Vietnamese wraps

Strangely, this Asian restaurant serves no rice. None. The menu is strictly vegetables and protein flavored with sweet peanut-y sauces. The wait staff seems to outnumber the patrons and food arrives at the table within seconds of ordering. We always get the assemble-it-yourself Vietnamese wraps, which ensures a slow, leisurely dinner. Everything on the menu looks gorgeous and we always order way too much. Even so, the bill at this nice sit-down restaurant never runs more than 10-15 dollars.

Just about every day we order from the Corner.

'The corner'
Actual name: Not sure it even has one
Frequency: Five times a week, minimum
Attraction: A three-minute walk from home
Must-have: Darn good tom yum soup

When the hour is late and we're lazy to cook or walk very far, the family shop on the corner is our first option. Even when we do cook in, it's super-easy to pop down for a 10-baht bag of perfectly prepared rice. The mother works the wok, her teenage children wait tables. A meal for two runs me two dollars.

Got duck?

'The duck place'
Actual name: Beats me
Frequency: every two weeks or so
Attraction: Something we don't eat every day
Must-have: Duck soup, duck with rice, anything duck

Duck soup.

This lunch-only joint is always busy, and no wonder: this is one of the few places where I seriously consider ordering seconds. The rich duck broth with meat, noodles and vegetables is that good. We always order an extra plate of roast duck over rice to go with our soups. And, Lian tells me that the owner-chef commented to her that I am so good with chopsticks. He also taught me the Thai word for "tasty," which is pronounced "ah-ROI." I use it often here.

Grungy but in a good way.

'That place in Warorot Market'
Actual name: Probably doesn't have one
Frequency: Every two weeks or so
Attraction: A hidden treasure known only to locals
Must-have: Crispy pork and vegetables over rice

After winding through the abbatoir-like meat market and past the stacks of fly-covered dried fish, Westerners who stumble across this grubby-looking kitchen in a ragtag corner of Warorot might hesitate to give it a chance. I am so glad to have a native guide who turns me on to these places. Lian always has moo grob, the crispy pork and rice dish, while I go for the noodle soup in a dark pork broth. The place could never pass a health inspection in Oregon, but eating here hasn't killed us yet.

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There are other faves as well: The som tam place for papaya salad, the Antique House for a nice "date" dinner with cocktails and live northern Thai music, the open-air place we go with the sadistic massage therapist Mr. Tong, etc. Not to mention the countless street vendors for rotee, patonko, hot soy milk, sweet sticky rice confections, and other Thai treats. And now I'm hungry again. Ghin khao ti-nai?

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Q:  What do they call corn in Chiang Mai?
A:  Thai Cob!

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."

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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."