Say, what happened to that travel blog?

I know it's been four months since my last post. But honestly? You haven't missed much. Since moving from the edge of the downtown tourist zone to Chiang Mai's version the 'burbs late last year, we've settled into this placid, totally unblogworthy routine:

*  In February we said "Ahhhhh!" a lot. That's because northern Thailand's so-called winter is like western Oregon in late May and everyone is in good spirits. Sunny, but not what Lian calls Big Sun. Every day was like being on vacation ... and we live here.

*  In March we made a quick trip back to Oregon for Lian's green card interview. Here's how nervous she was: when the interviewer asked for her last name, Lian literally could not remember.  And I could not prompt her in any way. We'd still be sitting there if I didn't finally stage-whisper: "Starts with M ..."

*  In April we built a vegetable garden space in the front yard -- and by "built" I mean we hired four young dudes to dig the bed, line it with stone blocks and spread a pickup-load of organic soil while we stood inside the front window and drank ice water and watched. Cost me all of thirty bucks, including tip. Now we'll see how (or if) Oregon green beans, spinach and tomatoes thrive in sub-tropical climate. Results so far are, uh, mixed: the spinach seeds hate Thailand and want to go home. The beans are sullen but slowly germinating. The only star performers are the cherry tomato plants that turned out to be a kind of tomatillo; I brought the wrong seeds back from Oregon. D'oh!

My favorite kind of yard work.

*  In May Chiang Mai is ridiculously hot as temperatures rise to triple digits by late afternoon. Then storm clouds blow in from nowhere, a windstorm whips up, and we get thunder and lightning and sometimes torrential rains, followed by a power outage ... and then it's sunny again. Same thing day after day. Crazy stuff.

*  In June I'll fly back to Oregon for some business-taking-care-of, while Lian heads south to visit her mother in Bangkok. Maybe then we'll have ''travel adventures" to write about?

We will leave Lian's 16-year-old son, Dao, to water the plants and mind the house while we're gone. What could go wrong with that?

Dining, American style (or, "20 pounds in 4 weeks")

Free for Incheon Airport travelers.

I love flying in Asia. I love the service on Asian airlines, the fresh-faced cabin crew, and most especially the amenities at Incheon Airport.

When the sign says "Free Shower," by god they mean a clean, private bathroom suite, complete with towel and toiletries -- all complimentary for boarding pass holders. And just around the corner is a reasonably priced econo-class buffet lounge, a massage spa and even a transit hotel. And if you don't want to spring for any of that, the benches are padded for sleeping. My 9-1/2 hour layover zips by before I even know it!

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A chilly 55 degrees -- BRRR!

I'm headed back to Oregon for a month of real winter, where people have good reason to wear wool scarves and sweaters. Blogging will resume in mid-February, along with a return to my wife's delicious and healthy cooking.

No fish for a month!

Until then, it's Yee-Haw Time in the foodie heaven that is Portland. Hot wings, here I come.

I know where the Oregon summer goes

It is the final day of 2014 and my last chance to make a visa run into Myanmar before my passport stamp expires on Jan. 1. The van picks me up in Chiang Mai before 7 and proceeds to collect another 10 aging white guys at various guesthouses before heading north to begin a 10-hour round trip over winding mountain roads. But then we stop and go back -- because one of these hosers forgot his passport, i.e., his Whole Entire Reason for Going in the First Place.

Barely an hour out of Chiang Mai the van pulls into some tourist trap-y row of shops with a bogus geyser out front. (You can hear the pump that pushes hot-spring water into the air, for god's sake!) I strongly suspect that the van operator has cut a sweet deal to deliver a steady stream of farang visa runners for this not-needed 20-minute "rest stop."

This is the last visa extension I can get, by the way -- Thailand changed the rules last summer because too many foreigners were abusing the system and overstaying their welcome. But that's OK, I'm eligible for a one-year multi-entry visa when I get back to the states.

The ride up and back is made miserable by Mister Passport Forgetter, who is also a chain smoker (not in the van, thank goodness) and an apparent black-lung sufferer ... although it is the rest of us who are doing the suffering. He hacks and hacks. And with every productive cough, the air reeks of dirty ash tray.

Back in Chiang Mai at sunset, our driver drops me near the corner where I can catch a Yellow Car, the fleet of covered pickups that provide mass transit to Hang Dong. The Yellow Car drops me in front of our gated community, but I am too late to catch the shuttle to my neighborhood. I have no choice but to walk and run the mile and a half home, where Lian is freaking out because we're already late for the New Year's Eve party at Tuck's house.

I am a panting, sweating, disheveled mess, but there's no time to shower or rest. Lian tosses me a less-terrible shirt and we're out the door.

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We stroll up the street to our landlady's place, where the party has achieved liftoff. My good friend Johnnie Walker fits right in with this crowd: everyone is drinking whiskey Thai style, a small shot in a tumbler with soda and ice. It moves you into The Zone ever so gradually. But it gets you there, boy, it gets you there.

Whiskey is the lubricant for tonight's real party engine: karaoke!



Asian people really, really love to follow that bouncing ball and belt out the hits, the farther off-key the better. Everyone takes at least one turn at the mic; Tuck, in the white shirt, takes many. To the great surprise of our fellow partiers, I actually know quite a few Thai melodies that I can mumble/scat my way through.

Fun with fire.

At midnight we usher in 2015 the same way Thai people celebrate umpty-ump other holidays: by attempting to burn down their neighbors' homes with free-floating incendiary devices. Happy New Year!

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Not six hours after falling comatose into bed, I am shaken awake by my wife, who insists that we go "for making donation." Feeling wretched, I pull on last night's clothes and we trudge the half-mile to the community center carrying bagfuls of nonperishable food for the monks.

There, hundreds of our neighbors are already unloading groceries atop the long row of white tables lining the road as we wait for the monks to arrive. Quite a few ashen faces in the crowd, and a fair number of folks are still wearing pajama bottoms.

The neighborhood waits to make merit.

At last the monks show up for their first skim of the year. They file past as the faithful drop food into their beggar's bowls, which the monks empty into larger bushel baskets carried by helpers, who upend the baskets into the bed of a pickup rolling along behind. I ask Lian why the people don't simply throw the food into the truck and eliminate the middle men. "No, cannot do," she replies.

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I feel very at home here right now. And by that I mean: Chiang Mai feels like western Oregon in late May. The mornings are brisk and at night we sleep under blankets. The afternoons can be hot but not oppressively so. The air in the shade is cool on the skin.

I'm flying back to the winter version of Oregon in 11 days. By the time I return in February, northern Thailand will be tropically hot-and-getting-hotter once more. So I'd better enjoy summer while I can.

White Christmas

Christmas Eve at the Buddy Mart.

How Santa gets jolly.

Thailand is an extremely Buddhist country, but the locals in our farang-ified enclave at least give a cheerful nod to the Christian holiday. On Christmas Eve, the owner of the Buddy Mart -- a retired Thai general who served in Vermont on a military exchange program -- hosts a party in front of the store for local children, complete with balloons, treats, and a very questionable Santa, recruited from among the beer-drinking ne'er-do-wells who loiter outside most evenings. For some reason the Thai children are afraid to go anywhere near him.

Later, the pleasant Canadian fellow across the street invites us to join his mostly-Thai church congregation for caroling and hot cocoa at his house. We stay put on our side of the lane but I do walk out around 10 to lurk in the shadows for a listen. The next morning one of his children bring us cake and cookies; I really need to mosey across for a visit, one of these days.

Home for the holidays, kinda-sorta.

The next morning we activate the dimensional portal that is FaceTime to watch my family back in Oregon, where it's still Christmas Eve, as they open gifts by the fire. Why, it's almost like being there in person! Except it's not.

Christmas dinner with the nabes.

That night we're invited to an east-meets-west dinner of sorts at the nearby home of our Thai realtor, Sandra, and her husband, Patrick, from Seattle. Like just about everyone in our neighborhood, our hosts entertain outdoors on the front patio by the street. Our culinary contribution is the very traditional Christmas dish of green curry with chicken and Thai eggplant. Over the course of the evening do I drink a little too much Thai whiskey? Oh, probably.

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January 12 I fly back to Oregon for four weeks, which is all well and good ... except that my 90-day Thai travel visa expires on January 1. In other words, I'll be making a New Year's Eve visa run up to Burma next week. Stay tuned.

Graduation vacation

Can you guess Eve's major?

Early Monday morning Lian, Dao and I fly down to Bangkok on holiday to watch Lian's daughter, Eve, graduate from college. Except we won't actually get to "watch" anything: the commencement seats go to Eve's father and step-mom, possibly because Good Old Dad paid for most of college. But we will get the girl to ourselves for the next two days afterward.

Not a carnival midway -- a graduation.

Eve's ever-reliable boyfriend, Boy, meets us at the airport and shuttles us to the main campus of Ratchadamnoen Commercial College, where 10,000 students from satellite schools across Thailand are graduating today, and ten times that number of friends and family are here to celebrate.

The campus is jam-packed with proud families toting picnic baskets, straw mats and, strangely, carnival swag. For some reason stuffed animals and gaudy plastic floral arrangements are must-give Graduation Day offerings, and they are hawked by a long row of vendors. Lian buys a double-armload of the junk.

An early lunch, a long wait.

Why we needed to be here so early in the day I have no idea -- it turns out that we won't get to see Eve until after 3:30. So the four of us take lunch and find a shady place to settle in and people-watch for the next several hours. This being a co-ed campus, the scenery is agreeable.



Graduation Day at Ratchadamnoen College is a boisterous affair with much drumming, dancing and chanting by the underclassmen to honor their seniors; drum circles across campus are whooping it up simultaneously under the tropical sun and it's a wonder that no one keels over from heat stroke. Even in the shade I'm starting to wilt.

Eve & Boy have a selfie moment.

Finally Eve is released from commencement and comes looking for us. We all take copious pictures of each other posing with our little graduate, who announces that she has arranged for a special picture for all of us: a professional family portrait. Including me!

Eve, under there somewhere.

So the five of us trek halfway across campus to the makeshift studio where two dozen families are already ahead of us in line. More waiting, and more sun.

At last it is our turn to pose. I try to mop up as best I can, but there's no way to "hide" me: as the elders, Lian and I are seated in the Chairs of Honor up front on either side of Eve. The photographer primps and poses me as best he can but, well ...

Later at the video monitor, as Eve makes her image selections, I peer over her shoulder and am chagrined at the result: a nice Asian family appears to be having its picture taken with Hoss Cartwright.

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It's getting toward dark and Boy is driving the five of us south: our first stop will be in Bang Khae for Lian's mom to see Dao (it's been years), and then on to the coastal tourist town of Hua Hin, where Eve lives.

To find his best route through Bangkok, Boy trusts the GPS app in his iPhone and follows its every direction. But a quick glance at a dumb old paper roadmap would have served him better: instead of choosing the elevated freeways, the so-called smart phone casts him down onto the capillary streets of the world's most notoriously traffic-jammed city. For hours we go inching in every direction except south. Finally, just after 9 we spot a familiar landmark and race for the family house in Bang Khae. We just hope everyone's still awake.

Grandmother and Dao.

At the house, Lian's flasher-mom is happy to see grown-up Dao, and she greets me warmly as well. I pat her hand and ask: "You're keeping your shirt on tonight, right?" The old woman makes no promises but soon indicates to Lian's sister that she's ready to go abnam (bathe). Whoops, time to go!

Three hours later, at almost 1:30 in the morning, after a full day of flying and driving and waiting and sweating, we arrive at our Hua Hin hotel and collapse into bed.

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Buying fresh crab.

Kudos to Eve and especially Boy for being such attentive hosts. Tuesday they drive us north to the fishing docks in Cha-am to buy crab, shrimp, squid fresh off the boat and cooked while we wait. Elbow-deep in crustacean gore, we consume our haul with fried rice under beachside umbrellas. Sometimes life's not so terrible.

Seafood lunch on the beach in Cha-am.

Holiday's over: Eve has to work on Wednesday morning and we leave for home late in the afternoon. But Boy remains ever at our side, chauffeuring us around town and getting us to the bus station in time for our 5:30 coach to Chiang Mai. Really, this young man has gone above and beyond: he could have dumped us off at the bus and gotten on with his life at any time, but instead he's hung in there good-naturedly, even waiting with us in the station. A gentleman.

Hanging with Boy in Hua Hin. 

Travel tip: when choosing a bus in Thailand, spring for the VIP luxury coach -- it's worth it. Better seats, more leg room, infotainment unit in the facing seat-back, and most especially a decent-size blanket. You'll need it: Thai people LOVE their air-conditioning, even at night when it's not at all warm. Most of the way home, despite being bundled tight, I am freezing my ass off.

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Yes, McD's has invaded Thailand, too. Kuhn Ronald has been here for a long time. But at least the big ginger knows to show the proper respect.

If the boys want to fight, you better let 'em

Baker Pete, meat man Tom.

A wood-burning brick pizza oven is not something you normally see in northern Thailand, but Ricardo has acquired one from God-knows-where and is eager to try it out. And so, on Sunday evening the beer-drinking cohort that hangs most nights outside the Buddy Mart will gather at Ricardo's house for homemade pies. Pete the baker will create the dough, Tom the sausage guy will bring meats and sauce, and everyone else will chip in for beverages. It'll be fun!

Around 5 on Sunday, hoping I'm not late, I pedal three blocks over to the demolition project that is Ricardo's house. Ricardo, a chain-smoking Swiss bear of a man, is tearing out his front porch and concrete rubble is strewn everywhere. The afternoon got away from him and nothing is ready for outdoor pizza-making: no prep table, no place for diners to sit. Worse, there's no fire in the pizza oven, which takes hours for the bricks to fully heat. Ricardo is pacing to and fro through the devastation, muttering unintelligibly, cigarette smoke trailing him everywhere. I get the impression that he has no idea what to do.

Ricardo: he didn't start the fire.

Pete arrives shortly and throws a conniption when he realizes that nothing has been set out for him to make dough. After a tense exchange with Ricardo, the baker gathers what he needs and sets to work assembling flour, water, salt and yeast. But the dough needs time to rise, and the brick oven remains cold. Pizza is not happening anytime soon.

More mates trickle in and we extricate tables and chairs from inside Ricardo's dronestruck-looking house. Tom shows up with sausage, marinara and mozzarella from his shop; a few other goobers bring beer (for themselves) and appetites.

Finally, about the time we should be pulling pies out of the oven, Ricardo goes to start the fire ... or not. He tries and tries but keeps killing it. Now it is getting dark and few guys shake their heads and leave. The pizza party has dwindled to five of us and tempers are the only things burning.

"Jeez, Ricardo!" hollers Tom, gnashing his cigar. "If you'd been in charge of the ovens in Germany, six million Jews would still be alive!" And then a flare-up between Ricardo and Pete threatens to escalate into a full-on Old Man Fight. Could this evening get more awesome?

 At last the charcoal is ignited (by Tom) and we assemble our pies. But now we have a practical problem: the firebox is full of embers, leaving no place to set the pizzas. Ricardo neglected to make room for a pizza stone. Our half-assed solution is to cook the pizzas on a baking sheet laid directly on the fire. We throw in a test pie fully expecting to pull out a monstrosity, nuked on the bottom and raw everywhere else.

But you know what? The resulting pie is ... perfect! And so are the next six we bake. Thin, crispy, delicious. Suddenly all is forgiven: we congratulate Ricardo for a masterful pizza party "in spite of everything." And the moment the last slice is gone, everyone gets the hell out of there. We'll see if Ricardo can talk anyone into another pizza night anytime soon.

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Thai people love their king with the most heartfelt reverence. In honor of his birthday on Friday, everyone turns out wearing yellow, His Majesty's favorite color. Even at home.

Flying the colors while watching the king's birthday festivities.

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Families in northern Thailand make good use of the dry season and no one in our neighborhood is shy about airing their laundry in the afternoon "big sun." Even the big fancy houses around the corner set their unmentionables out front to dry.

A club so private, we're its only members

Friday night lights ... but where are the players?

It's late Friday afternoon and Lian is called to stand by in the spa at the brand-new North Hill Golf Club. A group of 50 guests of the club, weary from a complimentary 18 holes, will be arriving at any moment. Maybe. So the spa needs to be all staffed up for Thai massage, mani-pedi or whatever it takes to impress these prospective new members.

Our dinner plans are trashed, but no problem: we've been wanting to try the fancy clubhouse restaurant anyway, so this is our chance. Lian goes ahead on her motor bike to don her uniform, and 20 minutes later I pedal along behind. It's a beautiful ride along the wide, empty road that divides the old nine-hole course and the new links. At sunset the megawatt floodlights illuminate the fairway for night golf. But I see no players.

The side road to the clubhouse is all but deserted. A quarter-mile down I wheel into the parking lot and leave my bike next to Lian's cherry-red Honda. No one else around but the gatekeeper and the doorman.

I want this lamp!

Inside, the lobby of this gorgeous (if a little gaudy) clubhouse is quiet as a library. I walk to the spa, where Lian is at the front desk with the manager, awaiting the first wave of massage-needing bodies.

"They say many golfer come soon," she tells me. "You can wait me upstairs for dinner?" Which I interpret to mean: Darling husband, you should go see what the bar looks like.

The Happy Hour crowd in the clubhouse bar.

Here's the first word that comes to me as I walk into the bar: grand. As in, look, there's a baby grand piano in the corner equipped with a vocal mic. Are you booking your plane ticket to Thailand yet, Tim Trautman?

I settle into a plush couch with a tumbler of Jack over ice and wonder: how many millions of baht are they losing on this place every day? Because I have three servers fussing over me and I am the only customer in this huge room.

Forty-five minutes and two drinks later Lian tracks me down -- the golfers' massagapalooza failed to materialize, so the spa cut her loose. Jack Number Two and complimentary peanut dish in hand, we step across the hall to the HOLY GOD IS THIS ROOM WHITE!!! restaurant. I neglected to make reservations but the waiter manages to seat us anywhere we want because we are tonight's first and only guests.

Our new favorite place for Date Night.

Our dining experience is sensational for its ambience, the view of the fairway at night, our deftly prepared entrees, and the bill that comes to a shade over twenty bucks, including bar tab and gratuity.

As we are ready to leave, the long-awaited golfer stampede comes rumbling in, but it's not 50; more like seven, and only half of them sit down for dinner.

"That manager, he tell me they want to have a new promotion for more customer," Lian shares. Hmm ... maybe I could work out a copywriting trade?

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From the inside looking out, I totally get the allure of gated communities.

This week I finally got around to buying a bike lock, but I have yet to use it here on the rez. Tom, the Sausage Guy around the corner, says he routinely leaves his keys in his truck at night. Thanks to diligent security, aided by the decorative bars across every door, window and driveway of every house, the crime stats in this placid bubble of non-reality are pretty much zero.

Which makes reading the day-to-day news from my neighborhood back in Portland all the more depressing: car break-ins, bike thefts, burglaries, all manner of intrusions. There's a lot I miss about home, but not that.

I know it'll be there in the morning.