My first and last post

What can I say? I meant to blog but stuff happened, and then some more stuff, and then some very unexpected stuff, and now I'm back in Bangkok, waiting for tomorrow evening's train ride to Suvarnabhumhi Airport.  Three flights and two marathon layovers later, I will have extradited myself back to Oregon for I don't know how long.  (Don't ask; it's complicated.)

So tonight I'd better enjoy my final taste of Thai street food. That's right, mango and sticky rice, I'm talking to you!

August recess

I catch an air-con bus out of Hua Hin up the coast to Bangkok, check into a $30-a-night hotel in the Silom neighborhood, and basically kill time for three days before catching my Tuesday-morning flight back to Portland. This gives me time to pick up some handicraft items for my sister at Chatuchak Weekend Market, and at the last instant meet a few of the lads from IH Bangkok at an Irish pub just up the street from the school. My final meal in Thailand: curly fries washed down with a black & tan.

Video: the midday bustle of an open-air food court along a Silom side street as office workers from the nearby financial district stream in for a quick, inexpensive lunch.

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That's it for the month of August -- I'm taking a break in Oregon. But stay tuned as all-new adventures (featuring special guest stars!) resume September 3.

Faces look ugly, when you're alone

I get my first taste of the unadulterated Thai experience, and I sure do have a lot to learn before I can play alone in the deep end of the pool.

On Tuesday we catch a longtail boat to Krabi town, where we board an air-con bus to Surat Thani ... or rather, an outlying village called Na San, Lian's home town. Na San is to Surat Thani what Molalla is to Portland. No dual Thai/English signs here, and no need for them. You could drop a farang bomb on this place and kill just one person: me.

We are a LONG ways from tourist territory: these locals gape openly at the big, drippy alien that lumbers off the bus behind the returning local girl. As it happens, Na San is having some festival or other -- these people are continuously celebrating something, and always with food -- so we wind our way through the vendor stalls as I manage to crack my head on a metal sign that is hung too low (for me).

Uncle Somebody with rambutan

No one in Lian's family speaks a syllable of English, which frees me from social obligations: I get to just sit here on a hard wooden bench sweating and grinning at the mother, siblings and nieces who ignore me, while quietly flashing on a Robert Earl Keen lyric:


"Little sister brought her new boyfriend / He was a Mexican.
We didn't know what to think of him / Till he sang 'Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad.'"

Brother Whozits chops durian

On Wednesday we pile into Lian's brother's pickup for a 30-minute ride into the countryside to tend his fruit orchard of durian, rambutan, and other exotic-to-me tropical delights. Finally I get to taste the notorious, much-maligned durian: many Asian hotels, including the one I'm staying in, have signs prominently posted: "No animals, no durian." The fruit is malodorous, like rotting sweat socks, but its taste is like creamy custard -- truly a cognitive dissonance between nose and palate.

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Time to start heading home.

Lian puts me on the local train that stops in every village between Na San and the next sizable city four hours up the line, Chumpon -- third-class rail, my favorite way to see the countryside. Passage is free for Thai people, 40 baht for white folks. Racial injustice? Not really, considering all the crap they have to put up with from us ...

My reading comprehension is improving: I make out the Thai script for town names at each station and then check my answer against the nearby English translation.

Third-class "local" rail

Tonight I am in the coastal town of Hua Hin on business -- I have a 9 p.m. conference call and need the proven superb wi-fi connection of a guest house I visited two years ago.  Then tomorrow, on to Bangkok.

Southern Thailand: Railay Amazing

Railay Beach West

Rewind back to last Wednesday, Chiang Mai International Airport. This will be the experience of a lifetime for Lian, who has never flown nor even set foot in an airport. And so the x-ray machine that swallows her baggage, the portal that beeps when she walk through it, the wanding by a uniformed stranger with what looks like a big ping-pong paddle, all inspire open-mouthed bafflement. Especially when she notices that I breeze through both checkpoints.

“Why they check me, not you?” she wants to know. I patiently explain: “They like me.”

Rather than fly straight to Krabi, which is more expensive and involves a long stop in Bangkok, I have opted for a cheaper, direct flight from CM to Phuket. As we settle into our seats at the very back of the plane, I make a big show of pantomiming the purpose of the air sickness bag to Lian, the notorious public puker from our songthaew return trip from Doi Suthep. She has already downed prescription motion-sickness meds and is fast asleep before the plane even reaches altitude.

Once on the ground at Phuket International Airport, I scope out our transportation options for reaching Krabi and quickly settle on a private taxi – more expensive but faster and less hassle for two people than the shuttle buses. For the next two hours our driver, a loquacious fellow with operatic projection, bends my ear with nonstop commentary. (Lian is still zonked.) But he takes us through stunning tropical landscapes over back roads and recommends a fine place to stay, Peace Laguna Resort & Spa, in the coastal town of Ao Nang. It is low season and at under $60 a night, this will be a fine holiday first-stop.

That evening we go in search of dinner and learn a little something about hardcore tourist towns in Thailand.

Waiting for malaria ...

We pass restaurant after restaurant, most of them advertising "Thai &" food. You know: Thai & American, Thai & Italian, Thai & International, etc. Lian seeks a recommendation from a Thai shopkeeper, who swears that the place next door is wonderful. In fact it is substandard, overpriced, and farang-ified for undemanding western tastes. But on the way back to the resort we spy a hole-in-the-wall noodle shop that becomes our exclusive dining destination for the next few days.

The shopkeepers of Ao Nang, the way they accost passers-by -- so very un-Thai! One assailant plants himself squarely in front of me on the sidewalk and calls out: "Hellooo, my friend!" as he reaches in for a handshake to drag me into his tailor shop. "Mai ao! Mai ao!" I reply, drawing back as if he just offered me a handful of leprosy.

So we spend most of our time in the gated comfort of the resort, but even that becomes crazy-making, as the sound system day and night plays the same CD over and over, a languid Brasil 66-sounding female voice singing '60s and '70s pop standards. I offer the receptionist 500 baht to please go buy a different disc. Anything!

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Ao Nang is mostly a jumping-off point for better destinations. On Saturday we depart for one of the most renowned shorelines in all of southern Thailand, Railay Beach. Lian, dragging a rollaway suitcase and dressed for urban shopping, is chagrined to realize that we're about to wade waist-deep into the ocean to clamber aboard a grimy longtail boat. After a drenching 15-minute shuttle down the coast, the longtail grounds itself near shore and we wade once again to reach what would be dry sand, if it weren't raining.

Bedraggled sand-encrusted, we make for the nearest shelter, which as luck would have it turns out to be the resort I was hoping to find. Fifteen minutes later we are settled in and waiting for a break in the weather. And waiting, and waiting ...

Is it "Lo Cal" or "Local" Thai food? Whatever it is, it's great.

Railay Beach is actually two beaches on opposite sides of a narrow isthmus: Railay West boasts the picturesque shoreline and impressive cliffs that draw climbers from around the world, whereas Railay East, a three-minute walk away, is a boggy stillwater of mangroves and muck ... but with a younger, hipper, more laid-back, ganjafied vibe. Railay East is also where we find this modest little corrugated tin-shack, dirt-floor restaurant with some of the best food either of us has ever eaten -- very Thai, very tasty.

Modest accommodations in the Third World.

Tomorrow it's back to the longtail for a shuttle to Krabi town, where we'll board a bus to Surat Thani ... and the final week (for now) of my stay in Thailand.

Change of address

The view from my balcony

A more detailed update is coming soon, honest.  I've been a bad blogger, but it's just that work has picked up these last few days and I've had to dedicate my laptop hours to being gainfully employed. The good news is, this little adventure is proving to be workable and sustainable.

Short version: Chiang Mai and the authentic expat experience of northern Thailand are behind me; Wednesday I was airlifted deep into farang-infested territory down south. I'll save my rant about how unfettered tourism debases native cultures for another time, because I'm currently too busy being a total resort pig with the other white folks being waited on by brown folks.

Tomorrow I catch a longtail boat around the rugged coastline to Railey Beach for the weekend, and after that ... to be determined.  Meanwhile here's some pictures, and now I need to grab some shuteye.  It's been a long workday next to this swimming pool, let me tell you.

Coconut shake ... in a coconut.

Birds' eggs and parasols

I am a little slow on the uptake, sometimes.

For example: at the admission booth for San Kamphaeng Hot Springs, an hour east of Chiang Mai by songthaew, Lian picks up, of all things, a bamboo basket containing a dozen speckled robin-size eggs, and looks at me: "We get?" For 20 baht (about 66 cents) I figure, what the heck.  But ... why?

An odd memento?  Another Buddhist worship ceremony?  (Last week at the temple we bought live fish and caged birdies to be released back to nature at the riverside.)  But as we approach the twin geysers of the main hot springs, I finally get it.

A sign provides directions for boiling the eggs in the adjacent pool.  Ah!  That would explain the packet of soy sauce tucked in with the eggs. How it works is, you hang your basket on hooks that are driven into sides of the pool.  A few minutes later you retrieve your immersed basket and start peeling teeny-tiny eggs to eat with the soy sauce.  Yum!

So we hang out at the hot springs for a couple of hours dangling our feet in the not-boiling watercourse near the geysers before grabbing lunch and heading back to town. But Lian arranges with the driver to take us on a scenic route through Bo Sang "to see amber store," she says.  I wince.  Amber?!?  What, with mosquitoes trapped in it, like in "Jurassic Park"?  I'm not buying any damned amber ...

But I am mistaken: she is saying "umbrella," not "amber," and it turns out to be a happy surprise.  Bo Sang is known as Umbrella Village for the many manufacturers of parasols, fans and other colorful trinkets -- all handmade using traditional, pre-electrical tools.  OK, I'll admit that this is pretty cool to see, and I might even come back for the Bo Sang Umbrella Festival in January.  Lantern processions, traditional Thai music ensembles, and not touristy at all, according to my tourist guidebook.

When culinary worlds collide

For about week now I've been jonesing for a platter of honest-to-gosh American chow. So when Lian says she wants to try "European food," I think: perfect. There's this local chain, The Duke's, that should cover both bases, and it's an easy half-mile walk from my place.

Typical Thai lunch, or what's left of it.

By the way, Lian has no idea what "European food" is, nor has she ever tasted any cuisine from outside southeast Asia. Our meals usually consist of takeout from the vendor stalls or what she buys at the open-air markets: dried fish, fiery stir-fried chicken or pork with herbs, raw beans and cuke slices, nam prik (chiles in fish sauce), fresh fruit, noodle dishes, and rice rice rice.

Tonight we visit a spot-on simulation of the lard-assed American eating experience, right down to the massive portion sizes. Think Applebee's quality at Stanford's prices and you've got The Duke's.  Lian is lost in the illustrated mega-menu of burgers, steaks, pizza, pasta, ribs, appetizers, sides, salads ...

"I have salad," she decides by process of elimination, and I get the sense that everything else looks kind of horrifying.  I go with the vegetarian lasagne, reasoning that it contains enough familiar elements that I can share; there'll certainly be plenty.

A big plate of focaccia arrives.  Lian points to the butter and asks: "Nii a'rai?" So I explain what butter is to a 49-year-old woman who has never seen the stuff.  Exactly the same way she explains the most familiar condiments in her world to me.

First, the bleu cheese dressing ...

Lian's salad arrives and thank goodness I thought to order the dressing on the side.  Can you believe that a lettuce wedge with bleu cheese was the least offensive salad choice?  She tastes the dressing and makes a terrible face.

... then the Roquefort.

Then she notices the lump of roquefort on the other side of the plate.  I am ready with the camera, and the moment does not disappoint.

We beg our waitress for something resembling Thai salad dressing, but the kitchen has none. So she eats her iceberg lettuce wedge dry. And that is Lian's "European food" experience.

As we leave, she thanks me for dinner, but adds: "I think, no second time."

A temple is NOT a theme park

Imagine that you're a young woman choosing what to wear to church on Sunday morning in Anytown U.S.A. Do you go with the halter-top and the shortie-shorts? No?  Then why the heck are you flouncing around in your beachwear at one of Thailand's most sacred Buddhist temples?

309 steps up to the temple

Founded in 1383, the grand Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep sits atop a granite mountain overlooking Chiang Mai. Sunday is a Buddhist holiday and many locals are making the pilgrimage up Doi Suthep (the name of the mountain) to worship. Lian and I rent a songthaew for the woozy 15-kilometer uphill slalom that puts us at the base of the temple, 309 steps above. We brave the gauntlet of food vendors and trinket sellers to make the climb.

Adorable hill tribe child in native costume

The ornate temple buildings, the golden chedi (a mound-like structure used for worship), the view of the city, the monks and dancers and worshipers -- it's almost sensory overload. Lian, a practicing Buddhist, is here on business; she buys a few offerings for her god -- "to give me good luck," she says -- while I hang back and take it all in.

Loaner sarongs for the culturally challenged

I should mention, admission to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep is free for Thai people and 30 baht for foreigners ... probably to cover the cost of sarongs and shawls to drape over the clueless white girls who show up dressed for beach volleyball. Did they, or the t-shirted, baseball-capped dudes who brung 'em, read ANYTHING about Thai culture before they came here?

After an hour or so we descend to the parking area and locate our songthaew driver, who agreed to wait for our return trip down the winding road. Lian's god apparently is in a pissy mood today and does not bestow good luck: instead Lian gets carsick and spews extravagantly and publicly all the way back to town. I tip the songthaew driver an extra 50 baht for the many emergency stops.

Feeting the fishes

Walking home this afternoon, just up the street from the restaurant with the honeybees, I pass a spa that offers a most unusual treatment: fish massage. The idea is, you immerse your feet in a tankful of small scavenger fish, which nibble away the dead skin cells.

These are not my feet in the photo, by the way -- they belong to an elderly Thai gent, possibly the owner, who is parked in the storefront window to attract slack-jawed farang passers-by with iPhone cameras. He almost catches one, too.

Shut up and eat your bees

Bee harvesting in a busy restaurant. Uhhh, why?

This might be one of the strangest sights I've seen in Thailand, or anywhere. Somewhere inside the cooking station of this noodle joint, in a glass corner next to the sidewalk, is a beehive. Honeybees are everywhere -- on the countertop, in the food, swarming all around the cook.

She reaches over with a pair of tongs and starts scooping honeybees off the glass and the counter, and stirs them into a pot. For cooking? Dipping sauce?? She is practically reaching her hand into the hive for bees but somehow never gets stung. I want to ask her so many questions, but that damned language barrier ...

It's a fabulous restaurant, by the way. Dis-sting-tive, even!

A changing of the guide

Flash back a few weeks to the day of my arrival in Chiang Mai. That afternoon I go in search of Thai-style pampering at a nearby spa.

Lian, a polite Thai lady

They sit me down with a plate of watermelon and soon a pleasant woman named Lian is cheerfully performing a most heroic act: rehabilitating my feet. She does such a meticulous and splendid job that I opt for a one-hour massage as well. Sixty minutes later I am a satisfied customer all over again.

As I am leaving, she asks: "You come back tomorrow for two-hour massage?" The notion is just so decadent, I automatically reply: "Sure!"

Nick (dramatic re-enactment)

Eventually Lian and I get to be friends outside the spa as she introduces me to the primo noodle carts and discount shopping places around the 'hood. (Two new shirts and cut-offs, $35 -- nice!) She also tutors me in what is "polite" and "not polite" in Thai society, from wearing short pants and tank tops in Buddhist temples (a big "not polite") to covering one's mouth with a napkin while using a toothpick in a restaurant.

Now I have a new guide to replace expat buddy Nick Egert, who is back in the states by now for physical therapy following a vicious beatdown in a bar fight. On Wednesday I visit Nick again at the hospital. He is much more alert than the last time I saw him in ICU, and not nearly as grotesque. (Damn, I wish I'd brought my camera!) He'll be back, he vows -- just unsure when.

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A word about Thai potty technology. The spritzer hose hanging next to the tank is exactly what you think it's for.

Sewer systems here are too fragile to accommodate toilet tissue, so the spritzer is Thailand's refreshing and efficacious solution. (Many places do offer TT as well but insist that you place used tissue in a nearby wastebasket, which is just nasty.)

Every expat I've asked about the spritzer is an enthusiastic convert. So am I.

Sunday church social, Thai style

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

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

A Room with a View

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Mac attack

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

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

Hobo with a FILTHY laptop

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

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

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

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

Nick Egert, my new role model.

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

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

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

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

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

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Charming local commerce.

An open letter of apology

Dear tuk-tuk driver:

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

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

Other foods at Khao Soi Smir Jai

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

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

Kind regards,

William J. Landers


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

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

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

This is like online dating: never trust the pictures.

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

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

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

My Thailand

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

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

'Planet' of the Oops!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laid-back Julie Guest House reception area.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Typical Thai breakfast: chicken & rice soup.

How now, brown khao?

Khao soi gai

When cruising Trader Joe's for a good trail mix to take with you on the plane ride to Thailand, you might want to avoid the bags that include chocolate chips. I learn this the hard way while stumbling along the midday streets of Ayutthaya on my way to the train station. I reach into the bag for a quick energy boost and draw out a gooey mess, with nuts and raisins.

Still, that shouldn't affect the taste or the edibility, and I paid perfectly good money for this trail mix ...

So I arrive at Ayutthaya Station under the blistering sun for a five-hour layover -- between my 11 a.m. guest house checkout and the 4 p.m. departure to Chiang Mai -- sweaty, disheveled and with chocolate smeared all over my face. This is why I travel alone.

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Outside my room, Riverside Guest House

After a 13-hour sleeper car ride to the far north of Thailand, I arrive in the cooler and much more farang-friendly city of Chiang Mai. An easy half-mile hike west puts me at my next guest house, on the Mae Ping River at the the edge of downtown.

At check-in I explain to the manager why I am in Chiang Mai and what I'm looking for. She nods understandingly and directs me to a place not three doors down. In minutes I am tucking into my first bowl of authentic khao soi, a curried noodle stew and the signature dish of northern Thailand, actually in Thailand. For breakfast! (And, later, lunch and dinner.)

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I am a hedonistic pig

In this part of Chiang Mai you can't fall in any direction without landing on a massage table. So I indulge: I go for the pedicure and 1-hour oil massage at a reputable-looking joint. Heck, at just under twenty bucks, including tip (and watermelon!), wouldn't you?

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It's Saturday night and I am determined to visit Lam Duan, one of the top-reviewed khao soi vendors in town. I've already had one disappointment today: I hiked into central Chiang Mai at noon to visit another five-star place on the grounds of a Buddhist wat, only to learn from a monk that they serve only on Sunday. Rats! But Lam Duan is, I think, a mile and a half up the road. So I take a chance and flag down a tuk-tuk driver. You know how I feel about tuk-tuk drivers.

"You know Wat Fa Ham?" I ask. "I go near there, to Lam Duan."

"How much you pay me?" he asks. We haggle. Fifty baht.

"Lam Duan," I repeat. "Lam Duan," he replies. We set off.

We go and go and go, much farther than I pictured from the map. Finally we arrive at Wat Fa Ham. I look around. "Where's Lam Duan?"

"Ohhh," says this evil dog, "Lam Duan closed!" And he's not lying: as all the locals know, Lam Duan turns out to be a lunch place.

I throw him his lousy 50 baht (around a buck-sixty) and stalk back in the direction we came. It takes me an hour to reach my guest house, and by then the khao soi place next door is closed. But on the walk back I toy with the possibility that God put me on this earth to kill tuk-tuk drivers.

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Yes, yes, I know I'm supposed to be researching living in Chiang Mai, not carrying on like some khao soi-smeared, massage-oil-smelling tourist. That starts today when I move over to the other side of town, to a place adjacent to Chiang Mai University.