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.

---

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.

Coming up for air in Ayutthaya

For anyone who is concerned about hygiene in Thailand, let me point out a few things about this picture.

Notice that this utensil cart in the airport cafeteria is plugged into an electrical outlet. The young lady appears to be selecting her fork and spoon but is actually immersing them in a reservoir of boiling water. I watch this cart for a good 20 minutes and every single person gives their fork/spoon/chopsticks a good swirl in the sanitizing bath.  The women especially eyeball their flatware before dunking as if they were going to be, well, putting it in their mouth.  Have you ever seen a utensil cart like that? I haven't.

Bangkok is a study in contrasts, and I try to reconcile the image of these fastidious eaters with the apocalyptic stench that hangs over their city this morning. Not just the usual funk but a gag-inducing reek, like burning toxic waste. Whatever thoughts I had of hanging around Bangkok for a couple of days vanish: my bus arrives at Hualamphong train station just in time for me to catch the next departure north to the ancient Siamese capital of Ayutthaya. Third-class rail fare for the roughly 65-mile ride works out to a penny per mile.

Rolling through the Thai countryside with the window down, gazing dreamily at sugar cane fields and rural Asian life, I almost don't want to get off the train ... and then manage to miss my stop in Ayutthaya. D'oh! It costs me an additional four baht to (literally) backtrack from the next village up the line.

Trackside squalor, 21st Century style: note the satellite dishes.

Centuries ago Ayutthaya, an island town at the confluence of three rivers, was sacked by invading hordes. Clearly the locals still hold a grudge against foreign interlopers, as I am assailed by savage touts the moment I step off the ferry.

"Hey, mister, where you go? I give you ride!"

"You got hotel? I take you good place to stay."

"I show you around!"

"Change money? I show you where you get good rate!"

Just when I think I've shaken an especially persistent creature, he turns up again, this time driving a tuk-tuk, the official vehicle of Satan's minions in Thailand. I dodge down a vendor-choked side street to lose him ... but now I've lost my bearings as well. It takes over an hour of sweaty, frazzled wandering around under the tropical sun, risking heat stroke, until I finally locate a guest house recommended in the Lonely Planet book, the very un-Thai-sounding "Tony's Place."

Tony and his fabulously flamboyant Thai manager offer the exact three things I need immediately: an air-conditioned room, a wi-fi connection, and a clean bed, all for the slightly splurge-y price of 500 baht (about $17).  Moments later I am well once more: a glorious cool-down shower, a bottle of ice-cold water, and the first horizontal sleep I've had in almost 60 hours.

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Walking around Ayutthaya, I strike up a conversation with a grizzled Aussie backpacker I meet who's searching for a certain guesthouse he read about in his Lonely Planet book. Solo traveler, perhaps in his late 50s or early 60s. Been to Thailand three times before, he says. Just arrived back yesterday and half-thinks he'd like to make it his permanent home, maybe. Badly in need of a shave and a shower.

Poor old wretch, I don't know whether to hug him as a brother or put him out of his misery.