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.