'I think long time my god hate me.'

“Will you have dinner with me?” asks my new massage therapist before our session even begins.

“Uh, absolutely!” I reply, flattered at the invitation but a little taken aback. So we set a date for 9-ish the following Thursday evening.

“Mr. Tong wants us to join him for dinner,” I later tell Lian.

“I think he want friend for drink whiskey,” she figures. Lian knows that Tong indulges alone most every night after work, so it’s a special treat for him to have a new drinking buddy. And sure enough, come Thursday night when we meet up at the open-air family style restaurant near his shop, a smiling Tong arrives packing a tall bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label.

This is a hardcore Thai establishment, no English translations on the menu, so Lian and Tong handle the ordering. My job is to sit there and eat whatever’s put in front of me (no problem – well, except for maybe the steaming pig intestines), and to keep pace with Mr. Tong’s bottomless scotch and soda. Tong himself eats little and consumes mostly Johnny Walker and the occasional smoke. (Luckily, Chiang Mai eating places are largely smoke-free, and smoking at the table is considered "not polite," so he steps outside.)

Fed, watered and feeling no pain.

Many plates and pours later we close the place down. The bill arrives and it’s Tong’s treat, for all of 459 baht – a little over fifteen bucks. As we part ways, Tong gives me the Thai version of the backslapping man-hug and we agree to do this again real soon.

I am just whiskey-buzzed enough to try riding home on the back of Lian’s motor-bike even after last week's spill, and together enough to jump off after one block and walk the rest of the way home.

---

"Delicious"? Maybe not so much.

Chiang Mai probably has scores of truly delicious restaurants. Optimistic signage to the contrary, this new place around the corner is not one of them.

Saturday night we give The Delicious Restaurant a try. Ominously, we are the only customers. The menu offers an unlikely mash-up of Italian and Thai cuisine: “spaghettis” with green curry? Or with tom yum? Weird. We play it safe and order a chicken dish off the Thai side of the menu; what arrives is this pile of freezer-case breaded chick-fingers with sweet chili sauce glugged over vegetables on the side. We look down at the red mess and then at each other.

I remark: “This sauce is …”

“Bottled,” Lian finishes. Which is almost a felony in the foodie heaven that is Chiang Mai, where every roadside wok-jockey can at least throw together soy sauce, nam pla, sugar, lime juice, chilies and whatnot.

I’ll be surprised if this place doesn’t fold before I fly back to America in seven weeks.

---

“Wang tan”? “Hang dong”? Do these people have ANY IDEA how awesome their language is to a filthy-minded adolescent like me?

---

Several times a day we walk along the tiny soi that connects our neighborhood to the road into town. Halfway down the path sits this ramshackle wooden shanty, its dirt yard littered with all manner of junk for the family’s laundry business – plastic buckets, hoses, clotheslines and such. Most mornings an elderly woman is squatting in the dirt, scrubbing and slapping away at the bucketfuls of laundry that surround her.

One night on the way home we pause to look in at the darkened dwelling. Through an unscreened window, its canvas drape pulled back, we can make out the old mama-san seated inside, just visible in the lifeless grey light of a bare LED bulb.

I ask Lian: “Are these poor people?”

“Yes, poor,” she replies somberly, staring in at the dark dwelling for the longest time. Finally we move on in silence.

At home, Lian motions for me to sit with her. She picks up my clipboard and a scrap of paper and starts to draw: first a rectangle, then diagonal cross-hatching inside. Staring down at the paper, she explains:

“Many years ago when I am married I live in the garden with Dao father. We have no …” and she gestures to the light.

“Electricity?” I guess.

"Electricity, yes. And window cover is this,” she says, pointing to her scrawled rectangle, which I realize is not a window screen but a rattan panel. Now I get it: living with a newborn in a hovel on her husband’s farm in the sticks, her choices at night were either fresh air and 10 million tropical mosquitoes, or suffocation. “Dao is baby, and so hot!” she recalls. “Every night quiet and dark. Many time Dao and I alone. And when Dao father come home, he drink whiskey and talk-talk-talk, not make sense.

“Then I understand: we are poor people! Cannot tell my family, not tell my mother, or she worry me. I think long time my god hate me.

“Now when I see poor lady who work hard, I want to give her money, touch her arm,” she continues, her eyes misting. “Because I know her. I know.”

Happy Feet 2

Late Saturday morning we grab lunch at a sidewalk noodle joint near the motor-bike repair shop. We have an hour to kill until Lian's crunched Honda is ready. Over bowls of steaming duck soup we review our what-to-do options. Lian suggests I try a fish spa just around the corner.

Feeding Nemo.

"I work there many time, maybe I get you Thai-people discount," she says, speed-dialing the shop. (Once again, a place where white folks pay extra, possibly because we are all such terrible guests in this country.) The girl snags me a half-off deal, bless her. Five minutes later we are ascending the stairs to Fish Actually, Chiang Mai's biggest and best fish spa.

Here's how it works: you sit on a wooden bench and dangle your bare feet in a recessed aquarium full of little sucker fish, which delight in nibbling away your dead skin. The sensation of all those little sucker-mouths hoovering away so voraciously -- and I mean they're getting in there between the toes, along the nails, everywhere -- is just about electric. And definitely not for the ticklish.

Watching this feeding frenzy taking place on your own body, you can't not flash on the word "piranha." And then I recall reading in an anatomy book last week at the dreaded Mr. Tong's shop that the human epidermis consists entirely of dead skin; the living tissue lies immediately below.

Thirty minutes later I withdraw my legs to observe great patches where dead skin is flaking away like paint peeling off a weathering house -- patches that were smooth skin going in. Much longer in that soup and the little suckers might have stripped me down to living dermis, and then ...??!!

But on the positive side, it feels pretty cool.

A taste of home? It'll cost ya!

For the white-guy staples of life -- whole-bean coffee, laundry soap, decent wine, just-passable baked goods -- western-style Rimping Supermarket is the only option within walking distance.

It really is like stepping magically back into America, and any Thai people you see at Rimping either work there or have a Caucasian mate. Its multiple stores in Chiang Mai do a fine job of satisfying just about every farang appetite ... for a price.

Jonesing for a big stack of flapjacks with your morning coffee? You'll shell out the equivalent of just under $6.25 not for a gourmet buttermilk pancake mix but your basic box of Krusteaz.

Newman's Own balsamic vinaigrette rings up just shy of $8.25 a bottle -- a little over a dollar more than what I spent last week for 2.2 pounds of tiger prawns.

Luckily Rimping hasn't caught on that it could triple its price of fresh-ground coffee and I'd still buy the stuff. Because some things you just cannot live without.

---

Meet my friend Meow-Meow, named for how she and I greet each other:

Me: "Meow, meow, meow."

Her: "Meow, meow, meow."

Whenever my terrible Internet connection is acting up, which is mostly always, I walk out front to work beside the fence bordering the hotel next door (I have their wi-fi password). Meow-Meow tags along for company, meowing all the while. We must drive the neighbors nuts.

---

I don't know why the American healthcare system is broken, or who broke it, or why we can't unbreak it. All I know is this:

Wednesday afternoon I decide to have my blood pressure checked -- I've been lazy about my meds for months now, damned fool that I am -- so I drop in on a nearby medical clinic. The place is very busy but clean and organized-looking. The receptionist hands me a card to fill out asking for name, age, occupation and address. That's it. I complete the card and 30 minutes later I'm ushered into an exam room where a nurse takes my vitals. Good news: even without meds my BP is only slightly elevated. (Thank you, clean living!) The English-speaking doctor comes in, does a quick exam and writes me a one-month prescription for fresh meds. Minutes later I am settling up for a grand total of 280 baht -- about $9.34 American.

No one asks about insurance or requires a signature on a stack of forms. And I get the impression that there are not many behind-the-scenes third parties involved. It's all about quality of service and patient outcomes.

---

Riding on the back of Lian's motor-bike always used to terrify me, but I am over that now.

Thursday morning we are tooling along on back roads to the railway station to buy train tickets for a trip south in two weeks. About halfway there we come to a narrow spot in the road where a car in the oncoming lane is parked and another vehicle is inching around it. Lian has two choices:

   a) Stop the motorbike and wait.
   b) Veer into the rough.

She chooses unfortunately.

Blammity-blam-blam!! go the tires bouncing madly over treaded concrete drainage ditch covers. Lian tries to maneuver this bucking bronco back onto the pavement but her front wheel lodges in a perpendicular tread and the motor-bike drops to its side violently. I sail over the top and land across the downed bike, my reading glasses skidding in front of me on the street.

We are lucky: Lian is unhurt, I walk away with a sprained finger, sore toe and one hell of a bruise on my right leg. But the motor-bike takes the worst of it, a nasty crunch to the handlebar panel.

"Tell you what," I say. "If it's OK with you, I'll walk the rest of the way there. And then home again. And maybe everyplace else we ever go again, forever."

The cruel hands of Mr. Tong

Tong the Merciless

For the last couple of years I’ve had this damned sciatica that just kills my right leg when I sit for any length of time. Driving to Eugene a few weeks ago I had to stop at every single rest area to get out and stretch – brutal. Ibuprofen doesn’t help.

“You go see my friend Tong,” Lian recommends. “He very good massage therapist, can cure you.” I start to reply that “cure” is a very strong word and that maybe I should talk to a real doctor abou— but she is already on the phone booking an appointment for me.

Nine the next morning we arrive on Lian’s motor-bike at a nondescript storefront up a dirt side street. Suwat Tong’s shop is no rattan-and-lotus-blossom pleasure palace – just two thin mattresses on a tile floor, a couple of anatomical posters pinned to an otherwise bare wall, and that’s about it. Tong himself is dressed for heavy lifting and sets right to work: he asks me a few medical-history questions while running his fingers over my right leg, squeezing here and there.  “Does this hurt?” he asks, clamping down.  “No,” I reply, even though it sure as hell does.

Tong produces a loose-fitting tunic and tie-shut pants. “Put these on and lie down on back,” he says, stepping outside for a smoke while I change. A few minutes later the meat tenderizing begins.

Over the next two hours Tong rolls relentlessly over every inch of soft tissue, mashing down with elbows, knuckles, knees, heels, or whatever else he can use to pluck unruly tendons like banjo strings. As Tong and Lian chatter away in Thai, I desperately summon Lamaze breathing techniques learned thirty-odd years earlier: “Hee-hee-hee PAHH, hee-hee-hee PAHH …”

But you know what? The moment it’s over, I feel great! I’ve sat working for hours this afternoon without so much as a twinge. My left shoulder no longer pops when I roll it. Everything feels a bit more limber. Old Tong apparently knows his stuff. Later over lunch, Lian tells me that he used to be a staff physical therapist at a Chiang Mai hospital before opening his own shop, and he is always busy.

Me, I love a nice oil massage as much as the next hedonist, but next week I’ll be back to Tong for another two-hour pummeling. “People don’t come here for relax,” he smiles. “They come to feel better.”

Oh yeah, the price: about $17, including tip.

Everybody is a big faker

We are riding cross-town Saturday afternoon in the back of a Red Car, one of the fleet of covered pickup trucks that pass for mass transit in Chiang Mai. The driver pulls over and in hops another passenger, a slight 30-ish man. He's carrying a crutch but certainly has no problem climbing aboard. In Chinatown the Red Car stops and the man hops out, hands the driver a 20 baht note and continues down the street at a pretty good clip.

"You remember him?" Lian asks me. Come to think of it, he does look vaguely familiar.

"On Loi Kroh, near Night Bazaar," she reminds me. "He beggar."

Sure, now I place him: most evenings this fellow parks himself along the dusty lane in full view of farang passers-by, legs splayed at horrible angles, crutch before him, one cupped palm pointed upward. And the eyes, oh the eyes, so pleading. He's really got his character dialed in.

But Grownup Tiny Tim has nothing on his competition two blocks up the street, a ragamuffin woman with her prop-baby cradled in her lap. Every evening around 5:30 she clocks in, occupying a narrow point on the sidewalk opposite upscale Hotel Centara so that pedestrians cannot simply ignore her -- they have to step off the curb and into the street to get around.

To the woman's credit, the kid looks pretty well-fed and happy, but little wonder when you consider the economics of her gig: all she needs is a half-dozen softies to part with a 100-baht note and she can pocket more in a few hours than Lian earns on a decent workday in high season.

Which I guess explains her poisonous disdain for beggars.

---

We are gone for just a few hours, so I leave my laptop in the care of Lian's 13-year-old son, Dao, who is visiting for the weekend. Might be a good opportunity for the boy to practice his computer skills, I figure.

Later that evening, while Dao is watching Tom & Jerry cartoons and Lian is tidying up after dinner, I happen to check my computer's browsing history. The boy was busy: Spider-man movie searches, online games, video torrent downloads, and porn porn porn porn porn. And what amazes me is how many pornos he consumed in that brief time we were gone.

The next day, after Dao returns to his father's house, I show Lian how productive her boy was.

"Ohhhhhh," she says, reading down the list of smut sites, then is silent. Finally she turns to me: "He is normal for boy, you think?"