I can't handle the truth!

The Iron Bridge: in technicolor!

Another 24-hour gauntlet, another late-night arrival at Chiang Mai International Airport. On the taxi ride to Lian's place, I notice that the city has pimped out the Iron Bridge over the Mae Ping river with theatrical lighting that cycles continually through the color spectrum. Flashy!

As Lian watches me unpack my usual assortment of ratty t-shirts and wrinkled short pants, she asks what I'll be wearing to her niece's wedding in three weeks. Only then do I realize: I forgot to bring the single pair of big-boy slacks that I own. D'oh! Even I cannot rationalize showing up at the sacred nuptials in faded plaid shorts from Old Navy -- the nicest apparel I brought -- so a few days later we're off to the bargain bins at Panthip Plaza.

Rummaging through the piles of hideous Arrow slacks for what I know is my correct size, I feel two arms encircling me from behind. I smile and reach down to acknowledge the embrace ... and touch man-hands! I am being sized up by a skinny young male clerk with a tape measure. He then produces a pair of ridiculous clown pants that cannot possibly fit me.

"No, no, this size number is much too big," I assure him, "I wear a smaller size." And to prove it, I agree to try them on.

The ugly-ass slacks are a spot-on fit, and for the rest of the day I am despondent.

Damn these primitives anyway, don't they understand the finer points of ly-- I mean, marketing? You don't label clothes for the customer's actual size, you label them for what the customer wants to believe. And I really, really want to believe that my hated new tent-pants are incorrectly labeled.

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It's a Buddhist holiday in Thailand ... which is like saying it's Monday. Honestly, you could throw a dart at a calendar and stand a better-than-even chance of nailing a holy celebration.

Immortalized in terra cotta. (Click to enlarge)

So I tag along with Lian to a nearby temple and hold her purse while she goes inside to pray. This particular wat, alongside the river, offers all manner of ways to make donation (besides cashola): you can purchase small birds, fish and turtles to release by the water. You can present prepackaged gift baskets to the leader-monk, who will bless you with a spritz of water that he flicks at you from a big brush. Or, you can write special messages on terra cotta tiles that will be used in the temple's constant structural repairs. Lian and I opt for the tile graffiti.

"Write your name and name your mother," Lian instructs, which I do, respectfully. So, Mom, together we are now a permanent fixture in a Buddhist holy place on the other side of the world. See?

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One argument against overly affordable healthcare is that some hypochondriacs might go rushing off to the emergency room every time they have a tummy ache. A silly concern, right?

Hospital food, Thai style

"Am sore my stomach, want to go to hospital," complains Lian one morning, and not exactly in the doubled-over-in-pain voice that should indicate a medical emergency. So O.K., we catch a Red Car to Rajavej Hospital and Lian checks in upstairs while I hang out in the hospital cafeteria. I am still charmed at finding tasty, fresh-made Thai food in the unlikeliest places. Hospitals? Train stations? Who'da thunk?

In the time it takes for me to enjoy a plate of grapow gai (chicken and holy basil) and an iced cappuccino, Lian is seen by a physician and fills her prescription -- all covered by medical insurance that costs her the equivalent of just over $11 per month.

I look at how Thai healthcare works (and "works" is the operative word) and am embarrassed for America's broken, corrupt joke of a system. What do these people know that we don't?