Uploaded more pictures

9 new pictures, some with the new posts, some added to older posts.

On the Myanmar Border

The photo above: monks crossing the bridge from Myanmar into Thailand.

We arrived in Mae Sai this morning, which is on the Myanmar border. Tomorrow Zander and I are heading into Myanmar and going up to Kengtung. We won't have any internet access when we're up there. In fact, internet access in general has been getting more sporadic. There were no places in Mae Salong, only one here in Mae Sai, and we don't expect there to be many in the more rural areas of Laos, where we're heading once we return from Myanmar.

Mae Sai is a strange place. The main road ends at immigration, and there's a bridge fording a small river to Myanmar. The river doesn't provide much of a barrier. We've been watching as Burmese wade across the river and kids strip down naked and swim across. There are little girls begging in the markets, their hair and dresses damp. There are signs warning us not to buy Burmese cigarettes or sleep with underage Burmese prostitutes. In the markets there are goods from Burma ranging from jade to antique figurines. Gem dealers are everywhere, sorting piles of tiny purple stones. We don't know if they're garnets or rubies. There are fresh roasted chestnuts in the streets, served hot in the bag.

As long as we don't have any problems with immigration, our visa will be good for two weeks. I imagine that we will stay for one week at most, and more likely a shorter period of time. However, don't worry if I don't email or update this for a couple of weeks. I'll make sure to resurface once we get back to Mae Sai.

Hitching Back to Town after Our Third Blowout

We were about 5 miles out of Mae Salong when we blew our back tire. This is the third time it's happened, and we've had other mechanical problems as well. The bikes are poorly maintained and it's anybody's guess how long they'll last.

With the winding, steep roads around Mae Salong, we were a 20 minute drive and a couple of hours walk from Mae Salong.

We ended up hitching a ride on the back of a pick-up truck carrying ten full grown pigs. There were sections of bamboo holding in the pigs and we stood on the back bumper holding onto the bamboo slats as the pigs staged a miniature mutiny. They had motion sickness and they were throwing up on each other, and it was all we could do to avoid getting chewed on, thrown up on, or falling off the truck, especially when we were going up the steep hills. The pigs all got frightened and started wrestling with each other on a particularly steep slope, but somehow we made it back to town.

That must have been a funny sight to everybody by the side of the road. Two farangs wearing motorcycle helmets riding with ten pigs into town.

Visiting Hill Tribes Around Mae Salong

We spent the better part of yesterday hiking and taking a motorbike to hill tribe villages near Mae Salong. Most of the villages we visited were Akha villages. The Akha are an animistic tribe originally from Tibet, and at the entrance to the villages there are carved wooden figures with huge phalluses as well as gates carved of wood and bamboo. These figures are supposed to ward off malevolent spirits, and I think the gate also represents the connection between the spiritual and the profane.

The Akha are very poor. It would be hard to romanticize their way of life. They live in bamboo huts and they are very resistant to integration into Thai culture, which also results in fewer opportunities. Walking through the Akha villages, I fully understood the reservations that some people have about trekking in hill tribe areas. In other situations, I feel a self-consciousness because I am the only farang, but for once, I actually felt too much a voyeur, like I shouldn't be here. The kids stared at us wide-eyed. The adults ignored us. And when we were a safe distance away, the kids shouted merrily, 'hello, hello, hello!' An older man watched us leave the village to make sure we didn't touch the totemic figures.

We also visited a Lisu village. The Lisu women wear colorful purple dresses and are known for their needlework. As we walked through the village, a woman with a plastic tarp over her shoulder followed us. Soon we had a group of women around us, their tarps unrolled to reveal homemade bracelets, hats and belts.

I didn't have any small money but Zander bargained for several bracelets. Because the Lisu don't speak Thai or English, this was the extent of our interactions. Using some basic sign language, they were able to convey prices and also the extent of their need. More than once a woman pointed at a swollen hand or her bad teeth. Some would use the sign for food and point at their bellies.

The best sign we received was when an old woman made a gesture as if wearing glasses. We had no idea what she meant but she led us down a dirt track to a beautiful vista of tea fields in the valley below. When she made the sign again, we knew exactly what she meant.

Going to Mae Salong

Sorry for the hiatus on internet. After leaving Mae Hong Son, we spent a good chunk of the next two days taking the bus-- from Mae Hong Son to Chiang Mai the first day and then up to Mae Salong the next day. In Chiang Mai, we returned in time for the 2nd day of the Intakin Festival, which represents the beginning of the rains. There were festivities at Chedi Luang again, and it was nice to have something to ease me back into the rather abrasive urban reality of Chiang Mai.

On Friday we took a bus up to Chiang Rai and decided we weren't really interested in spending the night there. We took a bus north to Ban Basang and then a saegenaw into the mountains to Mae Salong, which is perhaps the most Chinese town in Thailand. There are tea fields all around the city, and tea leaves drying by the road. Everyone speaks Chinese, and very few people know Thai or English. It's another KMT town, and I even met an 84 year old man who had been a soldier fighting against the Burmese army.

Early in the morning we went to Mae Salong's tiny market. Members of hill tribes from the area sell greens and poultry. We saw Mien, Akha, Lisu and Lahu traders, and for breakfast many Chinese eat fried donuts (basically like fry bread) in hot soymilk.

Mae Hong Son

The first two photos in this posting are from Bahn Rahk Thai. The third photo is Mae Hong Son from the wat on the hill.

It's almost 10 in the evening here, our second night in Mae Hong Son. Yesterday we took a four hour bus ride from Pai, winding our way through the hills between limestone cliffs studded with caves.

A few impressions of Pai that I didn't get a chance to put in my last post: like I said, I was expecting more farangs and tourism, but instead, found Pai to be an interesting crossroads for many different cultures. We saw Muslim women in burqahs speeding by on scooters, Lisu women in bright tribal dress walking through the town, and ate Shan cuisine at restaurants for farangs.

As beautiful as Pai is, I'm absolutely stunned by the area around Mae Hong Son. The town is situated on a tiny lake and ringed with green hills. Today, we took a motorbike out to Tham Pla National Park, the location of Fish Cave. Beautiful blue dace fish, which grow up to a meter long, swim in the cave and the pools around it. It's considered a very holy spot, and a lucky thing to feed the fish, which we did. On the other hand, it's very unlucky to eat the fish.

By the way, the word 'suoy' with a rising inflection means beautiful, while with a low inflection means unlucky.

While we were at the park it started pouring and we took refuge in a bamboo hut with two middle-aged Thai women. Zander had a phrasebook so we were able to have a rudimentary conversation.



After a contemplative hour in the rain, we headed towards the Myanmar border. We're not actually planning on crossing into Myanmar until next week. Instead, we were interested in exploring a tiny KMT town about 5 km. from the Burmese border. In the early '70s, KMT fighters were responsible for quelling Communist insurgents in northern Thailand and also fighting against the Burmese army. (They were also known for their involvement in the drug trade, but the Thai government turned a blind eye on this.) As a result of their aid, the tiny town on the border is known as Bahn Rak Thai (Thai-loving village). It's a peaceful town on a lake with Chinese influence, almost haunting in its calm. Red Chinese latterns hang from huts with clay walls and bamboo roofs. There's no sign of the old fighting, though it's possible to take a mule the last 5 km to the border to see where the KMT trenches were during the fighting. It's a dirt track, impassable by standard motorbike. In short, we'd reached the end of the road.

We had lunch at a little hut on the river and sampled the local oolong tea and wines-- lychee, pineapple, tamarind, and plum. The tea was most likely planted as crop substitution for the old crop, opium.

The road up to Bae Saw (the other name for this town), curved through tiny Shan villages and up in the mountains, where we were sometimes going up or down a 35 degree grade. The hills were lushly forested, and we stopped both at Pang Pong Palace and a waterfall on our return ride. There was old-growth bamboo and near the waterfall trees as big as any Doug Fir in the Pacific Northwest.

It's going to be hard to leave this town. Yesterday, when we arrived, we went up to a wat on the top of the nearby hill, which treated us to a lovely view of the city. We are almost in the clouds. At the top of the hills there is actually sub-alpine forest.

Tomorrow we will most likely be winding our way back towards Chiang Mai, spending the night in either Soppong or Pai. In the hills the buses stop at checkpoints and police with M-16s go through the papers of Thais on the bus. It's basically racial profiling; the Thai government doesn't want Burmese refugees and people from the hill tribes to move to the larger cities and take jobs.

Nobody checks our papers, which is a good thing, since they're in Chiang Mai.

We'll be getting back to Chiang Mai on Friday, picking up our passports, and then making our way to the northernmost tip of Thailand and the Burmese border, by way of Chiang Rai and Mae Sai.

Pai Paradise

The first photo in this post in the hot springs near Pai. The second is a bamboo bridge in the town of Pai.

We got into Pai early afternoon yesterday (Sunday). The bus ride up was spectacular. A narrow winding road into the hills with stunning scenery, rain and mists. At the higher elevations there was the smell of pine. Basically pristine upland monsoon forest.

I was expecting Pai to be a tourist trap but all my expectations were upended. It's a beautiful little town that's popular with farangs for good reason. It's in a valley ringed by mountains. There are waterfalls, hot springs, and hill tribe villages nearby. We're staying in a teak bungalow by the river, and there's mango trees and beautiful flowers all around the bungalows.

That's where Zander ran into Seth, the older brother of one of his old middle school friends. Strange small world. Seth is married to a Thai woman and has a kid. He's a great guy, and we ended up going to a barbeque over at his house in the evening.

The highlight of the day though was taking a motorbike out to the hot springs, which are out in the jungle. Some of the springs are hot enough to boil eggs in, and Thais often do that. We had a good soak before finding that our motorbike had a flat. There was an inch long thorn in the tire, but thankfully, we got some help from some Thais at the park entrance. The ride back into Pai at twilight was as beautiful a stretch of scenery as any I've seen while I've been here.

Coincidences; A Travel Partner; Leaving Chiang Mai

Sometimes quite a few circumstances conspire in strange ways.

When I originally got to Chiang Mai on Friday afternoon, I was thinking about leaving that day, but ended up staying on for the evening to do errands. I figured I would leave for Pai early Saturday morning. I stayed at the Smile House again, and ended up grabbing dinner with the person in the room next to me, a Puerto Rican girl named Mari Jose. Originally we were planning on going to a place she goes to regularly but then we ended up changing our minds and going to Aroon Rai, my favorite restaurant in Chiang Mai. While eating there, I saw the British girl I met in Nan passing by. It turned out that it was her birthday and she wanted to get some people together. Mari Jose suggested a bar called Roots Rock Reggae.

Back at the guesthouse, I invited a couple of other friends; a couple from Virginia and a photographer named Ryan who I met my first time around in Chiang Mai. So by the end of the evening, we had a lively crowd, and I ended up drinking one too many 50 baht mojitos. There was a Thai reggae band playing and the place was packed. The lead singer had a pile of dreadlocks on his head and they all had the Thai Rasta thing going.

I ended up staying out until three in the morning, and as a result I didn't go to Pai early like I'd planned. I woke up at 10:30 and found a note slipped under my door. Zander, who I met in Portland just before leaving town, had left the note at 10 and wanted to go to Pai together. He was staying at the guesthouse just across the street.

We met up and at the moment we're in Pai (I'll save this for the next post). We have plans to go towards Mae Hong Son, go up to Keungtong in Myanmar, and then to head onto Laos together.

So, if it hadn't been for this whole string of events, I would have been halfway to Pai by the time he stopped by. We would have ended up meeting up eventually, but I like this string of causality.

Chiang Mai has also really grown on me. It doesn't take long at all to meet a lot of people and get to know the town. Still, Zander and I were both excited to leave town on Sunday morning.

Back In Chiang Mai after Lampang and Phrae

I'm back in Chiang Mai today and I feel about twenty pounds lighter-- that's what it feels like to be sans passport, which is getting mailed off to Bangkok for my Laos visa. It's a sensation that Kundera might call the "unbearable lightness of being"-- nothing official to identify me except a driver's license, a photocopy, and a receipt. I'll be getting back my passport next Wednesday.

I'm also in the process of planning a new wrinkle in my travels-- to Kengtung, Myanmar. That is, if the border isn't closed and/or being shelled due to ongoing tensions between Thailand and Myanmar. Chances are I will be traveling with one or two other people. I have lots more to say about this, but it will have to wait until a future post. Originally, I wasn't planning on going to Myanmar for political reasons, but I've since learned that a trip can be planned with minimal revenue going to the government, and also that locals want travelers to bring in their income and ideas. Anyway, more on that later...

Today the sun peeked out for the first time in five days. Two days drizzle in Nan, cloudiness and rain in the evening in Phrae, a sudden noontime rainstorm in Lampang. I saw a grand total of about ten farang in those three cities. Phrae and Lampang were both nice for their quiet alleys, riverine passageways, and old teak houses. And of course plenty of ancient wats, which are more commonplace than 7-11's here. Now that I'm back in Chiang Mai, I plan to get out of town as soon as possible-- today or tomorrow, most likely heading to Soppong by way of Pai.

Uploaded some pictures

Just scroll down the page to see a few pictures that I've uploaded. It took forever, but it's raining out and the guesthouse has cheap internet.

In the Middle of Nan-Where?

I took a six hour bus ride into Nan last night and apparently I've arrived in one of the last corners of Thailand as yet mostly untouched by farangs. I'm only about 20 miles away from the Laotian border. My intention was to head up to Pua an hour north of here and then east into one of the national parks, but the weather isn't cooperating.

The last two days there has been a fine cold drizzle and a slate gray sky. In other words, the weather has been EXACTLY like it is during a Portland February. Apparently a storm from the Gulf of China is doing a tango with a storm from the Phillipines, creating this unusual weather.

So I'll be heading to Phrae instead, and then most likely on to Lampang. However, if the weather gets better tomorrow, I'll head up to Pua and I might be off internet for a while.

Wandering around the streets of Nan you would think I'm wearing a spacesuit or carrying around bagpipes. School just got back in session for the kids and they all find me incredibly amusing as I pass by. It's not very often one sees a farang wandering around here, apparently.

I've been hanging out quite a bit with three other farangs at my guesthouse-- a New Zealander, a British girl who has been teaching in Bangkok, and, get this-- a guy from Portland, Oregon. That's Rob, Lis and Roger. Roger is actually starting a trekking business here in the fall.

Last night Lis and I got dinner at a rather seedy bar and after way too many Singhas a drunk Thai from Bangkok joined us and insisted we join him on his trip to Chiang Rai. He kept trying to buy us more beers and seemed insistent on spreading the love. I came back to the guesthouse to find the lock busted on my door but nothing missing. There's something just a little off-kilter about Nan, or maybe it's just me and the weather.

Sick, continued; meeting Thai Deaf people

So the sickness went like this:
1 day fever and headache
1 day shits
And then I was better.
I can't believe that bush doctor wanted to dose me with Paramecetol.

Anyway, if there was anything good that came out of being under the weather, it kept me in Chiang Mai for the Sunday Market. Most of the main streets through the city were closed down and there were all kinds of fine arts and crafts for sale. I met two Thai Deaf women and I was amazed to find that the sign language they spoke is incredibly similar to American Sign Language. I ended up getting introduced to another half dozen Deaf people and spending the evening with them.

It started raining hard early in the evening so four of us waited in the shelter of a bar across the street. I wish I could say their names but there is no written translation for a name sign.

Pretty quickly it became obvious that one of the girls wanted to be my Thai girlfriend. She wanted to go to Pai together, talked about other farang boyfriends she had had, etc. All this despite the fact that I told her I had a girlfriend and no interest in having a Thai girlfriend.

I took the three of them out to eat at a place called Aroon's. It was pouring out. By the end of the meal the other two Deaf girls wanted me to get a room for the third girl to stay. Her family was in Phitsanulok, she didn't have a place to stay in Chiang Mai, etc. I had to say no and left her shivering in the rain, chagrined to find the limits of my generosity.

Buddha's birthday continued, getting sick

In the evening I went to Wat Chedi Luang to participate in the festivities for Buddha's birthday. Chedi Luang is an ancient temple that has only been partially restored-- the crumbling ruin towered above the worshippers and the golden Buddhas in its niches were lit up and all afire. Just as earlier in the day, worshippers walked around the wat three times, holding an offering of flowers and incense in their hands and also carrying a lit candle. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. I would estimate that at one point there were 5 to 10 thousand people circling the wat. Huge fires had been lit and smoke poured into the sky. Once again there was chanting from the monks. Spools of cloth were unraveled and passed from hand to hand so that the thread attached hundreds of people. I was so excited to participate in the festival that I probably ended up walking around the wat five or six times with my offerings. I truly felt like I was part of a greater whole.

Later in the evening, I ended up staying up too late talking with an American couple. And in the middle of the night, I woke up sweaty and hot, only to find myself with a fever when I woke up in the morning.

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I had been planning to take the bus to Nan or Phrae this morning but those plans were derailed. At home I would have just had some soup and gone back to bed, but traveling alone, I knew I should go to a doctor and get it checked. I started by going to a small nearby clinic that catered mostly to Thais. The doctor was a real crackpot. He took my temperature with one of those forehead bands, which are notoriously inaccurate, and when he tried to convert my temperature to Farenheit he insisted I had a fever of 202 degrees. And after a five minute diagnosis, he said that maybe I had typhoid and that he wanted to prescribe Paramecetol, an antibiotic.

So I ended up going to McCormick Hospital on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, which was started by missionaries. I've heard that Thai health care is like American health care circa the 1950s. That seems to be pretty true, actually. It's not the squalor of Indian hospitals but it's none too impressive. I took a tuk-tuk out, feeling that existential combination of being sick and alone in a strange land. I ended waiting for a couple of hours in a room full of Thais. Again, I was the only farang. My fever was a more manageable 100.3, and they gave me a blood test to check for typhoid. I'd been hearing these horror stories about hospitals using dirty needles and I was prepared to walk out of there, but thankfully that wasn't true.

So apparently I have a viral infection, though the doctor didn't know what the cause was. He did, however, say that he didn't think it was serious, and ruled out dengue fever and malaria, thank god. I had to ask him to write down just about everything he said. It was one of those weird days where all communication breaks down and I felt as if I was on another planet. But now, after sleeping all day and taking some Tylenol, I'm feeling pretty good.

My total hospital bill was 320 baht, just under ten dollars. It seems so strange. Instead of feeling sick I feel like I went on a special cultural field trip.

I'll be in Chiang Mai for at least a couple more days fighting this off. It's good to get some R & R. I've been pushing things pretty hard this past week. If anything, I've been thinking about how such a thing can completely change the flow of my travels. Leaving two days later, the people I meet and the experiences I have will be completely different. Lately I've been feeling a deeper link to the casuality of events around me.

Buddha's Birthday; Fred and Tui

Today is Buddha's birthday, at least in Thailand. It's the full moon day, and supposedly he was born, died, and found enlightenment all on this day. Thais are visiting the wats throughout Chiang Mai and giving offerings. At one of the wats I visited this morning the monks were chanting and I joined the worshippers in prayer. Lately I have been praying at all the wats, partly out of cultural respect, partly as I reaffirm a sense of spirituality that I haven't felt this strongly for some time.

I spent the good part of the day up at Doi Suthep Temple, which is in Doi Suthep National Park on the outskirts of Chiang Mai. It's a long winding road to the top by saegenaw, and there's a beautiful view of the city. To reach the temple, we climbed several hundred steps (by we I mean thousands of Thai worshippers and hundreds of farangs). It was quite a spectacle. In the outer sanctum there were at least three different traditional music groups playing, and kids were ringing the bells all around the temple. (I rang all the bells too, and there's probably fifty of them around the outer sanctum.) There were ceremonial dancers performing in the shade of a jackfruit tree with long tapering golden fingernails.

In the temple, I joined other worshippers in circling the central golden stupa three times, our hands held up in wai. The air smelled of sandalwood incense and jasmine flowers given in offering to golden statues. There were yellow candles and flowers of all kinds everywhere. At one of the shrines, people were crawling up to an orange-robed monk to have a short length of string tied around their wrists. I'm pretty sure this represents the underlying connectivity of everything, and I also had a piece of string tied around my wrist as we were sprinkled with holy water.

There's a legend behind Doi Suthep except it actually happened. About 800 years ago the rulers of Chiang Mai put a relic on the back of a white elephant. The white elephant was to choose the site of Doi Suthep. The elephant wandered up the mountainside and died at the spot where Doi Suthep was built.

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Many of the wats in Chiang Mai have gardens where signposts hang from trees. There are words of wisdom about Dhamma in Thai and in bad English.

It was in one of these gardens that I met Somboon (whose nickname is Tui) and Fred. Tui is a retired school teacher from Lampang, and also has a law degree. He speaks English well but always wants to learn more. Fred is a retired sociology professor from California who was a Deadhead at Haight-Ashberry in the Summer of Love. I wonder how they know each other, but regardless, I ended up spending the better part of yesterday hanging out with the two of them.

Tui gave me a Thai lesson and I helped him with some more complex English idioms. To put things in perspective, his pension is about 1500 baht a month, which is about what I have budgeted for two days of travel (and I'm a budget traveler). He spends a lot of days baby-sitting his five year old grand-daughter and he looks about twenty years younger than he is. I had all kinds of questions: how did he feel about farangs and Thai women getting together? Had he ever been a monk? That kind of thing. I've been very curious about monastic practices in Thailand because apparently just about everybody is a monk at some point in their lives. In fact, Tui had spent a month in a monastery about five years ago.

Fred is quite a talker. He has decided to retire to Thailand. If you can prove you have 800,000 baht in the bank (about 20,000 dollars), you can get a non-immigrant visa and live in Thailand. Fred was born with a cleft palate and it was interesting to hear his perspective on growing up with a disability.

We all biked out of town to Wat U Mong together, which is in beautiful teak and tamarind woods. There are man-made caves where monks used to pray. It is a beautiful place and the repose I felt gave me a few moments of insight on how I want to live my life. It's the type of clarity I find in places like the Shivapuri Reserve north of Kathmandu, Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon, the redwoods of northern California. It's a life of calm and awareness and living in harmony with nature.

Later in the afternoon Fred and I biked to a waterfall at the base of Doi Suthep National Park. There was a rainbow over the city and kids swam in the many pools at the bottom of each falls.

After biking about 20 km I decided that it would be a good time to get my first Thai massage. I practically had all my limbs ripped out of their sockets, my head pulped, and I was walked on, stomped on, and elbowed extensively. For the most part it felt great.

In the evening I had the chance to meet lots of cool farangs at the guesthouse: Canadian, Irish, Swiss, a photographer, a masseur, etc. It's nice to meet other farangs and get a chance to chill out.

Last thing: the Night Market at Chiang Mai. What a tourist trap. I went there to get some street food and check out the scene. Fake designer handbags, bootleg cds and DVDs, tacky t-shirts, women from the Karen tribe walking around with trinkets. But it was the fact that it was almost impossible to find street food that convinced me that this market is geared for farangs, not Thais. In all the touristed areas of Chiang Mai, it's hard to find street food, and this is an essential aspect of Thai culture. I practically have to bike out of the old city to get sticky coconut rice wrapped in banana leaves.

Chiang Mai; Frowning Farangs

If you had told me a couple of weeks ago that I would be in Chiang Mai the Wednesday after getting in Thailand, I wouldn't have believed you. But somehow it feels as if I've lived a lifetime each day in Ayuthaya, Lopburi, and Sukhothai.

I caught the bus to Chiang Mai this morning and a lot of the ride, especially the section between Lampang and Chiang Mai, was lush jungled hills and lots of up and downs on the road. I was excited to be getting into Chiang Mai but at the same time I had dampened down my expectations. I've considered Chiang Mai to be one of the cornerstones of my trip, particularly because I can use it as a base to explore Northern Thailand.

Well, where to start? I have mixed feelings about the city. I'll start with the good-- it's absolutely beautiful, there's green hills in the distance, and shimmering green water in the moat around the city. It's urban in a very approachable way, noisy in its busy streets and suddenly quiet on the side streets.

But Chiang Mai seems like the type of city I'd want to arrive in after two months of travel on the road. Like Thamel in Kathmandu, I would be excited to eat some falafel and meet other farangs and maybe have a taste of the west. In the area I'm in (and I've only explored a little bit so far), there are more farangs than Thais. I can't complain about farangs being here-- after all I'm one, too.

And first off, I'd like to start by saying there are lots of great traveling farangs, too-- people who are respectful and interested in the culture, and most importantly, who are good and kind and aware that we are very fortunate to have these adventures.

However, what's with the frowning farangs? So many of them look as if they have just been ripped off or as if they were forced to go to Thailand and get drunk by their parents. I see frowns and haughty expressions and it really annoys me. Particularly, I've been noticing the difference in my interactions with Thai people. Now, maybe Chiang Mai is just different, but when I was walking from the bus station on the outskirts of town, and I was in a farang-free environment, everyone was very friendly. As soon as I got to the old town and the travel agencies and the massage parlors and the western restaurants and the guesthouses and the endless farangs, no more smiles.

I went into a bookstore to look for a Laos guidebook and within a minute of going in a German girl was in there making a scene with the Thai owners. I could see that they were very embarrassed. She was talking about how she'd been ripped off on some books she was selling-- apparently she was getting 50 baht instead of a hundred baht. You would have thought that a buck fifty was her heart and soul.

If I were Thai, I would automatically charge frowning, haughty farangs double. And considering that Chiang Mai has been on the well-worn travel path since the 60's, that's a lot of frowning farangs over the years, so I would have raised my rates wholesale by now.

To these frowning farangs, I can only say one thing: smile, you're on vacation! You're in a beautiful land of beautiful people and hopefully you are experiencing things you've never experienced before. I see this aura of entitlement in the haughty frowns, and it really rubs me the wrong way.

Unless I can find a more low-key area of Chiang Mai, I will probably only be here a couple of days. Of course, I plan to be back, perhaps for longer. I actually think this would be a great place to take a month and write-- it's very accessible and easy to live in, and it is an absolutely beautiful city. I'm sure I'm going to meet some great travelers over the next few days, and since in the states I've had my fair share of frowns myself, I'll give these frowners the benefit of the doubt. I will say, however, that I've had a smile plastered on my face since I got here and my smile muscles have never been so exercised in my life.

Maybe all of these farangs just have very tired smiley muscles.

Rambling around the Ruins

Yesterday I was up at my usual 5:30 AM and I biked around the Sukhothai ruins. I will try to figure out how to get some pictures up at some point. I decided to go to the ruins outside of town first, because I wanted to bike through the jungle while it was still cool. I was the only farang out there, which was nice, and mists were rising from the ground. Sukhothai is surrounded by these lovely lush hills.

I'll only give a few highlights of the day, but it was another of those days that felt like a lifetime. I went to Wat Chum as the sun was rising. It is a 45 foot tall Buddha in a square enclosure that faces the east, so that as the sun was rising its chakras appeared to be illuminated.

My favorite ruins were about 4 kilometers out of town. They were overgrown wats and chedis, ruins in the literal sense, but covered with lush plants. One involved hiking up an ancient stone path to the top of a hill, affording a beautiful view of the countryside.

At another of the ruins I saw beautiful birds with long plumes for tails and a moth that was bigger than a humming bird. As I was biking along the road, I heard this strange flute-like melody (dryads? Thai-ads?) which I actually think might have been the bugle call of the nearby Sukhothai Boy Scout camp.

The main ruins are in a beautiful manicured park, and I realized that I had been at Wat Mahatat during the monsoon-- it had seemed to be in the deep wild with branches falling and lightning clapping overhead. Mahatat is the main ruin so I realize how lucky I was to have the place to myself (this morning, I also had it to myself bright and early).

I also tried my first mangosteens, which are a reddish hard-shelled fruit with a milky fruit for an interior. It is very tart and also a little sweet, and I can't really describe the flavor other than that it tasted a bit like a banana, a pear, a lemon and a pineapple all in one, but not really.

Late in the day, I also got my first plastic baggie of soup. In the markets, the soup is ladled into plastic bags to take home. It was a green chicken curry, very spicy and like everything I've eaten, very tasty. Probably the best part was that everybody seemed so excited that I had a bag of soup. I got the impression that not many farangs eat the bags of soup.

And in the evening I met a Portuguese traveler named Rui, who had been traveling around India for the previous six months and is a psychologist back in Portugal. We shared a Beer Chang and talked about travel, philosophy, and spirituality. It was great to meet another friendly farang, which leads to my next post...

Old Sukhothai

This will be the last post for the day. Sorry if I'm going on and on-- this blog is as much for myself as anybody, and though I'm also keeping a written journal, it's nice to express myself this way when I can.

I'm staying at a place called the Old Town Guesthouse in Old Sukhothai. I ventured out across the street to nearby ruins as ominous clouds moved in. I've been telling myself, "Let it rain, let it be hot, it's all fine." Really, it hasn't seemed that hot to me, though I am showering three times a day. It's a state of mind and by choosing to come here I've chosen to accept the weather as is. Yesterday I was even caught in the rain at Lopburi, and I simply put my camera and notebook in a Ziplock bag and put on my rain hat.

Well, today I got poured on. I walked through a beautiful, well-preserved wat before it started raining. There were twenty foot tall stone Buddhas and when it started raining I stood under the outstretched hands of one of the Buddhas. I like that poetic symbolism. Soon there were huge booms of thunder and lightning, including one that was practically on top of me. The coconut palms and bodhi trees were rocking back and forth. I got soaked as I ran to an old stone shelter and watched the storm. After a while, I realized it wasn't going to stop raining any time soon and I opened my umbrella, proceeding to get soaked on my return to the guesthouse. Well, I dried off quickly and it stopped raining an hour later, bringing in nice, cool weather and lush greenness.

Old Sukhothai is surrounded by green hills and I walked through the market before coming to this internet cafe. The power had gone out and under the covered awnings vendors were selling their wares by candlelight.

I am definitely going to be here for a few days, at least. I really like it here.

I wanted to do another post about street and train food, but I'll have to save it for another time. It's absolutely delicious.

Crazy German Farang on the Train; Phitsanulok

Today has been a long day. I'm in Old Sukhothai right now, about five hours south of Chiang Mai, but that will have to wait until later. This morning I caught the 6 am train to Phitsanulok. I spent only one day in Lopburi but I felt like I lived a lifetime there.

About two hours into the train ride, a tall man with a straw hat and army rucksack climbed on the train. He looked and acted very strange-- he appeared to have some kind of skin condition that looked cancerous as well as some scabrous infection on his leg. Soon he came over and demanded to see my ticket. I was taken aback but showed it to him. He nodded abruptly (something he did about every five seconds) and then returned the ticket to me. He wanted to know where I was from and what religion I was. I said Oregon and cautiously said 'no religion'.

"I have one word for you," he said. "Utah."

I have no clue what he meant by that.

He went on to ask me if I'd been in Thailand before and how long I'd been there, and if I was traveling alone. Of course I lied. I had traveled abroad extensively in SE Asia, was going to visit Thai and American friends, etc.

India came up and he mentioned that he had spent two years there. Then he added, "But I can't remember where I was. One, two, three... I can't remember. You know why?" And then, after a dramatic pause, he addressed the train car at large: "Because I drink too much."

At other points in the conversation, he burst into a song about Heidelberg when I mentioned I had been there, and perhaps the crowning moment of his insanity was when he returned to his seat, and proceeded to dance in a circle hopping on one foot while singing. On several occasions he shouted at the ticket collector and generally frightened the Thais on the train. Later, he returned and out of the blue tried to explain an incomprehensible German concept to me-- this involved him drawing out 64 small squares on a paper and counting them meticulously, then returning the paper to me without explanation.

Needless to say, I didn't tell him my name is Franz.

The train ride to Phitsanalok was 5 hours, and I walked over to a temple there which is considered one of the holiest and Thailand. There I paid my dues before hopping a bus to New Sukhothai (one hour) and then a half-hour ride by saegnaw (glorified truck/bus) to Old Sukhothai. Phitsanulok was depressingly dusty and industrial, as was New Sukhothai, but Old Sukhothai is lovely.

Lopburi

Yesterday morning I caught a 6 am train to Lopburi, known to westerners as the monkey town. I went for the monkeys, like anybody, but the best part of the day was meeting lots of different Thai people. I'm starting to feel more involved in the culture, eating the street food, feeling comfortable with my stock phrases, sign language, laughter and 'mai bpen rai'.

I checked into a rather dinghy place called the Nett Hotel, which is pretty convenient to the wats. I wandered around the old Royal Palace, which is monkey-free, but I did see a blue-headed lizard-- I've since seen more. As I was leaving the grounds, an old man waved me over and we started talking. He had lived in the states for a while, even getting a degree in Maryland (again, a small world). Prasit is from near Chiang Mai and worked as a doctor in Bangkok. He wanted to talk about Charles Dickens, Bernard Shaw and politics. Soon he offered to buy me a drink-- he actually offered to buy me lunch but I turned him down. We sat in a cafe drinking Lipton iced tea from bottles and hung out during the hot part of the day.

Afterwards, I went to Pram Sot, which is absolutely overrun with monkeys. There are two groups of monkeys-- the temple ones (I guess they're the non-secular, spiritual tribe), and the city monkeys, which have succumbed to the world's temptations. The latter hang from telephone wires, climb on cars, and generally make mischief. It was still the hot part of the day so many monkeys were huddled against the walls of the temple trying to stay cool, napping and picking bugs from each other and eating them.

Across the street at the Kala Temple, I was relaxing in the shade near a group of ceremonial dancers when I was again beckoned over. The group performs for families when they come to the shrine, and they were napping too. One of them spoke decent English and wanted to know why I didn't have a wedding ring. Single farang men get a lot of attention regarding this. I ended up just talking and relaxing with them for a while. Strangely enough, I haven't had too many difficulties understanding Thais. Well, that's not entirely true, but I think I'm doing just as well as anybody.

The Kala shrine is in the middle of a busy traffic circle and pretty soon a pick-up truck passed by with a live band playing in the back (complete with drums, guitar, etc.) Other trucks followed with dancing Thais. One of the dancers told me that this is a regular thing at the Kala Shrine, and happens every week. The celebrators go on to pray at the shrine, which was a spectacle in itself.

In the evening I went over to a park and there were about 20 Thais my age playing full court basketball. I ended up getting in a game-- sadly, I did not well represent my basketball playing abilities as befitting an American, other than one decent fade-away shot, but I had a great time hanging out with them for a few hours.

Meanwhile, other farangs get a Stevie Wonder thing going whenever I cross their paths. I find it quite amusing-- perhaps the sight of another westerner doesn't jive with their idyllic vacations.

Rambutan Revelry

I'm sitting in an internet cafe right now that is populated mainly by Thai kids-- the little girl next to me is dressing up virtal characters in natty dresses on myscene.com. It is incredibly hot right now-- it was already hotter at 8:30 this morning than it ever gets in Portland in the summer. Which means I'll be frequenting this air-conditioned cafe for a while.

I thought I'd be jet lagged or tired or something but I woke up at 5 AM ready to go. The weather is very pleasant in the early morning. I biked around the wats and chedis of Ayuthaya and saw a large group of elderly Thais in blue jumpsuits doing Tai Chi. I also engaged in my first real Thai-language "dialogue", which went something like this:

Me: A-roy mahk mahk. (This is delicious.)
Boy: A-rai? ("What?" Total incomprehension-- he calls someone else over to interpret)
Me: A-roy mahk mahk.
Girl: A-roy MAHK MAHK. (Nodding and smiling.)
Me: A-roy mahk mahk?
Girl: A-roy MAHK MAHK.
Finally I get it. "A-roy MAHK MAHK."

It took a while to place my order but fortunately I found a display case full of nifty looking food that I could just point at. I had some kind of fluffy rice pastry with spicy meat stuffing that was so good that I had to have another. ("Nueng. Nueng." Meaning one.) Then there was pork wrapped in cabbage with a fish sauce dip. As far as food goes I died and went to heaven.

Even the 3 baht tempura-esque thing that had probably been sitting in the hundred degree heat half the day, and also dipped in the ubiquitious fish sauce, was delicious. I ate it while careening around on my bike, wondering if it would be coming back up 30 seconds later. But it's still down there.

Which brings me to el RAMBUTAN!! (Or "ngaw", which took about 46 repetitions for me to even begin to say it correctly.) The rambutan looks like a cross between a deep-sea creature and a mutant from outer space. It's small, orange, and oblong with green spongy feelers snaking out of it. I gave the vendor my most questioning look and she peeled one, revealing a milky fruit beneath. It tastes like a coconut with a bit of pear thrown in.

However, I do not plan on eating the BBQ'ed bats I mentioned yesterday-- at the same vendor I saw gutted frogs and snakes (or eels?) A-roy MAHK MAHK.

I also had a chance to talk to the owner of my guesthouse for a while. He's traveled all over the states and got a masters in Maryland (ring up another strange coincidence there). He's also an architect and he showed me pictures of this amazing 60 million baht (about 2 million U.S.) house he designed. I love these wonderful surprises-- I never would have guessed at all the things he's done. He also let me know that the rainy season would be coming in a few weeks-- I'm not sure what to expect with that, but it should cool things off considerably.

Suwatdee Khrap from Ayuthaya

Right now it's 7:30 in the evening and I'm sitting in a guesthouse on the river in Ayuthaya. It's a beautiful night out. The place is an old teak house full of antiques and whirring ceiling fans. I wish that Kate were here because she would love this place.

I landed in Bangkok at around noon and the first thing I did was change my ticket (sort of) at the China Airlines office. So now I'm planning on coming back to the states on July 25th. That is, I've changed about 90% of it, but I still have to figure out the L.A.-Portland leg.

The Don Muang train station platform was right by the airport and I only had to wait about half an hour for a train to Ayuthaya. It was raining and the air had the texture of soup, but it felt like a second skin. It felt like India again. It's strange-- my skin has been sticky all day but I've actually found this 90 degree weather to be very pleasant, therapeutic even. It didn't seem that hot to me at all.

The train ride was wonderful. I really do feel a lot of parallels to being in India. Vendors were selling cakes and sodas. All the windows were open and we sped by lush vegetation and shanties, huge ferns and banana trees and heaps of trash. It was only about an hour to Ayuthaya and I checked in at the guesthouse. I expected to be exhausted after only about 3-4 hours of sleep last night (or was it the night before? I've lost so many hours). Instead, I ended up walking through Ayuthaya's market, passing everything from barbequed bats to furry lychee-looking fruits to the infamous jackfruit filling the air with its stench. Heaps of curries and good luck charms and even two kids sitting cross-legged by a hunk of flayed meat playing their PS2 video games.

I ended up at the Ayuthaya Historical Park, which is full of these fantastic ruins. Streams run through the park and I crossed wooden footbridges to reach little islands with dilapidated wats and gold Buddhas. In one of the famous wats, monks had draped the Buddha statues in diaphanous orange cloths. The flowers are so incredibly fragrant in this heat. Birds were screeching and calling overhead-- it's rare that bird song is loud enough for me to hear it.

The food is great too. I ended up at a place right near the ruins where I had a shrimp and lemongrass dish and it would not be an exaggeration to say it was the best Thai food I've ever had. I never knew that this is what Thai food really tastes like. I had dinner with an Aussie and a Dutch girl-- the Aussie runs a backpacking hostel in Queeensland.

One more thing before I sign off, and this is just to show what a small world it is. While I was waiting in Taipei for my flight to Bangkok, I met five people. Three of them were from Portland and a fourth was from my mom's tiny hometown of Souix City, Iowa. On the plane to Bangkok, I sat next to a couple (Thai immigrants) who lived in Seattle. And when I was walking to the Don Muang platform I met two guys on their way to Laos who were also from Portland. How really very strange this is.... and I'm finding that language hasn't been much of a barrier. I'm already starting to get the hang of my few Thai phrases-- believe me, I've been corrected numerous times. All of the Thais I've met have been so incredibly friendly. Experiencing the famous Thai smile, wow... I even get it from people passing by on mopeds, buses, speeding trains.

And no culture shock, at least not yet. Everything has felt completely natural.

Last Post Stateside

Yesterday was a free day at SFMOMA so I spent the morning strolling through pop art, surrealists and Calder "Constellation" sculptures. I particularly enjoyed the building's architecture and the way light streams through the skylight above the 5th floor catwalk. Mostly, though, I realized how being in the museum made me feel distant from real lives being lived around me. Much of the art is conceptual or intellectualized and almost seems to negate the reality of human experience.

Contrast that with my afternoon wandering around Chinatown. My favorite part was a small park where groups of old men huddled around mah jong boards and gambled. At first I felt a little apprehensive about being the young white guy with a bandanna in a group of old Chinese men, but I reminded myself that to make the most of my experience abroad I have to set aside these fears.

Other than that I spent the day wandering around the city, enjoying the weather, and also battling the contradictory emotions within me-- excitement, apprehension, doubt. Mostly it's just sunk in that I already miss Kate. Yesterday I remembered so many travel realities-- aching feet, parched throat, hungry belly, endless walking. Muscles lengthening and becoming leaner, shoulders knotting up, skin bronzing and salty.

In the evening, Jeremy serenaded me with songs I remember from the Williams house-- old folk songs and Elliot Smith and Ryan Adams. We drank tall bottles of Kirin and listened to Elliot Smith's "From a Basement on the Hill," which I thought was brilliant. It was the first time I'd heard the album and underscored the fact that I will be without these American amenities for the next few months.

I'll be at the airport in less than 12 hours. Today I plan to rest up, be reflective and prepare mentally.

San Francisco

I flew into San Francisco yesterday afternoon. Leaving Portland it felt as if all the floodgates in myself had opened up. It's a feeling I often have when embarking on a journey, and entails giving up the entrenchment and control of living rooted in one place. It is an exhilarating and liberating feeling.

It was a beautiful day in S.F. I met up with my friend Jeremy and we wandered the streets looking for cheap eats. The bodegas and corner stores were all closed in support of the immigration-related boycott. It seemed like the only places open in all of San Francisco were Thai and Vietnamese, and I plan to put off eating southeast Asian cuisine until Friday. Instead we found a nice little Indian restaurant and dined on veggie curries and Taj Mahal.

Jeremy is a good friend of mine-- we lived together in an old, rambling house in Portland with three others, which we fondly remember as the Williams house for the street of the same name. It was as close to a boho, "authentic" Portland experience as I've ever had. Jeremy and his girlfriend also were through-hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail this past summer, and their epic journey definitely inspired me to follow up on my own dream of backpacking in southeast Asia.

I wasn't planning on it, but I think I'll be a tourist today after all. Apparently the weather has been miserable the last few weeks and it just turned beautiful yesterday. I'll make sure to enjoy my last few days in the states.