Going home

I had decided not to walk in the city even though my flight wasn't until 1530. I didn't want to get all sweaty before an overnight flight. So I had a relaxed breakfast, showered, and took a tuk tuk to the airport at 1100. I would take it easy in the air-con, have lunch, then check in.

A quirk of Chiang Mai airport is that baggage screening is at the entries. I was under the mistaken impression that the eateries were outside the quarantined area so I walked along the outside. Who should I bump into but M from yesterday. ¡Que casualidad! (coincidence) we exclaimed. 

M was headed for Phuket for her next adventure. We chatted for a while in Spanish until her check-in time. She reiterated her offer to show me around Paris if I turned up, promising me French pastries and cheese. Such a tempting offer.

Food is good in Thailand; it's hard to find a bad cook. Thai are so polite; the Wai is such a touching gesture. I never saw a Thai person lose their temper even with traffic jams; losing one's cool is poor form. It was a cheap destination; perhaps there were times when I should have bargained, but the amounts involved were petty.

I liked the humid climate less, but better than Bangkok. Mosquitoes managed to infiltrate the screened dorm, requiring repellent. Crowds were tiring, but what do you expect given that Chiang Mai is such a tourist magnet; it seemed like every other person was a visitor. And a lot of the farangs are from Asia now; ads for Air Asia were all over. I was never sure if I was seeing tourist Thailand or real Thailand. Or even if they could be separated. It looked like Chiang Mai had been receiving visitors for a long time. Some of those were on medical or dental tourism, taking advantage of the low cost.

On the flight out of Thailand, the expat two seats away who read the Bangkok Post and who appeared to be going back for a visit, asked Your first holiday in Australia? No, I'm going home. Silly person. That was pretty much the end of that conversation.

When I thought back to the pictures that drew me to Chiang Mai and compared them to the ones I managed to take, I wondered if trying to see the same things was futile. Perhaps I should just travel in my armchair. But I reflected, I will never take pictures as good at the glossies in travel books and competitions, but the sights are only a part of my experiences, which are mine to cherish.

Doi Inthanon

Today's excursion is to Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand. It's relatively low at around 2500m, but is surrounded by a national park. There are waterfalls within the park. I was picked up from the hostel, then taken on a tour of Chiang Mai collecting the other participants, who turned up to be: a French Canadian couple, a retired Frenchwoman, a girl from the UK, a young Belgian couple, an Australian and his Filipino partner, and four young Taiwanese, not sure if they were two couples, besides me. We were one of two buses in a convoy sharing a tour guide.

The park is about 90 minutes drive southwest of Chiang Mai. First we were taken to a minor waterfall.

Alors, vous êtes la Française, I said, opening a conversation with the Frenchwoman. When she told me her name, I said, but M is not the French form. It turned out that she was originally from Argentina and had lived in France since her student days. So we switched to Spanish.

After that we were taken to a Karen village. They are a minority group in Thailand and many live in northern Thailand. The guide in the yellow shirt is explaining how the government is helping this and similar villages to grow cash crops to boost their income.

The white dress is for unmarried women. After marriage they wear black dresses.

But both married and unmarried men wear red dresses. Hmm.

In the same room Karen women were weaving on a loom. It is possible to buy fabric products such as scarves though I don't think any of my group took the opportunity.

After this we were taken to Wachirathan Falls, more impressive than the first one. The water spray was strong and got us a bit wet.

The water droplets even created a rainbow downstream.

At the site is a cafeteria catering for tour groups. We had to wait for a while for our turn; it was high tourism season in northern Thailand. The food were alright though overseasoned.

M and I continued our conversation. I gave her a piece of the durian cake to try. As a result she decided that fresh durian was not for her. A couple of days ago at the market, I saw glad wrap packs of durian flesh for sale as well as the whole fruit. They were actually more expensive by weight than the imported frozen product in Australia. Not sure if it was because of the season or due to exports sucking up the supply. I had helped a German couple buy a pack to sample and they commented that it was like avocado. Maybe they were being polite.

Next they took us to a pair of chedi (stupa) that commemorate the 60th birthdays of the Thai king and queen.

It was rather misty up there but there were pretty gardens surrounding both chedis. I also had to put on an additional T-shirt as it was a little cool.

Trumpet flower.

M being a tour guide in Paris and fluent in languages couldn't resist correcting my Spanish grammar when I replied that I had visited both stupas. (She had visited only one and used the escalator because of the height.) I should have said ambas not ambos, to agree in gender.

But she also complimented me on my vocabulary. I had replied mencionaste un hijo (you mentioned a son) when she asked me why I had asked if she was divorciada. Mencionaste is in the preterite and the pronoun is elided, as normal in Spanish. She had been separada for years, hence enjoying her holiday by herself.

Interesting garden decorations.

The mist came and went sporadically.

The rest house, when it wasn't obscured.

A short drive away was the actual peak. Visitors took turns to take photos. The guide commented that it used to be freezing cold in winter, but global warming has made winters milder.

Shortly after this photo was taken it started bucketing. We all got wet running to the tour bus. In the bus M said laughing I'm sorry I took shelter with someone with an umbrella and didn't realise it wasn't you until I reached the bus. You've been ditched for a man with an umbrella, said the Aussie, joining in the joke.

This was the last stop of the day, a tourist market selling dried fruit and souvenirs. The dried fruit was actually excellent. I got a bag of mangos slices, M a bag of cherries and the Aussie a bag of strawberries. Very smart too, dried fruit has a longer shelf life than fresh fruit. As you can see, it was still raining.

We were taken back to our respective lodgings. After the Belgians were dropped off the Aussie commented out of the blue that all the Belgians he had met were conservative. I wonder if it was a combination of him being gay, the Belgians being shy, and attribution error (psychology again).

In the evening I went to Brown Rice organic bistro. Service was a bit haphazard, I think the staff were family members. A boy was nervously checking the order slips every so often because the kitchen seemed to be overwhelmed. I had the Khao Soi which is noodles in curry sauce. Now my preference is for rice with curry and noodles with laksa, but that rendition was as good as it gets. Much more interesting was the signature Tom Yum drink which comprised the ingredients for Tom Yum soup, with less chilli and sweetened, as a cold drink. At the end of the meal, Duang, the chef, apologised for the slow service. I said it didn't matter, it had been raining heavily so I was in no hurry to leave.

It was still drizzling when I left so I got soaked. The streets were flooded. I must have looked a sight with my wet, bedraggled hair when I found a café serving hot coffee.

I called it a night and started packing for the departure in the morrow.

Loi Krathong

It had been my intention to get dinner at Brown Rice, a vegetarian restaurant run by another chef, but when I encountered Chiang Mai's night market, I went with the flow and browsed the stalls. I could have street food for dinner and go to Brown Rice on Monday night.

Thai Fish Cake was one thing I had not sampled yet. I found a vendor selling them and had a 50B bag which was quite filling. One thing I never understood though, where do the Thai in Chiang Mai dispose of the plastic bags? Street garbage bins were rare. Perhaps it was a deliberate tactic by the city to limit bag usage. I finally found bins near outdoor tables in grounds of wats that had rented out space to food stalls.

This one attracted quite a few devotees paying their respects to the Buddha, including some western ones.

Closing in on the Tha Phae gate. It had taken me over an hour to perambulate the length of the street market.

One thing I wanted to try was mango slices with sweet soy sauce. I passed it over at the market and never got a chance again.

Opposite Black Canyon Coffee, people were taking their photos with the wall.

A cultural performance at the stage set up the night before.

Nearby the decorated stands contributed by Thailand's ASEAN neighbours.

The parade vehicles were waiting at the gate for the start signal.

On Tha Phae Road, cordoned off to vehicular traffic for the parade, the crowds thinned out a bit, allowing a breeze to blow down the street and alleviating my claustrophobia. It got crowed again near the bridge.

On the bridge people were launching Yi Peng lanterns. But I was looking for the Loi Krathong floats.

They were down by the river bank. The floats are much less spectacular than the lanterns because the candles are not as bright and are visible to fewer people. People sometimes put a bit of hair or nail clippings on the float and symbolically let go of their negative thoughts with the float.

The night sky was full of drifting orange objects like so many stars.

The parade that had been expected finally came down Tha Phae Road and turned north. I was trapped and couldn't return the way I came but realised that if I just waited the parade would pass. A metaphysical lesson?

I called it a night. I was quite sick of crowds after two days in a row and looking forward to a quieter excursion the next day.

Sunday morning

The hostel owner assured me that I could find my leather belt and reading glasses at Waroros Market so I was headed that way again. For variety I walked to the south perimeter and continued around the inner ring. This was just as much to spot Brown Rice, a restaurant that had been recommended to me.

The canal has fountains which are more attractive at night when lit.

Interesting building facade but I don't know what they sell. Maybe a Thai reader can enlighten us. I can't read Thai script, it looks to me like printed circuit board traces. Any kind of Latin script, let alone English, is uncommon in Thailand. When I bought a bag of potato crisps, the only word in English was the flavour: Original. I wonder how the expats, an estimated 50,000 in Chiang Mai, cope. I spotted quite a few in the supermarkets and shopping centres, some with Thai wives in tow, or perhaps the other way around.

There is another market on the eastern flank with the usual produce. I was attracted by the brightly coloured lanterns.

There was a display of Thai zodiac animals just outside a gate. Apparently the dragon from the Chinese zodiac is replaced by great snake in the colloquial Thai zodiac. The other animal is the little snake of course.

At the market I found the leatherware stall. When I asked they helpfully took me around to the reading glasses stall. For lunch, from various vendors, I had: steamed pork balls in sweet chilli sauce, fried spring rolls, cylindrical kueh kapit (obviously more widespread than just in Malaysia), boiled peanuts, coconut ice cream, and a guava drink. All cheap, satisfying and as I remembered them.

I wanted a air-con place with WiFi to cool off so I had a coffee and cake at Black Canyon Coffee, just inside the Tha Phae gate, pictured here. (Vestiges of the various gates are at the edge of the old city.) BCC seems to be a Thai franchise chain. Their rivals opposite, Coffee Club, has Australian franchisees, but I see that they are now half owned by Thai interests and going global. Incidentally Thailand has highlands that grow coffee.

Back at the hostel, I got a haircut from a barber around the corner. The queue was long and I had to wait some 45 minutes for my turn, but I had nothing else on the agenda so just had a nap while waiting. It was cheap at 30B (~$1), though the record for the cheapest haircut I've had goes to Cuba at 16¢. Interesting that the barber didn't use the razor to shave the stubble near the ears like he did with the other customers. Maybe he didn't want any trouble from a farang in case he nicked me.

Yi Peng

I didn't change or shower upon return to the hostel. Which was just as well given what followed. At about 1800, the owner popped his head into the dorm and asked how come I wasn't going with the rest of the group in a songthaew to the Yi Peng site. I hadn't heard about the excursion. I had only asked the owner the day before how to get there. It seemed that he had taken the initiative and organised (hired) transport for the hostellers. So I popped on my sneakers and grabbed my daypack and we were off.

Tardiness is sometimes rewarded. I got to sit in the air-conditioned cabin with the driver, who spoke good English, while the others had the benches in the back. We took a back road to enter the campus of Maejo University, an agricultural college. The driver had to call his friend on the mobile several times to find the exact way; he confessed that it was his first time taking that route. There was a lot of traffic with the same destination so it took about an hour to get there.

The site was a canal bank. It was absolutely chockers with people. As expected of any huge gathering like this in Thailand, hawkers were out in force. Besides the lantern sellers, there were stalls selling snacks and LED trinkets.

We had until 2100 to return to the songthaew. I didn't want to get lost so asked a couple of German boys if I could stick with them, figuring them to be more reliable than the other hostellers.

The bank of the canal was crowded, grassy, uneven and slippery in parts. There was the ever present hazard of slipping into the canal and indeed later I saw a woman slip in, and get hauled out by rescuers.

Most of my shots did not come out well. The main problem was the dim light leading to long exposures and camera shake. It was a situation where an expensive kickass camera and monster lens would have been handy. Still, I've been there and that's what counts.

One of the more successful shots.

Lighting the doughnut.

And it's ready to fly.

One of the show-off lanterns with a sparkler attached.

The Germans decided that they wanted to participate so they bought a pair of lanterns each from a vendor. There was a sports field or similar open area where there would be a mass launching of lanterns.

We jostled our way along with the rest of the crowd towards the field. Progress was agonisingly slow. As we approached, we could hear the announcer say over the PA: Please wait until the signal to release the lanterns together so that we can get a beautiful photo.

This was as close as we got when the release happened. I suspect it would have been impossible to get into the field anyway; we would have had to start many minutes or hours before.

Still, it was an unforgettable sight.

Somehow one of the Germans boys got separated. The other and I decided to return to the canal bank. Eventually we were reunited but from the expression on the lost one's face, it had been a bit traumatic.

So with the remaining 30 minutes or so, we had to launch the unused lanterns and find our way back to the car park. But we did it and the Germans got the photos and videos they wanted.

We got back to the songthaew on the dot. But others were late. It didn't matter anyway, the roads were clogged, so badly that the people walking back to cars they had parked hundreds of metres away could match the songthaew's speed.

Back in Chiang Mai, the group decided to get a late dinner at the Dada Kafe, despite some reservations. After a 20 minute walk, we discovered that it was closed. Disgruntlement all around. I couldn't help thinking: Abilene Paradox. (I've been doing a psychology course.)

So we went to another restaurant. They were about to close the kitchen but agreed to take our orders. After a while they came back and said sorry we've run out of something or other, would you like to change your order? This happened a couple of times, and finally they said, sorry we really don't have any food left. So we paid for the drinks and left.

The Germans and a British guy ended up buying microwaved snacks at a 7/11. I still had the bento bowl from earlier so I went back to the hostel to eat that.

It was such a relief to strip out of sweat drenched clothes, shower and get into bed. Unfortunately that wasn't the end of the night for revellers. Loud firecracker bangs continued into the small hours of the morning. I remembered doing such things as a kid, but I dislike sudden loud noises now. It felt at odds with the very polite Thai culture. I suppose each culture has its own way of having a fling.

Waroros market

No tours today so I can relax. The Yi Peng lanterns aren't until the evening, naturally, so I had the whole day at my disposal. There were several things I wanted to buy so I was headed for the markets. One was a tool for crimping chor muang, a Thai steamed dumpling. Yui had told me which shop to get it at, and also the important detail that there is a rising inflection on muang.

Most visitors didn't use this gazebo for breakfast as it's separated from the main cluster of tables, but it is pretty.

But first a slow breakfast of müsli and mocha from the hostel bar.

For variety, I decided to try Loi Kroh Road to reach the river, instead of the popular Thanon Ratchadamnoen. This was nowhere near as grand as the map suggested. But I found a Rimping supermarket where I bought a mid-morning snack of chocolate milk, a chicken puff, and a danish pastry. I also couldn't resist buying a bento bowl, with the vague idea of having it for lunch.

I crossed the river and walked along the opposite bank where there were some restaurants with river views. Someone had told me that tables there are often booked for Loi Krathong. Thai massage shops seemed to be everywhere. You can also get fish spa treatment. I last saw those fish in Turkey.

Turning west at Thanon Charoen Muang, I crossed the river then headed north. Waroros Market was a covered building facing another market, Tonlamyai. The ground floor sold food, mostly dried produce and candied fruit. I bought a stick of durian cake, purely for research purposes mind you. The upper levels sold clothing and accessories. I didn't find the leather belt or reading glasses I wanted. 

Nearby is the flower market where Loi Krathong floats were on sale.

The displays were very colourful too. I had been told that Chiang Mai province produces a lot of cut flowers that are transported to Bangkok and other markets.

This is an old restored Chinese temple (with Chinese characters) which means that there must have been Chinese influence or Chinese migration in the past. More than that I couldn't tell you, I didn't swot up on the history of northern Thailand.

Some tortoise shaped baked goods. I suspect they are not meant to be eaten but are religious offerings, perhaps substitutes for real tortoises that are released to gain merit.

I'm pretty sure that these are not meant to be eaten. All that colouring, hmm.

At the Tha Phae gate they had set up a stage and seating. I guessed there would be performances for Yi Peng and made a note to come back later. But it was not to be; it was even better.

At the kitchen utensil shop they didn't speak Chinese as I had been told, so I had to resort to gestures to get them to fish out the chor muang tool from their stock. They communicated the price using a large calculator.

I returned to the hole in the wall place for another satisfying lunch, this time of Pad Thai. Then desert of watermelon slices before going back to the hostel to siesta.