RaveBurbleBlog

Once again, enjoying lolling around on our verandah, we were discussing snakes and lizards as per usual. Chow told me a story about his cat at his home in the country, who was stalking and catching a bird. Meanwhile, a large snake that he had - a python, I believe - was creeping up behind the cat. The cat caught the bird, the snake caught the cat, the cat turned around to see what on earth was going on and let the bird go, while the snake was having a few problems trying to get this wriggly, furry bit of prey to fit down its throat. So while the snake and cat were tussling, 3 people were on the other end of the snake trying to pull it off the cat. They finally succeeded and the snake and cat both left looking completely puzzled at their foiled hunting attempts. I’d love to have been there to get a photo of that. Snake, cat and bird, all in a row.

Yesterday we stayed in our room most the time, as the HEAT is back. At around 4ish in the avo we hired a tuk-tuk and got the driver to take us right around the outside of Chiang Mai wall. We were total, unabashed tourists, stopping him here and there so we could take photos of things. He also took us to a Wat that was incredibly ornate - probably took about 50 photos there.

Gill’s getting pretty soft on Mama cat and buying her fish, etc, at the market down the road. Mama cat of course thinks that this is pretty alright and is slowly moving her kittens closer to us so she can eat and watch them at the same time. The kittens look to be about 6 weeks old now and the 3 of them can make a fish disappear in less than 15 minutes.

Artist guy is still making dunnos. I wonder what they are for?

I gave Chow an English lesson this morning. Considering he’s learnt everything he knows so far out of a book, he’s doing darned well. A couple of French people turned up while we were at it and I made the mistake of greeting them a la Francais. They gabbled on for quite a while before I could say (in French) that I don’t speak French (well, very little anyway). It was nice to listen to though. They didn’t have much English and it took us all a while to sort out that the guy - who wanted to fly from here to India - had been booked onto Royal Nepal airlines by Chow. Chow gets his R’s and L’s around the wrong way, so it came out sounding pretty something like Loyor Enpar. I can’t read Thai so I couldn’t tell anything by what he had written down, but we managed to untangle things after 10 minutes or so. I hope the guy gets on the right plane.

Tonight is our last night in Chiang Mai. Tomorrow we take the overnight train again to Bangkok, then spend 3 nights there before coming home to NZ. Cross fingers for us that nobody does any protesting in the next few days.

Sawasdee Kha

We ate in a streetside cafe last night - Pad Thai and Fried Rice. Yummy. I love cafes where you can watch lizards running around the walls. Lends a unique ambience, I feel. Waiting for our food, we saw our English friends from the train go by. They had just bought enormous waterguns, so we lined them up as reinforcements for Day 2 of the Great Water Battle. Back at the guesthouse, we had a brief engagement with the enemy, then a truce was put in place for the night. Gill went to bed and I went downstairs to study fricatives and alveolar plosives (grammar and stuff) for a while, then off I went for some zzz’s as well. Our bedsheets are ever so glamorous - they have characters from Alice in Wonderland all over them.

There’s a really fat, large dog living down the road at the foodmarket. It lies under the stall most the time and just breathes. Obviously it’s very good at catching falling foodscraps. This morning it came to visit artist-guy’s little terrier dog. They just kind of lay in the shade looking at each other for a while, then went back to their respective territories. It was really cute.

I got a morning hello from Thai-guy down below with a bucket of cold water at 9 a.m. Then some fireworks went off - huge skyrockets that leave trails behind them like jetplanes. About half a mile from us is a Wat (temple) with gold fineals (sp?) on the edges of the many-layered rooftop, glittering in the sun. A little girl from our guesthouse family had great fun sitting in a large plastic garbage bin full of water, armed and ready with a giant plastic bazooka. Also leaking lots of cuteness, yet lethal at the same time. She got me when I was unarmed, which I thought was rather unfair, but this is a warzone and we can’t expect any mercy - not after our own behaviour yesterday. Gill and I went round the corner to the shops and bought bigger, better, faster, more weapons. They suck up the water like a syphon very quickly - excellent for quick reloading - and have a brilliant range. Our English reinforcements haven’t arrived yet and it’s now 5 p.m. so we’re very disappointed in their failure to front up and help. However, we do understand that they might well be under siege on their own street, so we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt for now. However, we’ve hung our NZ flag over the balcony and are giving as good as we get so far. This is getting more and more complex as miscreants are moving in to the rooms above us and beside us, so we’re hoping someone from Aussie or NZ moves in near by so we can present a United Nations front. Wish us luck.

The latest fashion here appears to be loud Hawaiian shirts, which we are seeing Thai people wearing in droves. Just like back in the 70’s. Did I mention that already? I’m typing as quick as I can so I can get back to Gill, as the street battle is really raging now and I can’t leave her to do all the dirty work by herself for too long. So sorry if I repeat myself anywhere. Put it down to battle fatigue.

We bought the newspaper today and are very glad we escaped Bangkok and didn’t go down south. Apparently they have riots down there (Bangkok and Pataya) and they had to cancel the Asean Summit. Sounds like it’s really put a damper on people enjoying Songkran (pardon the pun there) and the Thai people are pretty bummed out because it’s brought shame to their country and driving the tourists away. They really don’t need that after the tsunami and the last year’s airport siege.

Okay, I’d better get back to Gill and man my post again.

Sawadee Songkran (Happy New Year)