RaveBurbleBlog

Saturday - It got up to 39 degrees yet again, so we had brunch at the usual cafe then slept through most of the day or lay around under wet sarongs right in front of the fan, wishing it was a ceiling fan. We don’t know how to stop it turning so we get cool for a few seconds then have to wait for it to come round again - by which time we’re sweltering already. At the cafe an old lady came along selling little jellyish cake things that looked like fish roe to me. Gill was brave enough to try one and it turned out that they were a kind of chicken jelly with satay inside. They were tasty enough but the texture was pretty weird so we turned down offers of more from the cafe owners, bless them.

Come evening, we went off to the night market and did the rounds there for something to do. While we sat in the food hall a Traditional Thai Dancing show started in front of us. It’s amazing what these people can do with their fingers! They bend them backwards and make amazing, graceful shapes with them. Chow told us later than he was a kid, he’d hold his fingers under hot water then bend his fingers backwards until they were very strong and pliable. I’m not sure if I really want to try thai dancing that badly…

Yesterday, we played tourists again and went on a trip out to Maeteman to an elephant camp. We woke up to thunderstorms and lightening and were a little worried that the trip would be cancelled, but it was still on. We jumped into a van around the corner and found we were sharing the trip with an Israeli couple on their honeymoon and a couple of young Danish guys. The elephant show was pretty cool. Elephants play football really well. They’re not bad at basketball either. I got to sit on top of one - they are so tall and broad and bristly! No wonder tigers think twice before bothering them. Their trunks are incredibly agile. Picture a strong, intelligent, hairy snake and you’re getting the idea of a close-up of an elephant’s nose.

After the show we were shuttled onto ox-carts and taken for a ride up to a hill-tribe camp where some of their crafts were for sale. Once again, I was told how to look at a t-shirt (made by a tribal person?), that the boxes I was looking at were boxes, I really couldn’t live without a puppet and it was good luck for me to have a wooden roughly built cowbell or some such device in my home. I got fed up pretty quickly and not one of them made a baht out of me. They may look poor, but there were tourists teeming around this place and I’d lay bets that these ‘tribals’ have a Rolls Royce or two parked out the back of their straw huts somewhere. I saw plenty of satellite dishes too. Remeniscent of a Flintstones movie it was - rustic living with all the bells and whistles. After that, onto howdahs and an elephant ride down into the river and back to the main camp. They have great big ramps dotted around, with many steps up them to get onto the elephants backs. Man those things are tall! The ride is a bit like surfing sitting on your bum. It feels pretty safe though, except when the elephant walks up the steps from the river. It was about then I was praying to whatever rope God there may be around here that everything was tied on and checked for fraying…

After a buffet lunch (where they had the mortal cheek to charge us for a drink of water and a can of Sprite!) we were shepherded down to the river rafts. We had to run the gauntlet through a bunch of Thai guys who took rather a fancy to the young Danish fellas. One of them approached the dark-haired one in a very flirtatious manner and the poor man had to duck and dodge while the Thai guys cracked up laughing. The river rafts consisted of two layers of bamboo, one on top of the other, and small benches thrown on top for sitting on. There were two drivers (or captains?) poling the raft all the way downriver. It was a really nice trip that went on for two kilometers, taking us past elephants, trees dripping with fruit, waterfalls, funky treehouses, and other visual delights. The front captain, an oldish but very spritely fellow, and I kept making crocodile jokes and the cheeky bugger told us he’d take us all the way to Bangkok for 200 baht each. When he threw water at my foot with his pole I told him he’d only get 180 baht if he didn’t behave himself (having honed my bartering skills nicely with all my market-going) but I have to say, I actually could have easily sat on that raft for hours and gone to Bangkok - to hell with our train tickets. It would’ve have been even nicer if the Danish guys hadn’t chattered and yakked and scared all signs of nature away all the way down. I think the honeymooners felt the same, but were too polite to say so. But what the heck, they were really nice guys, and they’ve recently been to New Zealand, so they obviously have discerning taste.

Next stop was a Karen tribe camp (where the long-necked women live - them that have metal coils around their necks), but Gill and I sat outside and chilled while the others went in. We couldn’t bring ourselves to go and stare at a people zoo. We feel bad enough about doing it to animals. Then, onto the part I was really looking forward to, apart from the elephants - the Butterfly, Orchid and SNAKE FARM! This has been my personal challenge - to go to a snake farm and touch a snake. There were only three of us at the show - me and the Israeli couple. I sat right in the back of the stands in case any escapism went on (yep, fraidy cat, that’s me). The show was short but pretty cool. It started off with a guy versus two cobras. The guy was very quick with his movements, but I noticed the snakes weren’t striking as quick as I thought they would, so I’m guessing they make sure they’re well fed first. After playing with his pets for a while, he milked one of its venom and shoed us the fangs at close quarters. Then he brought one of the cobras up to where we were, blast him, and the emcee said that in Thailand if you touch a cobra, it brings good luck to you for the rest of your life. What to do? So I actually touched my first snake. The skin is very beautiful, I admit, but I’m not in any hurry to do that again. He played with a few more snakes, then the emcee anounced the last part of the show - the jumping snakes. The guys reached into a box very gingerly, ducking and diving, then one of them got hold of a snake and threw it into the audience! I realised as he was doing it that it was a joke, but the Israeli guy kicked his bag off the stand in fright and his wife leapt behind him so quickly she was just a blur of movement. I nearly wet my pants laughing. Once the Israelis got over their fright they took the whole thing in good spirits, but the snake guys must have apologised about six times before they realised we were okay about it.

Finally, they played around with a ‘young’ python, who, as a wee fella, was only six feet long or so. Then they challenged us to wear him around our shoulders. This I had to do. If once only in my life, I had to try it. It was about as creepy as I thought it would be. The snake was really heavy, I could feel it’s muscles constricting and moving along my back, and they were holding it’s face rather close to mine. Never will I forget the feeling of having a set of long muscles with fangs at one end on the back of my neck. The Israeli guy took a couple of photos of me and Mr Python and in the first one you can see the look of ‘eucchh’ on my face quite clearly. So I’ve decided to cancel my trek down the Amazon River as I just couldn’t handle one of those or an anaconda falling on me from out of a tree. I’m sure if that happened, they’d find me frozen stiff with a look of sheer horror permanantly stamped on my face, should they manage to do an autopsy on said miscreant serpent. Blecchh.

The final leg of the journey was to an elephant poo paper-making place. Enough said.

Last night, back to the Sunday market. I now knew what I was after and what prices to pay, so I covered everything I needed to do and hied off back to the guesthouse. I sat around with the locals for a while and discovered that one of the guesthouse guys who’s an effeminate sort of a chap has just graduated from university (majoring in Tourism). He’s cut his long hair and fingernails short, as the King was at the graduation ceremony, and I gather it’s just not the done thing to turn up as a Ladyboy. For the rest of the evening, he alterately crowed about graduating and mourned the loss of his locks and claws. One of the guys from down the Rabbit Hole was there and we got chatting about snakes and lizards and things. He told me that when he was a boy (in Louisianna, U.S.A.), tomboy girls would catch the smallish lizards around the place and wear them as earrings. Apparently they hang on until you press the back of their jaws then you can take them off again. He told me this with a perfectly straight face and I figure it’s either one hell of a good story or one hell of a tall tale. Either way, it’s a pretty funky fashion idea. I put it to him that perhaps you could also use these lizards as clothespegs to hang your washing out. but he seemed to think this was a pretty way out idea. I was thinking of all the plastic the world could save…

Anyway, for the first time in ages, we were actually almost cold last night. The rain cooled everything down really nicely and it was rather odd not to be super hot. The frogs were croaking all over the neighbourhood - love songs apparently, as they have to mate really quickly while the temperature is down. I reckon there’s a few million tadpoles going to be born shortly, from what I could hear.

It was cooler again today - only 36 degrees. Hanging out on our verandah as usual, we saw our cooking school teacher go by. Today is her 25th birthday. A guy from a few doors away walked past with his poodle, who thinks he’s a rottweiler, on a piece of string. Fat dog actually ran down the road this morning (we wiped our eyes and took another look!), so we figured there must have been some sort of emergency, i.e. free food being handed out. Little dog followed after her, little legs blurring as she tried to keep up. Mama cat went by with a mouse flopping out of her mouth. Another successful family meal going down. Ratty Norvegicus (our chubby little neighbourhood rat) darted in and out of the art gallery potplants then disappeared. Artist guy has been sawing and hammering all day. Twice I’ve asked him what he was making and twice the answer has been ‘dunno’. For a guy that doesn’t know what he’s doing, he’s pretty industrious about it. Mind you, we saw him watering his plants in the rain yesterday, so we’ve started to wonder about the state of his cerebral health. Tonight I watched a little frog hop across the road, have his leg stood on by an unaware pedestrian, just miss being squashed by a motorbike/sidecar and make it to the other side to be almost stood on again by artist guy. Then it turned around and started back across the road! Little dog spotted it and played with it right in the middle of the traffic, and then finally it found a hole and leapt down it, out of sight. Talk about nerve racking!

Gill has just been feeding Mama cat and kittens secretly, over the side of the verandah, and it sounds like a party is starting up down the Rabbit Hole across the road. I’m off to find some liquid of some sort, as our respite from the heat is feeling like it’s over.

More observations:

It takes exactly 5 minutes for ice to melt in a glass of water here.

Serviettes (napkins) in Chiang Mai cafes are either really tiny or they put toilet rolls into kitch plastic dispensers and them on the tables.

Sawasdee Kha

The evening after our zoo day, we had a wee party on our verandah. I had decided that a bottle of gin was in order, so I went and bought one at the 7/11 (otherwise known as a Dairy in NZ) for 260 baht (or about $12.60 NZ). Chow, Gill myself and a Phillipine girl called Lyn swanned about with a guitar, some gin and whiskey and several buckets of ice. Very civilized. Chow and Lyn put a sand lizard on the ground by my foot, thinking to scare me, which didn’t work at all, to their great disappointment. Gill suggested quietly to me that I should go and get my scorpion and do the same back, which worked a treat. When Lyn spotted it, we both jumped back and climbed on our chairs in horror (this was at night time, so the light was working in our favour) and she was totally taken in, poor thing. I think she had murderous intentions towards us for a little while after that. Chow then passed me a fancy whiskey bottle that had a cobra inside it with a large scorpion in its mouth. He was lucky I didn’t drop it! He then told us that the cobra would have been put in the bottle when small, then the scorpion dropped in once the snake was bigger, then both of them drowned in whiskey. We couldn’t believe the cruelty of it! And in a Buddhist country? But for some people, dollars speak a darn sight louder than morals. I also really hate seeing the insects set in resin or in frames at the markets. They’re pretty impressively sized bugs, but I refuse to support such a practice. Every time I see this I shake my head at the person selling them. I have to say I’ve seen a lot less of this than I saw in Bangkok in 2005. Maybe more tourists are refusing to buy them. I hope so.

Okay, stepping down off my soapbox, last night we went for food in our favourite cafe again, where you can get a nice Thai meal for about $1.25NZ. At cafes here, they serve their food takeaway in cellophane bags, which are then puffed up a bit with air trapped in them and rubber bands are put around the top. Many Thai people buy their dinner this way and a lot of snacks, like potato chips and nuts are sold this way also. Across the road from us was a traffic light. When the light goes green for pedestrians, the light counts down from 10 to 0, which doesn’t take long at all. You have to scuttle across the road rather than walk.

Last night we went in search of the Pinte Blues club which is mentioned in our second-hand Rough Guide to Thailand that I bought in Bangkok. (We never take this with us - we consult it in our room then take notes in a tiny notebook. There’s nothing like a falang with a guidebook to yell to the locals ‘I’m new here and I don’t have a clue. Come and rip me off!’) Nobody around our area had any idea about this blues bar, which has been here since 1985! We kept walking along Moonmaung Road (just round the corner from our guesthouse) until we found it - not actually very far away, close to a piece of Old Chiang Mai Wall. First we spotted the neon sign, then we saw an awesome Harley Davidson sitting at the curb outside it. This Harley had 4 saddlebags, a large American flag hanging off the back and every part of it that didn’t consist of steel had studs in it. We stopped, gawping like idiots, then spoke to the owner who sat beside it. At first we couldn’t make out whether it was a he or a she, as he/she’s voice was very deep, and was dressed in black t-shirt and shorts, white socks and sandshoes and a fuzzy white hairstyle. Considering some of the falangs we see around here, this gave us no clues whatsoever. It wasn’t till we sat down and watched for a while that we figured out, due to anthropological observation, that this was indeed a She.

After a few drinks, and many times fending off Hill-tribe women with - yes, wooden frogs - and flower sellers, our Laughing Tuk-tuk driver pulled up close by (we seem to be a magnet to this guy - and no, he hadn’t seen us yet) and I sent Gill home with him. I then went and had a chat with the Harley Davidson Rideress. I was dying to know what her story was. Turns out, was was a chief engineer for Hilton Hotels for many years, then adopted a Thai daughter and has retired here in Thailand.  It took her every day for 5 years to decorate this huge bike, which she rides all over Thailand on. We sat on the street chatting (I love how they just put chairs and tables out on the road here and the traffic just roars past, weaving around you) and then she started her bike, which as it turned out was lit up with LED lights more busily that your average christmas tree, her dog leapt up onto the back seat, she turned her stereo on so it blasted out George Thoroughgood and off she blasted.

As you do.

Observations:

• If you sit still long enough around here, everything will come to you. Flower leis, alcohol, food vendors with entire shops hanging off the side of their scooters, wooden frogs, beautiful Thai women in skyscraper shoes, lizards, dogs, etc.
• Thai dogs are very good at riding on scooters. They have terrific balance and ride like naturals.
• There are no parking meters. You just squeeze in wherever you can. Somehow it works.
• There are little sprayjets of water hanging down over the streets and sometimes rows of fans spurting out larger sprays to keep people cool.
• Bridges here have cool statues of elephants or whatever on them.
• Traffic police somehow manage to blow whistles even thought they wear masks over their mouths.
• Thai people love fish and the vendors keep them swimming around live then chop their heads off and cook them for you.
• They also love loud music and kitchy dancing groups doing strange jerky movements on television.

Today we hired Chow and the guesthouse car for the day and went outside the city to Sunkompang Village. This cost us 300 baht ($15NZ), which when split between us, worked out a darned sight cheaper than a tuk-tuk would have. We felt like royalty having an actual car and a driver to ourselves. We went out to an umbrella-making factory and watched how the process is done. When we got to the umbrella painters, Gill got her handbag painted with butterflies and I got a Ganesha (elephant god) and an Om sign painted on my camera case. They wanted to paint my bag, but I explained to them that it was made in India and would last a lot less longer than the painting on it.

We then went to a silk-making factory where you can watch the entire process from the moths mating, to the worms eating mulberry leaves, to them making cocoons to the cocoons being boiled (ugghh) to the silk bobbin winding and weaving on the looms. We were then led into a shop in which the prices nearly made me eat my tongue in fright. I went back out to the factory and played with a pop-ball with a boy in there who had to stick around his mum, who works one of the looms, all day. He was a nice young guy, aged about 11, and I gave him the pop-ball so he had something to do while he was hanging around. He loved it, and his mum was pretty pleased too, so that, as well as seeing the silk-making process made the visit worthwhile for me.

Next, we walked over to a factory next door where they made jade products and jewellery. There was a multitude of women there to serve us and no other  customers. Once again, we were shadowed so closely they were almost tripping over us. So far, these factory/shops were charging like wounded bulls for their products - by our experience, about four times what you could buy the same stuff for in the markets. But then you see huge, flash tourist buses full of falang pull up outside and you see how they get away with it. They had a lot less luck with the two part-scottish kiwis who wandered around taking photos and drinking their nice cold FREE water.

Chow then took us to a Thai Antique place. Yeah right! It was run by Kashmiri guys who featured mostly Kashmiri carpets and stuff from Rajasthan and other parts of India who I think were a little put out that I recognised a lot of it for what it was. However, the guy running that particular show had promised Chow 400 Baht just for taking us to the door, so we were happy to go through the motions to help our Thai mate out.

Finally, a wood-carving factory. We got herded through there like cows late for milking because it was nearly closing time for the workers. Out the back they had a huge teak trunk and another huge rosewood trunk drying ready for carving and various and sundry bits of furniture and carvings, once again with terrifying prices. When we were pushed back out the front to the showroom, I was looking for something small enough to afford and found myself once again being followed around. By this stage, I was in a ‘Get Mad or Get Even’ sort of a state and Get Even won out. So every time I felt the serving girl behind me and heard her draw a breath to give me a selling spiel, I’d move forward a few steps then stop. She would do the same thing, then just as she was about to speak, I’d move forward again. I don’t know about her, but I was actually starting to enjoy this game and started to quietly get the giggles. It was like going shopping with Inspector Clouseau (enter Pink Panther music). Childish, I know, but it was either that or tell her where to go and how to get there, so I was just taking the politest option.

Finally, we went back home, via the train station to buy our ticket back to Bangkok in a few days time, and staggered back to our room. Gill is now asleep and I’ve imbibed in two very warm gin and Sprites (my left arm for some ice!) and am thinking about a nice cheap dinner. Yay for living in cheap neighbourhoods.

Sawasdee Kha

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