Indelible Roots

I got to the bus station at about 10am and found the one window servicing Chaing Kong. It turned out that the early buses were full so I took the 1pm bus. Little did I know how long this ride would be. But I wasn’t feeling great, so sitting around Chiang Mai for a few days doing nothing new wasn’t appealing to me. Being sick on a bus wouldn’t be great, but I would get that travel time out of the way.

With three hours to kill I decided to walk around looking for an internet cafe. The first one I came to had a bunch of computers, but all were running Windows ME, so it wouldn’t read my external hard drive from which I surf the internet being the paranoid person that I am. So I left and found the next one several blocks away with newer computers. But as I plugged in my hard drive, the lady motioned that usb wouldn’t work or something to that extent. So I left, had a cheap lunch for twenty-five baht, and sat around waiting.

Finally on the bus we headed off just after 1pm. However, we stopped at every city along the way picking people up and dropping people off. At one point there were about ten extra people standing in the aisle of the bus.

Around 7pm we finally arrived in Chaing Kong, on the Mekong bordering Laos. Of course the “ferry” was closed for the night, so I had to spend the night there. I took a tuk tuk with a Frenchman, Rene and an Australian gal who said she didn’t particularly want to go to this guest house, but was somehow pushed onto the tuk tuk. We arrived to find that there was only one room left and Rene and I agreed to share it for a whopping three hundred baht (ten dollars.) I had reserved this last room at the last bus stop.

The place was called Bamboo Riverside or something to that extent. The staff was rude and the room was bare; two beds side by side, a brick wall on one side, a wall that didn’t go all the way up separating the bathroom, and no electrical outlets.  Rene and I then went out to get something to eat and then we walked to the hillside what was on fire. The haze around Chiang Mai turns out to be slash and burn from the fields as farmers clear things out before it gets too dry. The whole of northern Thailand and Laos is apparently smoking for months, until the rainy season.

I spent all of yesterday walking and walking with my little “walking map of Chiang Mai” in my hand. The old city is surrounded by a moat and is square in configuration. It takes about thirty minutes to walk from one end to the other and I walked pretty much the entire old city.

I saw many Wats, some cool statues, and sat in the park to read “The Iliad.”  Then it was back to the guest house for some food and to get some suggestions for things to do the next day. The food there was actually quite good and in large portions. And the owner seemed to know everything about everything to do around the area. Her husband is a westerner who puts together motorcycling tours of the area and we had a good chat.

Later that night I went to a local bar for a few drinks and ended up talking with the elderly Canadian owner. He has two bar/restaurants here in Chiang Mai and two in Phuket. He said he wanted to look at getting a place in Kampong Som in Cambodia, but it was more expensive than Thailand and there was way more red tape. No kidding.

Today I decided to go to the local mountain top and then onto the national park several kilometers away. I walked to the northern taxi station where all the red pickup truck taxis going in this direction are located. I was met by one of the drivers who asked if I was going to Doi Suthep and I said yes. He said it was forty baht which was lower than I had been told (should be sixty) and then told me that because I was the only one waiting to go, it would cost four hundred.

I laughed at him and then a Thai man came over and said he wanted to go also. They talked back and forth and this new guy said we would just pay two hundred each as he wanted to go and hadn’t been for a long time. I told him that for that price he should rent a motorcycle and he said he didn’t know how to drive one. Yeah right. I wished him luck, told him to honk at me if he finds eight other people to go, and walked in the direction of the mountain.

On the way I found that my pricey earphones no longer worked on one side, likely due to ear wax intrusion since I wore them all night on the train to block out the noise.  And of course I didn’t have any more filters and there was almost no chance of finding this brand here. So luckily I walked right by a computer/IT mall and wandered around looking at all the knock offs they had. I picked one up that I thought said Sony, only to find that it said Sonia upon closer inspection. A helpful girl found me a pair for under four dollars and I was on my way.

At the next taxi station (a long walk away) I got on one with five other locals for fifty baht. The ride up was intense and nauseating. The driver wanted to get up and down as fast as possible and the entire way the road switched back and forth. It would have been great fun on a motorcycle, but I was nauseus by the time we got to the top.

There I found some less than appetizing lunch  and sat down for almost an hour, wondering if I should try to hike up the three hundred steps to the top or call it quits. Of course I went to the top, but Chaing Mai was obstructed by haze or pollution. The ride back was just as bad. My symptoms are that of the flu or cold, so hopefully a good night of rest will do it. But that means I can’t book the mountain biking day trip for tomorrow as I had hoped, but hey, that just saved me fifteen hundred baht. If I feel good tomorrow I think I’ll just hop a bus to the Laos border.

OK. Not a lot to write about here, but just to let everyone know where I am. The landlady got a tuk tuk for me at 6:50pm. She told me to pay him "fifty baht" when he was there even ... [Continue reading this entry]

9am today saw me leaving on the Skytrain to parts unknown. I took the train as far north as it goes and tried asking the only western looking person where the northern bus station was to no avail. Finally I ... [Continue reading this entry]

I took a visit to the river to see the area around the palace and the big wat today. Not caring to go inside, I went in my shorts, thus was barred from entering. Unfortunately there is a high wall ... [Continue reading this entry]

I'm in need of a good swing set in a quiet room. Bangkok is just plain madness after four months in Khmer Country. There is constant noise, cars/buses/motos whizzing by at high speed, the rumble of the train overhead, skyscrapers ... [Continue reading this entry]

I've been in Thailand a couple of days now and as the heading states, it's different, but the same. Different: Traffic flows in an orderly fashion, if on the wrong side of the road. There are people everywhere and the city ... [Continue reading this entry]