Life As Canvas

After taking a night train with full twin-sized beds, sheets, pillows, blanket and all, Erika and I got off in Chiangmai where we were picked up and whisked off to our guesthouse. It was 8 or so in the morning and, though the train was about the best night sleep I’ve gotten this past week, I was still tired. Tired seems to be a theme running through my life, lately.

Luckily, Chiangmai, in the North of Thailand, is much quieter and more laid back than Bangkok, which we practically felt in the air when we arrived. We got to our room, unpacked, de-trained, and set out to explore the city, full of temples and restaurants, Thai and Western. We ducked into temples of shining golden Buddhas and ate some amazing chicken coconut soup.

We explored a day market and found an array of wondrous and horrid things to revel in. Fruits I’ve never seen, big bowls of noodles, flower offerings for temples, and barbecued bugs.

Thailand is this colorful place where unusual and delightful flavors and aromas flirt with the senses and the essence of it can be found at the city market. Every day I gravitate towards soothing tropical flower scents, curries, ginger, coconut, and then reel at repulsive odors easing out of abandoned alleyways. Most of it is pleasant, some of it shocks my Western-tuned nose.

We’re staying here with a hotel package we bought back in Bangkok and, with it, we were offered a dinner and dance. “I feel like I’m back in Vegas,” said Erika, when our hotel mentioned it. “There’s always a dinner and a dance in Vegas.” We knew the thing would be overly touristy so we went not reluctantly, but not expecting much. But the food was good and the dances were fun. We gave in to the touristy side of it when we were invited up on stage to dance and went, giggling as we awkwardly copied their moves.

Today we took a cooking class with Meow, our Thai teacher, who showed us through the fruit and vegetable market and described the different ingredients to us. “This is ginger. Makes big boom-boom for men.” We cooked and ate, cooked and ate, cooked and ate all day. I am full of coconut milk and curry and so pleased. Meow liked to tease us and say “Sexy time, sexy time!” whenever someone took a photo and posed, herself.

She showed us how to make curry paste and spring rolls, and many a tasty dish in the wok. I suggest a cooking class to anyone who comes to Thailand and if you happen to come to Chiangmai, take it with Meow! Her school is called the Thai Cookery School, which is easy enough to remember, and the quality of the food was beyond anything I’ve tasted back home.

Tomorrow: Trekking in the jungle, elephants, rafting!

Alone on the hotel terrace, I sit nursing the little thunderstorm of rocky love in my heart. I can see the Pacific Ocean, a great churning mass of slow changes over time. It’s misty out, the sun is setting, and the waves look stone grey against the light clouds behind them. Near the horizon moves the silhouette of a local man fishing in a traditional boat made of reeds. It’s curved up in the front, making it look like an elf shoe. He goes out on this ocean, the same as it was centuries ago, to find dinner in the same kind of boat his ancestors used, though judging by his cumbersome maneuvering, a kayak would be more practical. But it’s simpler than that. The way he’s fishing is just the way it’s done around here, and has been done for generations. I ask myself what kinds of complications and troubles of the heart this man has. From here on my terrace looking out to his horizon, it just looks so simple.

Peru is overwhelmingly full of things to do and see, from jungle to desert, ocean and high mountains, all of it scattered with ancient walls and palaces belonging to the ancestors of the Inca who still live here. Today the Inca hassle you with their taxi offers and order you to enter their restaurants (Adelante! Adelante!). As a gringo, it gets tiring fending off their pleas. But when I look beyond the things placed in front of me to those who still fish and farm, to the friendly man who sold me an Inca Cola in the Colca Canyon, a man who lives in a village of 5 people and farms cactus for the pigment it produces, these lives seem so much simpler and, in ways, more authentic than my own.

I’m going to leave Peru for Ecuador in a few days, meandering up the coastline until the border and then following the Panamerica Highway to some new Gringo Paradise. Ecuador’s currency is the dollar. I fear that farther north this simplicity will be harder to find.