Troy Archie – Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

Good old Sir Simon Milligan, what a guy…man I sure do miss Kids in the Hall…Well I’ve been cooking away here in Chiang Mai, taking part in a 5 day cooking course. It’s been really great and really interesting. Thai food and cooking is so basic, simple and extremely fast; it’s rather shocking to see just how basic it really is. It’s also really interesting the different mixes of herbs, spices and sauces that are added to give it’s unique flavor. You’d think by adding palm sugar, fish sauce, tomatoes, dried shrimp, unripe papaya and green beans that you’d hurl upon first bite but instead you have the amazing Som Tam, aka papaya salad, one of my personal favorites. There’s so many other combinations like this that you think would not work but instead come out tasting great. Same with the speed of the cooking; my stir-frys would never turn out right but I realize now that I cooked them way too long. All it takes is like 10 seconds and that’s no exaggeration of stir-frying and your done. I’ve been reading in my LP book that there’s cooking classes also in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam so I just need to find out where to sign up now.

Food is Good

The Master Chef

Hot Hot Hot

Now I’m not a big fan of junk food back home but there in Thailand they have some really crazy ass junk foods that rock.  Chocolate is pretty much more expensive than back home but all the great stuff they have here makes up for it.  Lots of cool crisps and coconut flavored things with nuts in them, weird chips, strange geletan candies, rice puddings, and just about anything sweet in coconut, it’s great.  I don’t have them very often but when I do I always get something different and am always impressed.

Thai Candy

Slow Down
On The subject of food though I have been thinking about “Western Cuisine” lately and I still think after all the great foods that I’ve tried and sampled western cooking is the best. Whaa!? you say. Let me explain; when we all think of “Western Cuisine” what comes to mind? Burgers, chips/fries, battered fish, sandwiches and generally pretty borring and most of the time unhealthy food. The reality of it is, the really good western style foods you can never get in restaurants and can only be found in people’s homes. When was the last time you went out and ordered a stew? Maybe a nice roasted chicken cooked along with potatoes, onions, garlic with aromatic herbs? What you would find at the table for Thanksgiving is usualy not on the menu at any eatery I’ve been to lately and if it was, it usualy isn’t that good, infact it usualy sucks. You don’t find places that have foods like that because they take such a long time to cook. One of my favorites dishes that I’m craving a bit right now is my mom’s stew. You’d never find that in a restaurants simply because it takes 3 hours to cook. One of the best meals I’ve had in recent times was my last night on KI when we had leg of lamb (from a lamb that I got to see slaughtered and butchered a few day’s before) that was cooked with rosemary, pumpkin, garlic, onions, sprinkled with olive oil and left to cook for like 5 hours.

Moments
One thing that I love here is the moments you have with the local people without a word being spoken. I remember in Krabi seeing this huge fat disgusting white guy walking down the street with no shirt on and I turned and made eye contact with a Thai guy, we both looked at each other with looks of disgust on our faces and both just started laughing. No words were spoken but we both new what was going on. Same thing happened in this fitness park I was in. I was admirring the Thai girls and looked over and made eye contact with another guy who was doing the same and we both just smiled and nodded our heads in approval.

Chiang Mai Market
I went out one night to the night time market in Chiang Mai; man what a place that was. They had so much cool stuff there that I know Brad would go awol there and I myself just about lost it and walked away with a pile of stuff but instead went away with a pair of pants. I know own 1 pair of pants to go along with my 2 pairs of short pants and 3 shirts. I was told afterwards though that there’s a market in Bangkok, the Chatuchak Weekend Market that’s even better and coveres like 35 acres. So sinice I’ve been nice and not naughty, I’ve been making a list and have even checked it twice as to what I want to buy before I go home. I figure I’ll fly out of BKK and will probably pull a Brad, buy a duffle bag and load it full of cool crap that I want.

Well I typed that all out a couple day’s ago and since then I have been even more amazed by the markets here.  Saturday night I went out with a couple others and found that most of the city had been blocked off to traffic and the streets closed to only pedestrians setting the scene for a huge open street market, it was amazing.  Chiang Mai is a real artistic and university city so there are tonnes of artists of all sorts of different wards making some amazing crafts, clothes, art work, furniture, nick knacks and just about thing else you can think of.  I added to my list ten fold.  There were street musicians and bands playing everywhere and the atmosphere was amazing.  I thought it couldn’t get any better than this but sure enough I was wrong.  This was the Saturday night market, which was the appetizer for the Sunday Night market which was Saturday times 10.  Sunday night all the locals come out and the rest of the town pretty much shuts down.  The streets were flooded with people and there were twice as many stalls and crazy cool stuff to go along with it all plus they had like 6 more streets that they blocked off.  The amazing thing is is that this is a regular Sunday night thing.  I wasn’t too sure if I’d come back this way but after seeing this market and all the amazing handmade things I am for sure making a special trip back here to stock up on cool crap.  And yes they were handmade stuff, you could watch most of the people making it right in front of your eyes and if they didn’t have your size they’d make special orders.  Two of the people that I was with made special orders of these really cool flip flops with carvings in them from this one guy.

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

Rad Flip Flops
 

Met My Match
So after all this travelling, all these different places I’ve finally met my match. Her name is MAM and I’ve spent 3 nights in her confines until I had to leave, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve stayed in my fair share of nasty places on this trip, hostels/backpackers, farms, bungalows and camper vans and have managed to tough my way through them all but this guest house beat me. It was only 100baht($3can) a night and the room was alright, albiet there was a frog in it last night, but man the bathroom was horrid and I couldn’t take it anymore. I left in the morning and took my chances before cooking class and ended up going even cheaper into a dorm room for only 60baht($1.86can) a night in a place that’s much much better, although it is a dorm room. I felt at first that, yeah it was only 100b a night but after a couple days I realized that I was getting ripped off and had to high tail it out of there. Memories of going to the bathroom still give me shivers down my spine and up until then, I’ve never dirtier after taking a shower. So lone behold, I do have a breaking point.

Comfort
And my god, the bed at MAM, the worst bed I’ve ever slept in EVER and this coming from someone who doesn’t remember the last time he’s slept in a comfortable bed since he’s left home over a year ago. My bed in Sydney was like a wooden board and at first when I started to use it I thought there was no way I could go on like this but after a while it somehow became comfortable or at least I kept telling myself. Before that I was in a good old backpacker, then a caravan that I had to either sleep with bent legs or diagonally in, to again a backpackers to a little shed with a bunk bed in it in Southern Victoria that got freezing cold during the night and so forth. So if you’re ever hating your job, sick of the daily grind and think, “man Troy’s got it going and I envy him so much. That travelling thing he’s doing sounds so cool, I might just throw caution into the reckless wind and give it a shot,” just be prepared to give up everything and all that is comfortable to you. Say goodbye to laying on a comfy couch on a Friday night(Friday doesn’t exist out here anyways) watching DVD’s, laying in bed on a lazy Sunday morning (again, day’s have no names on the road), nice showers and hot baths and just about anything and everything that you hold take as comfortable…ahh, I wouldn’t have it any other way and I regret nothing. At times I think that I am in need of some pampering, especially after the MAM experience and think that maybe I shouldn’t have taken a step even further down by going into a hostel but I say screw it, I can pamper myself when I get home and I keep going. I’m hard, tough as nails and have to stay that way or I’ll die out in the middle of Cambodia or Laos where shit gets hairy. I still have my coffee shops though, that I won’t give up but I do wonder how long I can go before I snap and put myself into a place with AC, a tv and a nice bed. Until then it’s rats, bunkbeds and frogs for me.

More Pictures for your enjoyment.  My next stop is in the north of Laos called Luang Namtha where I’m looking to do some treking.  I’ll either do it out of Luang Namtha or else out of a small town a bit to the north called Muang Sing, I’ll see when I get there.  I’m heading up there with an other Canuck from Vancouver so at least I got someone to get lost with.  Until then…

Safe Travels
Troy

Dogs and Cats
There are lots and lots of dogs and cats here in Thailand, they appear to be stray but as time goes on I seem to think that they are people’s pets. I had heard about the packs of roaming dogs and alleys full of cats before and had this imagine in my head of tones of mangy muts and scraggly cats but I’ve found the opposite. All the dogs look to be pure bread or close to ranging from Golden Retrievers to Cocker Spaniels to German Sheppard’s to hundreds upon hundreds of shitsus and poodles all nicely groomed and fixed up. Even the street dogs look pure bread. Mike told me he thinks that people here don’t treat their animals that well but I disagree, I’ve seen some pretty pampered pets here. I really don’t think this fellow has missed many meals lately.

Rats
When I was staying in Ton Sai in my little bungalow I had a little bit of a rat problem. I came home one day to find a baby rat lying on top of my mosquito net evidently having fallen from the banister above from a nest. I pt my sock over my hand, picked it up and threw it out the door. Later that night I was awoken by scratching from above and grabbed my flashlight, sure enough spotting a rat scaling along the top banister beam tugging away at the leaved room. I made some noise and it ran off and that was the last I heard from it that night. The next day I came home again and this time I found two baby rats lying on the front porch, again having fallen from the heavens above. This time however I decided to let nature take its course and found one of the many cats that were roaming the area and showed him the rats. That made his day and he grabbed them both and took off with them. For the rest of the day I could hear the sounds of the rats squealing as the cat played and toyed with them; vicious bastard. To get rid of my little problem I then employed a broom from one of the lady’s there and knocked down the nest, expecting to be raining on by rats but found none. So that’s the rat story.

Riding your Bike and Traffic in Thailand
Traffic here in Thailand is…well chaos, or so it seems to the naked eye but on further analysis there is a certain poetry to it. You’d think, upon first glance that this place must have hundreds of accidents each day and numerous pedestrians getting hit. You expect to see it at some point of the day but sure enough and fortunately it doesn’t happen. Cars, bikes, tuk tuks and motorbikes fill the streets and jockey for position with one another, nearly glance each other as they race down the narrow streets often veering onto the opposite side of the road in order to pass a slower vehicle or bike (me). In Bangkok you can jump onto the back of a motor bike for a couple baht and they’ll do short trips to where you want to go destination, veering in between cars, taking hairpin turns into back alleys and cutting across parking lots to get you where you want to go as fast as they can. Laws are broken, signs half ignored and lines crossed consistently and constantly all the while I’ve yet to see any accidents. How does this go on I question, without anyone getting killed or a 10 car pile up occurring? I assume that they’re all watch one another and just simply avoiding other vehicles as best they can so in turn I jump on my bike, veer into traffic and do the same. Who needs coffee when you have a bike and speeding traffic?

Injury Report
I won’t lie, traveling is tough work. It’s, at times not all what it’s cracked up to be at least for me that is as I always seem to have some sort of cut, bruise, bite, burn or kink. On Ton Sai I was a walking calamity, cranking my toes on 3 separate occasions of which I’m sure must have broken at least one as it was a bright purple for a couple days. I also had the problem there of sand getting into my sandals, rubbing with my feet and getting really bad chafing and sores. I hate sand. Along with the common climbing blisters and cuts and scrapes from trampling threw the jungle on paths that don’t exist I’m in all right condition. Fortunately that’s all healed up but the list carries on. My current injury list consists of the usual bug bites, along with a really nasty one on my lower back that I think I got from one of the huge ants on Ton Sai, two friction burns on my arms that I got from working out with my rings and a terrible heat rash under my arm pits from again, working out. This traveling shit hurts some days.

Crossfit Edmonton
At long last, it’s there but I’m not. One more reason to come home I guess.

Keep on Truckin’ Big Momma
Troy

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