planes, trains, n tuk tuks….

Woke up with my new favorite ritual of tying up my mossi net tent and flinging open the double shudders above my bed to reveal the bird nest a ft from my pillow complete with 2 babbies getting fed their breakie my mamma bird.  Rallied enough energy to make it to the ppolside bungalow for a full continental breakfast and lounged the mourning away in the hand woven mulitcoloured hammocks.  Shopped around town in all the clothing stall lokking at floral dressed and bags, all cute enought to buy if i had more space to carry them.  City wide power outage made the heat unbearable so catie n i rented scooter and drove out of town in search of a  waterfall.  Beeler needing some relaxation from still living in the river hut went to relax by our pool.

i had more experience driving scooters from my time in Italy, so i drove, and it was relativly easy to reaclimate.   The waterfall was a ways out of town but a really nice drive through very rural rolling hills, wooden thatched shack shanty towns.  Stopping only when a family of ducks, chickens, or cows needed to cross, we made our way with no english signage 1.5 hrs away to the most spectacular waterfall.   Finding a waterfall in the jungle with no english signage and no english speaking direction stops is difficult, but add driving on the opposite side of the road and you have a real adventure. 

The waterfall was spectacular and formed in a way that you could hike up the side, shimmy out to the middle trying not to fall, and then sit down and slide the whole way back down launching off the end into a 15 ft free fall.   Catie got the nerve up firs and watching her bumpy ride arms flailing made take an extra few minutes to muster up the courage myself.  Eventually I did and the English travelers already masters of the slide technique showed me the way.  Brilliant.  although a little rough on the already bruised elephant riding bum.    Spent hours there swiming and wathcing all the newbys come and gather their own courage.   headed back towards town stopping in a fantasitc roadside hut/ bar complete with dj, batchi ball, pool table, hammocks and had a drink with our new waterfall friend from Germany.

All three of us loved Pai especially the outskirts of town and schemed ways to get around the no property ownership rule for foreigners.  Living in Pai at least part of the yr. would be a dream, but the best we could do for now was stay one extra day.

Catie n I had experienced more than enough of the river hut n checked into  a place a local girl suggested was really beautiful and way discounted due to being the off season.  She even took catie on her scooter to check it out first, not that we needed to as it was HEAVEN.  Bungalows beautifully crafted in Lana style scattered through the trees w/ cobbled paths and and oasis blue tiled pool complete w/ outdoor veranda overlooking a rice field w/ cow grazing.  Our room had 2 twin double beds, mossi nets, 3 huge windows w/ shutter, ensuite open air shoer and hot water.  We had found Shangrila.  and for only 2 dollars more than the river hut.  5 dollars a piece for a night in heaven.  B was decidedly not giving up on the river hut authenticity and stayed behind.  We swam, drank pasison fuit / pinapple slushies, layed in hamocks and wiled the rest of the day away shivering at the thought of our previous night w/ the rat.  We deserved this and really needed it emotionally. 

A perfect nights sleep, luxurious hot outdoor shoer, breakfast on the veranda and then off for thai massage and facials.  Not your westernized ”thai” massage as I have had plenty of those…this was a very interactive affair.  Bending, contorting, slapping, stretching, and we were all but recovered from the elephant riding soreness.  Elbows, feet, knees were all tools of the trade.  And they let us wear giant thai pants that we both put on backwards and had to be re-dressed.  Followed wi/ the most wonderful facial / natural oils and potions that all smelled a little like heaven.

Catie had been contemplating getting a traditional bamboo tatoo and decided now was as good a time as any.  So we perused the numerous authentic tatoo huts, and she settled on a very clean one, even by western standards, where everyone gets their own bamboo ”needle”.  Desgined w/ the artist a pretty lotus flower w/ balinese script of a blessing for good fortune.  I cowered as he jabbed that ink tipped bamboo shard into her back repeatedly until i needed some air and left her to it.

A quick breakfast and off we were to our elephant ride/bamboo rafting tour we had arranged the day before w/ a local street vendor.  I use the term ”tour” loosley as this was no well oiled tourist machine, but rather a pick up truck that we jumped into the back of, and off into the mts.  Greeted by the three elephants and a small thai boy who immediatly ushered us onto a platform and spoke what turned out to be the only english words he knew.

”One, Two, Three….JUMP!””  So we did.  Larry, Mo, and Curly (i”m curly as my hair has been one giant frizz mop since arriving in this humidity)  jumped bareback on that elephant with just a cloth and a rope.  3 american girls and 1 thai elephant hit the road w/ our guide who walked yards away most of the time talkin on  a cell phone, only returning to yell commands at ”Mai Mai” when he needed to move over to let trucks go by.  Eventually we turned onto the jungle path and for and hr or so traversed, Very Slowly.  the guide would run and climb on rocks and jump on the back of Mai Mai when he got tired of walking.  So larry, curly, mo, thai guide, and Mai Mai walked n walked n walked through the blistering afternoon heat.  This was beginin to feel like round II of theory vs. practicality until we reached the rivers edge.  The same dirty, swift moving river we had been terrified to fall into off the bamboo bridge, we now barreled into.  Our guide then spoke the only english sentence of the day. 

”Now Elephant Dance””  and w/ no more warning that elephant shimmied us straight off his back flopping in 3 different directions into the river.  It wasn”t until i had a mouthful of river water and was fighting a really fast current to surface that i even grasped that i was no longer on the elephant.  Eventually surfacing to see the guide and i”m pretty sure the  elephant laughing hysterically.  From then on it was elephant jungle gym time and we all climbed, stood on his back, he would spray us with water, and then when he wanted do a l”il jig and throw us off back into the river.  For at least an hour we all played in that filthy river, on big happy family.

Our afternoon was part II of the tour, a traditional bamboo rafting experience.  Back n the pick up truck and further into the wilderness we rode while it poured down rain.  Hardly a bother still being soaked in Pai River water from elephant gymborie.  A little man jumped in the back off the roadside, w/ more teeth missing than present, not that it kept him from smiling the whole way.  He like most people in th rural thailand didn”t speak even a word of english.  We arrived at a wwII memorial bridge and he got to working on building the raft out of 8ft bamboo hollow rods attaching them w/ twine while we ate unidentified meat on sticks cooked to perfection from the roadside vendor.  When he was done w/ the engineering process we boarded and he grabed a big stick / paddle/ rudder and for hrs we meandered thru rice fields, past pastures, into lush jungle while he spoke to every animal along the way in their native tongue.  He cooed, chirped, mewed, and howled at cows, birds, monkeys while we relaxed and watched the magnificent scenery go by.  The whole trip passed too quickly even in the sporadic pouring rain.  A great day.

Our quaint riverside hut quickly became on of those things in life that sounds wonderful theoretically, but in practicality is HORRID.  it started while Catie n i were waiting outside our respective huts for B to return as she had the key when C noticed perched above our heads a spider the size of my hand.  The minicing look in his eye warned us he meant bizness and if given the chance would jump straight on our faces.  We screamed like 2 american girls in the wilderness of thailand w/ a man eating spider in their huts, ran back across the rickety bamboo bridge w/ the lightness of foot of an olympic hurdler back to the safety of Pai town.  had a beer, lamented the fact that we eventually had to return to the scene of the crime and that not knowing where the spider would be is certainly worse than knowing where he was.  Eventually B showed up and we trapsed back over the bamboo bridge in pitch black darkeness w/ just a headlamp to light the way to certain death.  Little did we know, the night was just getting started.  

Catie promptly changed rooms with B, as she now had 4 lizards in her hut, one for each thatched wall, and B was not bothered by lizards.  We surrounded ourselves with the mossi net, full of holes, and tucked ourselves in for the night.  Over my book in my periphery i saw the tale end of something run across on the four bamboo beams that made up the frame of the interior space.  The  the noise beagan.  squeaking, churing, shuffling behind the draped side panel as we could ssee the outlin of the perpetrator moving across our room.  The largest rat (nyc large) was running in a circuit avout our heads in 5 minute intervals for the rest of the night.  He’d go up the wall behind th tatch part gather miscillaneous debris in his mouth carry it across the other side back to where he was makin no coublt an extension off the back for his inlaws.    Tirelessly working, running, and squeeling all night long,  2 ft from our heads.    Perfect.  We had nothing more than the flimsy mossi net b/w us.   A bat also joined at some point in the night as well as other unidentified creatures of the night who carried on a serious debate.  Probably about what they had to do to get us out of their hut.

“if we can just make it until morning….surely it’s almost light.   What time is it?”

“12:45″

Perfect.   When it finally did get light, we were up and outa there w/ a new concept of what ‘hitting bottom” really means.

Trying to avoid the overun tours that visit the hill tribes and mts. surrounding Chang Mai, and thinking we could have a more authentic experience on our own, we boarded a bus to Pai.  A tiny (3 main rd) town NW of CM nestled in a valley amoungsts mts, hill trives, elephant camps, and  sitting smack on the Pai river.  We heard rumors but had very little info about our destination other than it was off the beaten track, beautifully located, and at one time had been a popular hippy destination in the 70s.  The bus ride was a mini van packed knee to knee 12 deep and half locals half travelers.  The scenery changed just after leaving CM into narrow mt roads past bbq stalls, villages, around livestock.  Our driver was not overly burdened w/ the responsibility of the 12 lives he carried.  The ‘rules of the road’ were mere suggestions as he deftly swerved pas trucks around blind corners and took hair pin turns at full speed.  We arrived white knuckled 5 hrs later in Pai.  Made our way on ft towards thes li’l bamboo huts we had read perched on stilts right on the waters edge just outside of town.  We (me, b, and Catie…our new american friend from the bus ride) made our way over Pai river across a rickety bamboo bridge loosley covered in dried leaves with no rails  to our designated huts.  Found reception, a larger hut, and checked in for what was suppose to be 3 days lazily spent by the river. 

Our hut was A frame, thatched leaf roof, approx. 8 x 10 with a double bed touching 3 walls, straw floor, and woven walls.   public outhouse round back that you shared with the other 6 huts, was the toilet and sink with a shower head above it combo that we have come to know quite well.  Wow.  this is basic.

Literally one step up from sleeping on the ground.   Actually even a tent would be bug and rain tight, where as this has a 4 inch. gap b/w the walls and roof, ans some leaves of the roof are missing. 

“i’m not sure i feel safe sleeping in a place where someone can just punch thru the wall?!”

Well at least it’s cheap.  Dirt floor cheap.  Pai the town is really difficult to descrive.  It is a quaint artsy town literally in the middle of nowhere.  Surrounded by rice fields and livestock w/ the mt backdrop, hippies roam the narrow streets w/ giant asian pants and dreadlocks that have been forming for decades.  We knew in the 70s the hippies ‘found’ this place, but judging by the age of  a lot of them, apparently they never left.  Wide eyed the three of us ate an fantastic dinner of noodles on the streetside and watched the mix of local villagers, hundreds of dogs, old hippies, and young travelers mixing in the streets.  Pai is by far the strangest place any of us had ever been.  Even now, I’m not describing it fully.

Beelz had the grand idea to put the hangers in our room thru the fan, which i promptly smacked with my head sending them up shattering the blades.  Only a few pieces actually broke, so we knocked it down a speed and hoped for the best.  Que bedtime, and that fan started sounding like a run away motor boat, then exploded sending shrapnel in all directions in our room.  Jagged peices of fan blades littered our room until i did a comando style dive role and unplugged it from the wall.  We slept soundly knowing we had survived, but it was a little on the warm side that night.

Felt a little feverish, perhaps just dehydrated from such extreme heat so ordered a full american breakfast, and spent the morning in the hammock reading up on the local hill tribes and treks this area is famous for trying to suss out the least touristy ones.  Set off on a walking tour of the numerous wats and temples cutting thou the local market.  Mostly flowers at first and then it opened into a massive clothing bazzare w/ semi western gypsie chic the predominent trend. 

the frequency of passing stunning Wats just walking down the street is mind blowing.  11c AD lavish gold gilded, filigree, bright primary colours, all w/ a budha statue dominantly placed.  Monks live inside the compounds and are often walking thru the yard sweeping w/ twig brooms the puddled rain water off the walks.  The frequency of afternoon showers especially this time of year in the rainy season makes for a full time job.  One particularly intersting Wat had exotic 4 ft lawn animals…zebra, giraffe, deer, and ”daffe duck” all paying respects to master budha.  A little monk motioned us to follow him into his altar room and we shuffled out of our shoes and sat with him on the floor while he wove a rope thru our cuped hands folded in prayer gesture, then around our back and then through his until we made a circle of three.  He chanted a prayer/ blessing for what seemed like 10 minutes asking us to repeat occasionally.  We did our best being phenetically illiterate and must have passed because we got yellow braclets. (only after giving the 1usd offering to solidify the deal) and “”100 years of happiness””    Bargain!  I would have paid more, not that he needs to know.  Also wonder if there is an inheretence policy as a futher 100 yrs seems optimistic.

Dinner was interesting.  We decided to go  the opposite way of town to explore and stumbled across a locals only bar.  Bery chic young kis kept filing thru the door – poped collars, izod shirts, perfect over styled hair.  and most suprisingly….they all had braces!  Most Thais we’ve seen on a daily basis are a l’il rough round the edges appearance wise, (though not as rough as we already are) but not this lot.  Private school aged all ording a bottle of whiskey and 3 bottles of tonic / table, that they mixed 1 part tonic 3 parts whiskey.  Not a word of english was spoken by anyone leaving us to wonder what language the wealthy kids are learning…chinese?    All the service industry, stall workers, vendors speak enough to tout their goods, but only cause their livlihood depends on it.  We hand gestured our way thru ordering food which sas more complicated then it should have been turning out there was only one item on the menu.  hotpot.  A cooker full of broth with stacks of individual meats, veggies, and spices followed.  After cooking the meats on the top and mixing the soup at the bottom we had ourselves a feast.  dinner and a cooking lesson…not bad.   As more and more posh kids filed thru the door we started to get self concious about our scruffy appearance and headed home feeling like we might have brought the street credit of that place down a little.

After our first full nights sleep since we arrived, I woke feeling great.  Had an iced coffee and read while b went for a ‘quick run’, which turned into a two hr run as she got horribly lost, had to flag a tuk tuk and traverse the city trying to remember where the guest house was.  She arrived w/ blisters on both heels, but a new endurance.  Back to the Indian Consolate this time  well before noon where i was informed my immigration paperwork had come unstapled from my passport somewhere back in bangkok and couldn’t leave the country without it.  Must go back to the immig. office at the airport.  Great.  sure that will be a simple procedure!  Both of us had to resign all our forms to ‘better’ duplicate our own signitures.  ha.  they really are particular. 

Spent the afternnon meandering around Chang Mai old city.  Still surrounded by a crumbling wall complete w/ moat.  Soaked in the peaceful relaxed vibe that is such a contrast to the filthy, stressful, feeling like prey to the scam artists hunters of Bangkok.  Chang Mai is clean, with stunning teak bungalows, southern American colonial plantation style mansions, fountain w/ manicured gardens. 

payed our respects to a GIANT Budah and marveled at the elaborate offeri gs of food, treasures and incense in pic nic baskets at his feet. Asked Pom later who actually gets the booty and apparently the monks do.  Monks are everywhere in thailand.  On buses, boats, sidwalks.  I’m facinated by them but know the rules, “no touching or sitting next to them”  its hard to really get to know them from such afar.  Pom says that most are just really poor men that se ‘monkhood’ as a way out of squallor.  I guess that’s fair….a vow of poverty for a fetching orange robe.

Diner was at the local hole n the wall or moreover the tent in the parking lot with only 1 item on the menu.  Noodle Soup w/ chicken or beef.  I had the chicken.  B had the beef.  No stone left unturned.  Hers came with the added delight of suspicious “fish balls”.  dinner and a fish anatomy lesson.

still suffering from crazy jet lag, settled into our guest house courtyard read books, drak tiger beer with the owner.  A Swiss guy named Roger who married a Thai woman and has a beautiful little girl named ViVi, who i tried to help with her kindergarten homework.  A little over my head, but I breezed thru the matching the number of ducks witht the picture lesson.

As a foreigner or “farang” he isn’t allowd to own property so its titled to his wife, and he needs to make visa runs every 4 months.  As Pom explained, “this is necessary to kept you wealthy foreigners from buying the whole city and turning it into Dubai.”  Fair enough Pom.  Sorry folks but Chang Mai is off the market, try HoChiMin.  I hear it’s hot this time of year.  He also informed me that the seperatist war in the south of thailand is not getting any better and there are still daily shootings, bombings, and even public executuions.  Seems the malaysian border inhabitants are demanding autonomy from thailand as they don”t even speak the language and are primarily muslim not budhist by faith and have long since been looked over by the gov.  There is no end to this in site as thailand isn;t about to give away a good chunk of its territory and they aren”t planning on assimilation anytime soon.  

Rebellions and soft coups are hardly a new concept for thailand.  Since a 1932 coup overthrew the monarchy to establish a constitutional monarchy ( a la uk) their have been 19 attempted coups.  10 have been successful.  Seems th emilitary is not all too pleased when any elected official / prime minister is not their candidate and simply overthrows the elected gov. and replaces it w/ themselves / and or their officials.  Representative democracy thailand is not.  2006 saw the peaceful overthrow of the “”thais love thais”” party prime minister  elected by a landslide in 01 and well loved.  He is now in jail, forced out by the general of the Royal T. Army still awaiting trial for corruption.  Meanwhile the military installed gov. blames his zelot supporters for th random bomb attacks in bangkok.  They”re not having an easy time convincing the people and gaining support, but then again….guess they don”t have to win their votes anyway.

 This tumultous legislative legacy helps understand why thai people have an almost idolic fascination w/ the king.  He is seen as protector, father, and a practical diety.  It”s hard to walk five feet w/out seeing his face in gilded frames, on walls, calendars, posters, 50 ft billboards, and painted on sides of bldgs.  He does seem omnipresent…definitely a trait fit for a diety.