CHIANG MAI

We reached Chiang Mai well after dark (the train was about two hours late) and took a tuktuk to the River View Hotel. It was a recommendation of Debbie Corbridge and was very nice. Lots of local handiwork, terraces, a garden and right on the river. Outside the window we heard our first tukaa – a large lizard that makes a noise like its name. Al tried to catch the sound on video but it didn’t last long enough.

We walked over to the night market which when I had been there was only a few hundred meters long. Now it was blocks of stalls crowded with foreigners and every kind of goods you could imagine. Silks, carvings, brass, trinkets, clothing, and rhodies. The wood elephant carvings had changed in style from the shiny wood to a texture that actually looked like elephant skin. There were several booths from the hill tribes with native costumes and musical instruments.

We found an Internet kiosk and checked e-mail. The cost was 30 Baht per 10 minutes. We found a rhodie stand and tried variations with bananas and chocolate mixed in.

Next morning was Sunday and we had breakfast and got ready for church. While Al was showering I phoned the elders but we had a bad number. I tried a couple of others, then tried a number for Peter Wilden (a missionary acquaintance that still lived in Thailand) but he had moved to Bangkok. The phone book turned up nothing and the hotel owner couldn’t find it. "Ask me where any bar or night club is and I can tell you,’ he said. We even called Lopburi and Bangkok trying to get a fix on the chapel but with no luck.

We walked to the end of the soi thinking maybe we would discover it while walking around the city. As we passed a little travel shop we noticed a couple of Honda scooters for rent and stopped in. Only $5 a day so we signed up. The lady (Mrs. Vanida) who helped us was Chinese and very accomodating. Within a few minutes we were dodging traffic and trying to get used to driving on the left side of the road.

Driving in Thailand is a rush – especially on a motorcycle. First off, there are no such things as driving lanes. As traffic stops for a light, all the motorcycles filter to the front of the line. When the light changes, it’s an all out drag race into the intersection. Signals are rare and whoever gets their nose into a space first has the right-of-way. We crisscrossed the city a couple of times watching as we went but Chiang Mai is so much bigger than it was in 1976. I didn’t recognize a thing except for the moat around the city center. We stopped at to other Christian churches and at the US consulate. We got general directions and rode around until church was probably over.

We finally left the city and headed up to Doi Sutheb. Outside of Chiang Mai are sizable mountains and on the top of one is a temple that supposedly houses some of the actual personal effects of the lord Buddha. The road was paved and curvy and we climbed and climbed until the city was buried in the haze below. The entrance to the temple is a long stretch of 267 stairs that are guarded at the base by seven headed snakes on each side. I watched an old woman determinedly make it to the top with her granddaughter cautiously following at her elbow. A young father was encouraging his tiny son to take the last few steps on his own.

The complex at the top included a large gold dome with statues of Buddha all around. People were burning incense, lighting candles and placing flowers in front of the statues. There were lines of rounded bells that people queued up to ring to get good karma. At the base of the stairs we noticed the crowd of vendors selling everything from food to film to caged birds for release.

The road uphill kept going so we kept going up. We passed several roadside stands with uniformed soldiers and guns. The signs said a palace was ahead and as we pulled up to the gate several soldiers were there signaling to us that we couldn’t enter. We talked for a minute and found that the palace was actually in use for the month by the king himself. As we were talking, the gate opened and a new Suburban with tinted glass roared past.

My bike was almost out of gas so we both got on Al’s and headed over the top and down the other side to one of the hill tribe villages. Not much going on there and I felt sorry for all of the market stalls filled with goods and shop keepers but no paying customers. The roads were dirt and snaked up the hill to rock and wood huts with leaf roofs. The scene included roaming chickens and old women smoking.

We rode back to Chiang Mai and stopped at the Orchid shopping Center. I couldn’t believe the motorcycle parking. It was a separate lot where you had to pay and your license plate was noted on your ticket. There were thousands of motorcycles parked there. I guess with warm weather all year, a motorcycle is adequate transportation for a family of four (and we saw lots of families on motorcycles). Lunch was at Burger King and dessert at 31 Flavors (they only had 5 flavors though).

Back to the hotel for naps and Sunday reading. I bought a detailed road map of northern Thailand and studied all of the places that we could go in the golden triangle – the area where Thailand, Laos and Burma come together.

Monday we were off for adventure. We paid another days rent on the bikes and headed north. It was a little chilly and we were glad we had our jackets. Going out of Chiang Mai was flat. There were lots of buildings, traffic and garbage by the road. We finally got into the hills where there were orchards and more beauty. We stopped at the ChangDao elephant camp and just missed the show. There were still elephants saddled up in the corral however, so we tracked down a manager and asked him how much for a ride. 300 Baht ($8.33) for one pass into the jungle and then return up the river – both of us on the same elephant.

We climbed the tower, our chauffeur brought our ride around and we climbed on. The driver was perched on the back of the elephant’s head with his bare feet right in behind the ears. As we started off, I realized that the equivalent of reins on a horse were toes behind the elephants ear. With his toes, he got our mount to move forward and turned him from side to side.

The ride was not necessarily bumpy but there was a lot of swaying motion. It was hard to take a picture and be still long enough to get it focused. We plodded along a trail with the jungle canopy overhead and the river running to the side. After a good trek we turned and dropped into the river and then plodded back upstream to the camp. The area was beautiful with the sounds of birds in the trees.

We saw what the ‘rafts’ noted on the map were like. Instead of air inflated rubber they were flat bamboo with a couple of boards for seats. Each one was steered by a native and so rafters just sat there and looked at the scenery from the slow moving water.

When we finished, we got our motorcycles and headed back to a turnoff that headed out to northwestern Thailand. The map indicated the region between Thailand and Burma in this area was a ‘sensitive border area’. It turned out to be much further than we could have gone in a day but we started in that direction after a bowel of kwatio.

I watched the lady make kwatio to see if I could figure out how it was done. You need a large boiling pot that is divided into three sections. One section has only boiling water, one has beef broth and the other has pork broth. The raw meat is dipped in whichever broth you ordered (beef or pork) until done. The noodles and vegetables are dipped in the clear water until done and then everything with some more broth is put in the bowel along with some fresh leaves of something and garnished with red peppers, peanut chunks and fish sauce. Pretty tasty!

As we rode west, it started to rain. We pulled off and parked under a shed that functioned as a bus stop. A couple of older men came over to visit with us and gave us general directions to get to a town called Sop Kai. From the map, Sop Kai looked like it was at the end of a good road and was also a starting place for a rafting stretch.

The area we were now in was beautiful. There were hills and valleys, small farms of rice paddies, banana groves, and quaint traditional houses with leaf roofs. When the rain stopped we back tracked a little and then headed up into the hills. The pavement only lasted a kilometer and then we were on dirt roads. The further we went, the worse they became. That is until we came to a very steep hill and then the road was paved again with cement. It appears that mountain roads on steep grades are paved to avoid erosion.

It was a beautiful ride. We came upon a little valley that had one old traditional home and it was surrounded by neatly farmed rice paddies, orchards, and blooming flowers. We motored along, each next hill becoming steeper than the last and hardly any sign of anyone.

At one point, while shifting down to low gear and throttling full blast to climb I noticed my gas gage was right on empty. Enraptured by the surroundings, we hadn’t even noticed that we were running out of petrol. It was at least 20 kilometers back to the main road and we had no idea if there would be any gas there or ahead in Sop Kai which was supposed to be about 7 kilos further.

I had seen someone on a motorcycle pull off the road to a farm back a ways so we went back to ask. With the northern dialect and being in the boonies it was hard to catch everything said but they indicated going forward would get us to gas the quickest.

Four sets of instructions later, we finally pulled into a farm yard and there inside a shed were three 50 gallon barrels of fuel with little hand pumps and glass tanks for measurement. Boy were we glad to see them! An older woman helped us fill up with ‘Super’ and we were again ready to ride. By the time we left, several families had come out to see the funny foreigners.

It was getting dark and we still weren’t to Sop Kai. It was hard to tell from the map but there appeared to be a better and faster way out if we could just get to Sop Kai so we pushed on. The road was now just a mountain trail and we were dodging (not too successfully) large puddles or red mud water. There were no huts or other people on the trail. We stopped on a hill and looked out over the valley at the dense foliage and wondered what it would be like to fight a war in this type of country.

Finally we made it to a village. It was really quite humble and the buildings were not much more than huts. But it still wasn’t Sop Kai. We found a trail leading down towards the river and followed it across a couple of bridges. Finally we pulled into Sop Kai just as the last rays of light were fading. Young children were playing a game in the middle of the main road with different colored balls. The road seemed more accustomed to play than traffic in this remote area.

Just beyond the village was the big river and there were lines of bamboo rafts tied up. Apparently this was the end of the ride and to get to the head you either rode elephants or hiked back in. We talked to a young man who told us that to go back the way we came was the fastest way. There was another road along the river which was better but the distance was further. Knowing what we had just come through, we opted for the longer route.

The road was much better. We kicked it into fourth gear and raced along through the valley. Even in the faded light it was beautiful. At one point the road ran through a clear stream and we stopped to wash all the mud off our bikes. I doubt if our jolly bike owner would be so jolly about us returning them caked in mud – especially when they were only supposed to be street bikes.

With nightfall, the bugs were out in full force and I put on my sunglasses as repellent. It helped with the bugs but made it more difficult to dodge the large elephant guano droppings that showed up periodically. We finally made it to the main highway going to Chiang Mai.

Riding along after dark was an adventure. For one thing, there is a white line along the side of the road and signs that indicate motorcycles should ride on the outside of the line. That’s ok, but sometimes there isn’t paved road outside the line. Often I would make out the shadow of a person pushing a food cart or a three wheeler with no tail lights and would need to swerve around them. The bikes would go 80-90 kilometers per hour so we just pulled into the car lane and stayed ahead of traffic. It was like floating along in a dream with my sunglasses on.

Eventually we got back to enough exhaust fumes that there were no bugs. In the crowded traffic of Chiang Mai we got separated, and finally met up back at the rental shop. Mrs. Vanida found us a room at the Porn Ping hotel and one of the girls got on her motorcycle to lead us there. We lost her and made two rounds of the market. Finally they pointed it out to us, a tall building only a block away and we got there OK. The Porn Ping was a high rise, nice and only 1100 Baht a night with air con and TV. We walked through the food market and ate padthai and fried rice.

Next morning we were so sore from riding that we decided to try something where we didn’t have to straddle anything. Mrs. Vanida lined us up for a one day Thai cooking school which turned out to be great fun. We were picked up by a soi truck and transported to a home on the outskirts of town.

Our classmates for the day included Mikael from Telavive. She was the owner of the only Chinese dimsum restaurant in Israel and we found right off that she was not Orthodox. The Orthodox Jews had made it difficult for her to get a permit for a second restaurant because she sold pork and shrimp which wasn’t kosher. She had lived in LA for a few years and had to go home to do her two years in the military. I mentioned how it was strangely attractive to see Israeli women carrying machine guns. She said it was ridiculous that they had to carry them everywhere – if anything would happen she would have thrown it down and run away!

There were two Americans, Greg and Veronica from Washington DC who were living and working in Singapore for SAS Institute, a computer company that does data mining and data warehousing. Bernard and Nina were from Frankfurt, Germany and both worked for a television station; Bernard as a TV journalist and Nina as an editor. And Yevonne was a pharmaceutical rep from Basil, Switzerland.

Busara was our host and teacher for the day. She immediately went to work and kept a fast pace all day. We started in the garden where plants and herbs were grown. She showed us lemon grass, basil, chili pepper leaves, garlic, shallots, and many other things. We smelled the fresh scents of newly torn leaves while she told us the medicinal value and what could be substituted for each plant in cooking. She walked us around fruit trees with mango, papaya, and jackfruit. Lemon grass is one of the ingredients of Sprite – Busara knows because the Sprite corporation has a large plantation near her mother’s home in the country.

Then we were off to the kitchen table – the floor with mats for each of us and stone mortars and pestles at our sides. She surrounded herself with an array of spices and started us off by having us each eat a fresh clove of garlic followed by a taste of palm sugar to note the strength of the flavors and the contrast. Busara then detailed all the common flavor ingredients for Thai food including light and dark soy sauce (salty and sweet).

Then to the burners for our first dish. We each had our own wok, complete with spatulas, oil, and sauces. The plates had been prepared with just the right amounts of ingredients for padthai. It was quite the assembly line process with her helpers preparing the plates, changing the spatulas and cleaning the pots between each round.

Making padthai, we started with oil and then fried the rice noodles. These were pulled to one side and we broke in a raw egg which we scrambled and then mixed with the noodles. We added the plate of ingredients including hard bean curd, green chives, tamarind juice, dried shrimp and peanuts. I was surprised at how much sugar and oil are used in Thai cooking. Once done, we retired to the porch overlooking the river to eat our fixings.

By now Busara knew we could speak Thai and was talking to us frequently. She asked me if the food was good and I said, ‘Delicious.’ She responded with a saying in Thai that translates something like, ‘You cook it by your self, you eat it by yourself, it is delicious to yourself!’

Back to the kitchen for making of curry paste. Although I eat a lot of curry, I had no idea where it came from or what a job it was to make. All the fresh ingredients (coriander seed, peppercorns, green chilies, shallots, cloves, kaffir lime rind, lemon grass, cumin seeds, shrimp paste, chili leaves, galangal, salt, and tumeric, were added to our mortars. Then we started pounding. It was really a lot of work and just when we thought we were done Busara inspects and say’s we are almost half way there. We all pound away with more vigor.

We finally finished and moved to the stoves to make green curry chicken using our fresh made curry paste. This was followed by making coconut galangal soup, sweet and sour shrimp soup, deep fried chicken wrapped in leaves, and stir fried vegetables. Again to the porch to eat it all.

We were all stuffed and when done settled to a low table to eat fresh fruit for dessert. We finished the school with a demonstration of how to make som dum (green papaya salad) and pommagranit seeds (a dessert made of water chestnuts). Busara gave us each a spatula made of coconut shell and said, ‘That’s all. You done now."

I had a couple of questions about how to make coconut cream, fried rice, and rhodies. She politely told me about rice and cream but when I asked about rhodies she said emphatically they were not Thai food! ‘Ben ahaan kaag!’ – they are Indian food!

It was 3:30 p.m. I told her it was a great class and very well done. She looked tired. I learned she would be working with Mikael until the next group came at 5:00 and then do it all over again until 9:30 p.m. She did this seven days a week depending on how many people signed up.

We took a song tow (pickup truck with two benches in the back) back to the city and walked through the bar district to get to the market and our hotel. We saw some big dirt bikes on the way (Honda 250 AX1s) for trail riding – we should have had them yesterday! They rent for 900 Baht per day with a three day minimum rental. On the board was an article by someone who had made a several day trip out through the country we had been in. It looked like a lot of fun.

We checked out the second floor pool (that could only be reached from the fourth floor) of the hotel. We swam a few laps and then sat and talked till it got dark and we could see the brand new crescent moon and the bright star light of Mars in the western sky – right next to a high rise hotel.

At Vanida Tours we picked up our plane tickets for Phuket in southern Thailand. Mrs. Vanida was so funny; a delightfully pleasant person who anticipated our every need and of course had a deal for us – even a hotel in Phuket if we needed one.

We had debated over whether to buy anything to take home from Chiang Mai and just started browsing the night bazaar. We slowed our gait at a stall with silk robes and womens clothes and were immediately sucked in. The proprietor was very nice and pleaded with us to buy something. I said I wanted to ‘think about it’ and she held my arm and begged me not to leave. She would give me ‘special price’. We were the first to stop and this was a brand new booth. Alan was looking at dresses for his daughters and I kept moving from one thing to the next. Each thing I would leave she would bag up and then give me a new price based on everything she had bagged. Finally we were ready to go and I ended up taking a silk robe and two womens outfits for a total of 1000 Baht ($28). I handed her two 500 Baht bills and as I was walking away she started rubbing the money on all the other stacks of clothes. I stopped and asked what she was doing and she said indeed we were her first sales and she was using the money to bless all the other merchandise so it would sell well also.

We stopped at the Internet shop – no new mail – and set Al up a Hotmail account. We were still full from our cooking school so just had ice cream to finish off the day.