RSS

Category Archives: Chiang Mai

To Tha Tun

After our cooking class we went to bed a bit early and read. Our hosts at Taicoon guest house told us there is a direct bus from Chiang Mai to Tha Ton, leaving from the north bus terminal. We looked up the schedule and found it is a four hour trip, departing every 90 minutes or so. We thought catching the 9am would be best, but if we slept in 10:30 would work. Our alarm didn’t go off, but we managed to return our bicycles, buy pastries for breakfast, and get to the bus by 8:55.

A bus winding along mountain roads was a bit rough on two of the kids on the bus, who threw up, but a great breeze through the open windows made sure the smell wasn’t a problem. The bus dashed from town to town, stopping at a half dozen or so spots in Chiang Mai, Chiang Dao, and Fang before arriving in Tha Ton. We had a brief delay when the bus blew a tire in Fang; we limped a half mile to a tire shop, then a bunch of Thai men took off their shirts (Thai men in tank tops! The scandal!) to employ pneumatic tools and jacks to get us on our way. I’m glad it happened there and not halfway between towns, that could have been disastrous. So we rolled into Tha Ton and booked a room at the Garden Home for 300B ($10) a night.

Tha Ton is a small, rural Thai town. There is one main street, which goes over the Maekok river (which the locals call the Limkok river, I believe, making directions difficult the first few tries). It’s surrounded by corn farms, garlic farms, guava orchards, and other agriculture. The mountains overlook to the west, and there are several Wats hidden in their tree-covered clefts and seams, visible at times from the road. The humidity gives everything a thick haze, so the river seems to wind away into a milky nothingness.

The Expat Teacher is staying with her family and a few friends at a nice resort a kilometer from town, along the main road. We walked there, talked with her while gazing out over the fields, joined her and her family for dinner (Khao Soi for everyone!), then continued talking over a drink. Come 10pm, The Private Eye and I decided to head home. It was too late for a sōrng-tāa-ou, so we decided to take the 10 minute walk home.

For two city slickers who love nature but don’t actually spend much time in rural areas, it was an adventure. Some of it was fun, like the silent white cow looking ghostly in the moonlight. The part that was scary was when we walked by a home and a trio of dogs started growling and barking furiously. But unlike other homes with barking dogs, these dogs weren’t behind a fence. So they came out onto the road and followed The Private Eye, growling and surging forward, then slowing. None of them were very big dogs, so we weren’t in serious danger, but a bite or two would certainly have been painful. And in all honesty, we don’t quite know how to deal with dogs in a pack who are that aggressive. Our uncertainty and surprise led to a lot of adrenalin, but nothing happened. They followed us for a hundred yards or so – seemed like a mile – then turned back. In the same spirit of honesty as The Private Eye, I’d like to say that it didn’t bother us at all, but that is not true; we were both scared as this trio of dogs growled at our heels and calves on the otherwise deserted and dark road along the hillside.

We woke early, while it was still cool, to climb up to the most ornate of the Wats that one can see for the road. There’s a series of 8 different stages, from small Buddha shrines, to a large golden Buddha with a Naga hood (the Naga eyes light up at night?!?!?!) to finally the temple on top. Inside it was beautiful, but also creepy; there were lifelike wax figures of two famous monks whose pictures were all over the temple, sitting in the central prayer area, while a recording of monk prayer played over the speakers. When I first saw them I thought monks were actually praying (why was the cleaning lady using her vacuum then, of all times?), but no, just creepy wax figures. The Expat Teacher’s husband, who also visited the Wat, but later in the day, saw them as emblematic of the decline and corruption of Thai Buddhism. “No attachment, indeed,” he said.

We wandered down to the docks to arrange for a private boat to take us 6 down river to see hill tribe villages (The Private Eye is great at this), and found a lady who said her daughter could teach us how to ride a motor scooter when she returned from school. Unfortunately the girl had cold feet – she was only 12 after all – so we will have to learn some other time.

Being in Tha Tun has been wonderful because it’s rural. After Bangkok and Chiang Mai, we needed some quiet, nature, and clean air, all of which are here in abundance. It’s a sigh of relief. But it’s of course also a bit slow, which I have trouble with after 48 hours or so.

The Private Eye and I went over a bunch of possible plans for our next steps. Our hope is to do a nature adventure trip in Laos called the Gibbon Experience, which involves sleeping in tree houses 200 feet up and going across 2km of zipline in the jungle canopy, then heading to Luang Prabang. Depending on how much time we take, we have a lot of options. If we spend a lot of time in Luang Prabang, we might head directly south to Ko Tau. If we have a few extra days before most European tourists clear out on the 15th, we might head south to Vang Vieng, which seems to have thankfully cleaned up a bit recently (no more bars at the top of the tubing region of the river). If we have a bunch of extra time, we might just fly over to Angkor Wat and give it the 3 or more days it deserves.

— The Professor

1 Comment

Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on January 3, 2013 in Chiang Mai, Tha Tun, Thailand, transportation, Uncategorized

Thai Food and Thai Cooking (Chiang Mai, day 3, New Year’s Day)

02 Jan

We awoke a little lazily after our late night out. The Private Eye headed out to run a few errands (drop off laundry at one of the nearby homes that offer the service, renew our bike rental, etc.). I tided the room before heading to Black Canyon Coffee, which although very bland inside actually makes excellent coffee, to read my book. Almost everyone we know who’s been to Thailand has recommended taking a cooking class, and Chiang Mai is supposed to be one of the best places to do so. The classes range in complexity from an all day class that involves traveling to a local farm to an afternoon/evening affair for 4 hours. Given our late rise, we decided that we’d try to do the latter. We’d bike to and wander around a shopping district in the northwest to try to find The Private Eye another pair of pants, then come back to the old city for our cooking class.

So we ventured out to this one Soi nearby where there seemed to be several cooking classes, with the hopes of signing up for one this afternoon. None of them panned out, including the two our guest house hosts recommended. Since we’re leaving tomorrow morning for Tha Tun, our situation looked grim. But I remembered what our new Melbourne friends has said the night before about finding rooms – just try again later, and chances something will have opened up. So we ventured to the northwest, planning to stop by Asia Scenic, the most highly recommended school, just before the class to see if an opening had appeared.

There’s a huge amount of street food of many kinds, in a fashion that regulations in a place like San Francisco would never allow. Yes, that old man has a sidecar on his motorcycle, which is a propane stove and table. Yes, that’s a huge wok of boiling oil that he’s frying chicken in with that stove, 6 inches from the sidewalk. If you tripped, you could land your hand or face in the oil. In return, a large, enough-for-lunch fried leg and thigh is about 85 cents. The pickings were slim today compared to last night, but this fried chicken vendor was along the road were bicycling on, so lunch for 2 (fried chicken, sticky rice, some vegetables) for $2, slightly less than a cappuccino. A papaya salad is $8 for takeout at Regent Thai in Noe Valley; from a street vendor, it’s 85 cents.

While Parisians famously frown at street food (the recent encroachment of falafel is fascinating), the Thai love it. But this reflects something about the cuisines as well. While a properly made coq au vin takes 3-4 hours to make, a good 90 minutes of which is work, most Thai dishes are astoundingly simple. You can make a bunch of them in the morning and serve them all day. Furthermore, seemingly very different dishes turn out to have almost identical ingredients. The only difference between a red and a green curry is the chili pepper used (fresh green or dried red). Pad See Yew, Pad Thai, and other stir fry dishes have identical seasonings, just different ingredients. So one set of prep can provide for many different dishes.

We dropped by Asia Scenic at 4pm, and, indeed, they had space for 2. We wandered to a nearby coffee bar along this narrow, quiet Soi and read in the shade of a forested oasis before heading back over for our class.

The class itself was delightful. Our group of 12 had four people from Toronto, four from San Francisco, two from Sydney, and two from Frankfurt. The other Californians were really from Sonoma, so we talked a bit about markets to buy the ingredients. Of the 6 possible courses, 2 were picked for us (curry paste and curry) and we as a group could pick 2 from appetizer, soup, stir fry, and dessert. We chose soup and stir fry. For each course, you chose one of 3-4 dishes. After choosing your dishes, you walk to a nearby market to have a bunch of ingredients explained and shown. 3 hours, some chopping, propane, and stirring later, we ate our own cooked Thai food and left with a cookbook.

Tomorrow morning we’re catching a 4 hour bus to Tha Ton, to meet up with The Expat Teacher again. We plan to stay there until the 5th, at which point we will either head east to Pai and Mae Hong Sun, or north to Laos. I’m itching to get south, to the islands and beaches, Indonesia especially, but doing so before the 15th is probably a bad idea due to the super-high tourist season. I’m fascinated by Brunei Darussalam, in part because I haven’t yet heard anyone say anything about it and in part because of its virgin rainforests. I wonder if it’s off the beaten track because there’s no alcohol, so not a partying destination? We will have to ask The Expat Teacher tomorrow.

– The Professor

Rolling into Chiang Mai

30 Dec

Our bus rolled into Chiang Mai around 8AM. It didn’t drop us off in the city center. Instead, it dropped us off at a guest house/tour company who gave us a free coffee to keep us there while they explained all of the wonderful deals they have. We left as soon as we finished our coffee, combining forces with another couple to hopefully find a pair of rooms together. But unfortunately it was not to be – since it’s the New Year, rooms are scarce. We found one just south of the East Gate, Pratu Tha Phae, on Soi 3 of Th Moon Muang. It’s simple and bare bones – a bed, a folding table, a stool, a clothing rack with a few hangers, and a private bathroom. It doesn’t have air conditioning, but Chiang Mai so far is a good 10 degrees cooler than Bangkok and Ayuthaya, and the hotel cooler still, so we didn’t even need to turn on the fan when we sacked out until noon or so.

Chiang Mai has a central old city, surrounded by a somewhat crumbling wall and a moat. We wandered around the old city a bit, getting some surprisingly good coffee and a bunch of practical items, such as mosquito bite ointment, a shiny purple tshirt for The Private Eye, a small personal bag for me, and another prepaid phone card. Sundays have the Sunday night market, so as we wandered west, across the old city, towards Chiang Mai University we saw people starting to set up.

We were heading to CMU (academic readers are probably as initially confused as I was when I first saw it) because it’s supposedly the place to catch a sōrng-tāa-ou, a kind of communal cab made from a pickup truck whose bed has a roof and benches on both sides. When you flag one down, they’ll let you get on if your destination is reasonably along their existing route. Some of these cabs gather near CMU’s main gate to gather groups of passengers to head to Wat U Mong, a forest temple up in the hills behind Chiang Mai, some 12km away.

Riding in the back of a pickup as it wound up the hills, surrounded by lush trees and sweet air, the trip up was a delight. It felt a bit like winding into Tilden, but with a damper and lusher forest and without the distinctive smell of eucalyptus.

The Wat was beautiful, but of all of the temples we’ve visited so far, this was the worst experience I had. It was a strange, crowded mix of tourists posing by notable features and people coming to pray. Outside the Wat was a horrific traffic jam, complicated by all of the yelling and cooking fires. There were even food vendors within the Wat itself. This meant that as some people walked in a circle around a central golden pillar, praying and holding lotus flowers, they did so passing by empty soda cans and discarded corn cobs. The Private Eye said she was in a small shrine on the side when she saw a man come in, give the Buddha a bracelet, pray for a moment, then as he stood, start talking on his mobile phone. The lack of reverence in such a beautiful, secluded temple, its confusion between tourism, rote, and belief, well, all kinda sucked.

After the temple, we rode down the mountain in another sōrng-tāa-ou, but this time, rather than sit inside, The Private Eye stood up and hung off the back, seeing and smelling the forest pass by. We transferred to another at the zoo, and had a nice chat with a couple from Toronto who are planning on moving to Bangkok in a year or so.

And then back to the old city, where Sunday Walking Street was in full swing, with people shoulder to shoulder making a slow clockwise circuit up and down Th Ratchamandoen, each side crammed with arts, crafts, food, and clothes, the center filled with musicians, many visibly blind, busking. We finally made our way to Pratu Tha Phae, and found, right on our corner, the bar for us.

You see, it isn’t a building, more a trailer. Set up in the middle of the sidewalk. A trailer in that it’s pulled. It was a tiny, narrow bar in the center, with just enough space for a bartender and twenty so bottles of liquor and mixers, with coolers at his feet for beer and soda. The bar seats were all bicycle saddles, with roughly-welded foot rests. The bar and seats were raised, so you have to clamber up and sit with your feet about 3 feet off the ground. A worn, hand painted sign said “Cocktail Cycle” and the only real decoration was a string of Christmas lights with plastic straw pieces stuck over the ends to add color and texture (the bendy bit of the straw). It was, in short, a bar that belonged in Black Rock City just as much as Chiang Mai.

When we sat, it was empty except for one couple. By the time we left, it was full. The couple was born in Australia and New Zealand, but now live in Malaysia and work in Indonesia. He’s a gold miner, she works in orphanages. We talked about San Francisco, gold mining, and travel. We of course asked for recommendations – they both spoke glowingly of Gili Island, near Lombok, and he told us of a wreck dive near Bali. So when we make our way south, to the beaches, we have two items at the top of our list.

After one side car and one seltzer water we had spent the last few baht of our daily budget, and exhausted from the night bus, we walked 100 feet home.

— The Professor

Farewell, Ayuthaya, hello Night Bus!

30 Dec

I had really mixed feelings about Ayuthaya. It was only natural, I suppose – my first encounter with the backpacker infrastructure and all that it entails, my first nights sleeping (badly) in a fan room rather than an air conditioned one, my first mosquito bites, my first participation in a gratifying but possibly dubious activity (elephant rides). Despite many pleasures – museums! Ruins! Meeting Hans, the awesome 50 something who is cycling around Thailand solo! – I found myself getting really grumpy about the heat, the traffic, and the cost of everything.

Now wait a minute, you may be thinking, Thailand is cheap! Well, it is and it isn’t – the thing that surprises you is that it doesn’t scale as you’d expect. My two coffees today cost 100 baht. That is around $3, which is about what they would cost at home. But our room in Ayuthaya cost 400 baht. That means coffee can be 1/4 or more of the cost of your room, which is very expensive. I am starting to worry about affording experiences that cost far beyond this, like zip lining or diving, which I had hoped to enjoy. I’m thinking of giving up the American style coffee I had been clinging to.

Anyway, these worries and discomforts were getting to me, so I decided to get away a bit. We went to Wat Phanan Choen, which has an absolutely enormous Buddha and is a working Wat, not a ruin. It was touching to see people wrapping the giant Buddha in ceremonial orange cloth and tossing the loose bolts of it into the crowd, which people strained to touch and pull about their own heads. We saw people praying to many different smaller sculptures and images of the Buddha around the temple. We saw people release fish into the river adjacent, which were quickly eating by much larger fish that were wriggling on the surface of the river in excitement.

We ate some egg custard served by an ancient woman with betel nut stained teeth, which I had read about but never seen before.

I then parted with The Professor and did a solo bike ride on the far side of the river, in the Muslim quarter. Muslim outskirts would be more like it. I rode through long green shining rice paddies filled with herons and the like, past long-eared skinny cows with humps on their backs, and by practical rural businesses: the lumber yard, the hardware store, the coffee stand. Here were both new palatial homes and tin-sided shacks that I never would have realized were homes were it not for the flip flops out front and the glimpse of a mattress behind a curtain door.

I was really happy to be in a sweet smelling green place, where the only amplified sound was a few moments of a muzzein noting a time of prayer for these folks. I bought some satay, sticky rice and a tamarind soda from some smiling women at a roadside stand. I then biked to the ruins of a Portuguese settlement, where a man was practicing electric guitar ballads next to the excavated skeletons of European merchants.

It was a good ride. The Professor and I took the rest of the day easy. Good thing: the overnight bus to Chiang Mai that night was a freezing cold, loud, bumpy 12 hour experience. But we survived and are now happily settled for a couple of days.

– The Private Eye

2 Comments

Posted by theprofessorandtheprivateeye on December 30, 2012 in Ayuthaya, Chiang Mai, Thailand, Uncategorized

The Professor and the Private Eye: Adventures Abroad

Category Archives: Chiang Mai

To Tha Tun

Thai Food and Thai Cooking (Chiang Mai, day 3, New Year’s Day)

Rolling into Chiang Mai

Farewell, Ayuthaya, hello Night Bus!

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Meta