Chiang Rai
Totally Thailand - Saturday, Nov-21
Today is my day off, which means I have no plans at all but to exchange some money, pay my bill at the Baan Bua Guesthouse, and visit Wat Rong Khun, the White Temple. I know, that sounds like a lot to do, but it doesn’t involve trekking or riding a bicycle for four hours, so as I see it, it’s an easy day.
I meet Monika, my neighbor at the guesthouse, and we exchange plans over coffee in the garden. She asks if she can join me, even though she had been there yesterday on a field trip with the children from her school. I adore her company and am delighted to have a friend to spend my day with.
She and I walk to the bus station and negotiate a songthaew to take us to Wat Rong Khun, 13km south of Chiang Rai. A songthaew, which literally means “two rows,” is a small pickup truck with two rows of bench seats facing each other. You can pick one up at the bus station or flag one down in the direction you’re going, and the fare is pretty inexpensive, depending on how far you’re going. Up here in the north the songthaews are blue, but they’re red in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, and I hear the yellow ones go farther out, sort of a long distance commuter vehicle. I’ve been on some pretty crowded ones with folks standing on the rear bumper and hanging on to the roof rail, and things get pretty comical when a monk gets on board and everyone has to rearrange themselves so that he’s not sitting next to a female passenger. As a rule, a crowded songthaew costs less than an empty one, but since it’s just Monika and me, we end up paying a couple of hundred baht to get to the White Temple, which is still cheaper than a subway ride in San Francisco so I don’t give it much thought.
Within a half hour or so we arrive at Wat Rong Khun. Chalermchai Kositpipat, a Thai artist who funded construction of the temple at his own expense, built Wat Rong Khun, and it is still a work in progress. A successful painter in his own right, Mr. Kositpipat wanted to create an elegant temple to honor Buddha’s purity, but the temple is unique in both its look and symbolism. The temple is unlike any in Thailand. It is a radiant white, and decorated with tiny silver mirrors that give the temple complex the overall impression that it is made of spun sugar and icing, accentuated even more by the curling, spiraling ends and sharp terminals that decorate the temple and statuary. Among sculptures of demons and angelic figures, it includes a Boschian sculpture of hands reaching up from Narok, the Buddhist version of hell. One of the hands flicks you the middle finger, its fingernail painted bright red. Even the carp in the adjacent ponds are white. Inside the temple, murals depicting an apocalyptic end-of-days feature pop culture imagery such as Neo from The Matrix, the Millennium Falcon, Superman and the alien from Alien. As Eleanor, my Kiwi friend might say, it’s so OTT. Even the toilets are ornate gilded pavilions.
Monika and I take it all in and then visit the gift shop where we peruse the artist’s prints for sale. They are really quite a fantastical lot. I buy a t-shirt for my older brother of a demon devouring some other being. It’s the kind of thing he’d wear when he’s performing.
Monika and I sit at one of the cafés nearby and talk and people-watch for the next two hours. I love her company, her gentleness, her gorgeous smile and her Amélie haircut. We discover many parallels between us: our fathers we merchant seamen; we are one of three siblings; we’re both born under the sign of the serpent. We talk and talk, our words flowing endlessly, mostly about love and sex and relationships. It’s almost four o’clock in the afternoon, and we decide it is time to find our way back to Chiang Rai before it begins to get dark. We walk the 500m or so to the main highway, and sit next to a police kiosk until we see a songthaew coming our way. We flag it down, hop on board, and eventually return to the bus station.
Monika and I regroup at eight o’clock. It is chilly tonight, so we go to the Night Market and buy ourselves cashmere pashminas. I find a brown one, embroidered with pink and green flowers, that matches the rest of my travel wardrobe, and pay around $12 USD for it. It will come in very handy during the remainder of my trip.
We walk to the Peace House where we meet Matteus, a fellow from Pittsburgh, USA of Polish parents whom Monika had met a few days ago. When he’s not around, Monika chuckles over his unusual Polish accent, but right now we are all speaking English. Matteus has a degree in Asian studies and is trying to get into the Foreign Service. He’s taken the test twice already and failed, so we all all wish him good luck and hope the third time is a charm.
Tonight, Aob and Gauthier are tending bar, and I share some of my photos from last night’s concert and get some photos of them so I can remember their faces. Aob comes over with a hollowed out bamboo section that he’s taken from a large terrarium. His pet hedgehog is inside, and we take turns petting him, but only in one direction else we end up with a bunch of quills sticking out of our palms.
Monika, Matteus, and I go to Coconuts Bar and I order fish and chips, my first farang food since I arrived. I thank Kevin, the Irish bar owner who, like everyone I’ve meet in Chiang Rai, is friendly and makes me feel quite at home.
By now it’s 12:30pm, and I must return to the Baan Bua Guesthouse to pack up my gear. Tomorrow I go to the Thai/Lao border to catch a slowboat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. The two-day journey leaves in the morning from the border crossing at Huay Xai, Laos. After a lot of research, I found a tour operator who runs trips to Luang Prabang in a more comfortable alternative than the public boats. But the best part, Tim, the delightful owner of Baan Bua, will drive me to Chiang Khong on the Thai side of the border. I’m a little bit sad to leave Chiang Rai, and especially sorry to say goodbye to Monika, but I know another adventure awaits me down the river.
Totally Thailand - Friday, Nov-20
I am going on a trek today with a small group from my guesthouse. Our guide is Nok, who has been affiliated with Baan Bua for eight years, and from reading the testimonials on her web site, past guests have nothing but great things to say about her. Nok means “little bird,” and that name describes her perfectly. She’s tiny as a pixie, educated, fluent, with a good sense of humor and a warm demeanor. Today’s group consists of Mitsuo from Osaka, Eva from Poland, and Elise and Celine from France.
Our first stop is an Akha village in the highlands, about 80km (50 miles) north of Chiang Rai. We are welcomed inside a traditional Akha bamboo house. It is dark inside, with shafts of light filtering through the gaps in the bamboo. The owner, a wiry older man smoking a cheroot, enjoys posing for me while I take his photo. Inside the house we are shown the traditional kitchen with woodburning stove, a huge pot of food (“for the pigs”), and the household altar to the spirits. Some Akhas still practice animism, but many converted to Christianity long ago, and there’s a tiny church in the village for the Christian tribespeople in this village of about sixty people. We learn that men and women sleep in separate quarters, but there’s a special hut reserved for when a man and a woman want to bed together for the night. That answers that question. Nok hands me a 8-inch length of hollowed bamboo, about 4 inches in diameter. Inside are a few bamboo worms making squiggly sounds in their dark abode. Nok tells me they make a delicious snack when they’re fried and salted.
“Taste just like potato chips,” she adds. If the opportunity presents itself, I will have to try one.
Except for Mitsuo and me, Nok and the others walk to a Karen longneck village, so I go wandering about the Akha village on my own. It turns out Mitsuo had been to the Hilltribe Museum as well, and decided he didn’t want to be part of the human zoo, either. In the meantime, I take lots of photo of some young boys at play. Their heads are shorn, but they’re too young to be novices so I suspect it’s to prevent or get rid of head lice. Children are always delighted to see themselves in the viewfinder of my camera, but they soon grow tired of me and continue clobbering each other over the head with toy guns.
Our group rejoins in a little over half an hour, and we drive to Mae Salong, a Chinese village high in the mountains. The area has an alpine-like landscape and climate, but with banana trees, and is famous for its tea plantations and cherry blossoms. The history of Mae Salong begins at the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, when some remnants of the anti-communist Kuomintang (KMT) forces refused to surrender, and fought its way out of Yunnan in southwestern China before seeking asylum here. In exchange for their protection, the Chinese settlers fought for Thailand until 1982, helping to counter the communist insurgency at the Thai frontier. As a reward for their loyalty, the Thai government granted citizenship to the KMT soldiers and their families. In Mae Salong, all the signs are in Chinese, and the inhabitants who are not from a hilltribe minority all speak Mandarin.
We stop at a teahouse and sample locally cultivated teas. The shopkeeper is quite proud of her products, and we sample as many as seven different teas, from green to black oolong, and one tea that is blended with ginseng, lending it a naturally sweet flavor. The tea is prepared in the following way:
When the water is boiling, it is poured into a small pot with about a teaspoon of tea leaves. This first water is meant to wash the tea leaves and is immediately poured out. The second water is poured in the pot and allowed to steep for no more than a minute. The tea is then poured in a small cylindrical cup about 2 inches high, and topped by another inverted tea cup that is dome-shaped like the tea cups you’d find in any Chinese restaurant, only smaller. Take both cups between thumb and forefinger, sealing them tightly, and flip them over so that the tea in the taller cylindrical cup flows inside the shorter, rounder cup. Take the now empty taller cup and roll it between your palms, inhaling the aroma left behind while warming your hands. And finally, sip the tea and enjoy.
There are many of bowls of dried fruits to sample: sweet cherries, salted cherries, apricots, tamarind, and lo and behold, some fried bamboo worms. Okay, here goes. Goodness, they are delicious, and they do indeed taste just like chips. I grab a big handful, then another and another, so I make sure to buy something before I leave because I did nosh on quite a few worms. The teacup set I purchase, both the tall snifter and the short drinking cup, is emblazoned with a black dragon that turns bright red when the cup is hot. I also buy a package of ginseng oolong tea.
Our group stops for lunch at a noodle shop next door, and I order a bowl of “black chicken with mountain herbals.” A large bowl of chicken soup arrives at the table, loaded with ginseng root and wolfberries and other herbs and roots I cannot identify. The chicken meat, as well as the bones and skin, is black and comes from a wild hen that is found around these parts. The broth is savory and warming on a cold, foggy day. One usually doesn’t think of the words “cold” or “foggy” to describe Southeast Asia, but at higher altitudes – and Mae Salong is at 1,800 meters (5,904 ft) above sea level — a couple of warm layers are necessary to ward of the chill. It’s November, after all.
Our group browses the market, which is but a row of blankets on the side of the main road displaying vegetables and tribal handicrafts. I meet a delightful Akha woman in all her finery. Through a series of sign language and charades, I learn that she is a widow with 4 children. I don’t doubt that life is tough for the people here, and often the most basic needs we take for granted, like healthcare and education, are unimaginable luxuries to them. I buy two small purses from her for 100 baht ($3 USD) and don’t even think of haggling. Souvenirs are cheap enough, and I know bargaining is part of the buying game, but I often don’t feel inclined to haggle over what amount to a buck or less. A cup of coffee in the States costs 3 times that, but this is their livelihood.
Madame Akha gives me a little woven bracelet that she ties to my wrist, and I take a moment to admire her amazing tribal dress. I point to a long silver pick like a four-sided dagger that hangs from her headdress, and I ask what it is used for. She demonstrates its use by picking her teeth, and proceeds to stick it under her elaborate headdress to scratch her head. Then she does the same to my head, so I kneel beside her and put my head on her shoulder, mimicking total bliss. Everyone around us is laughing, and Madame Akha and I hug tightly and laugh so hard we have tears in our eyes. I ask if I can take her photo, but she won’t show me her betel-stained mouth. Still, I capture her sassy grin and it will be one of my most favorite portraits of my entire trip.
The French girls are across the street, eyeing a beautiful Akha tapestry. It is astonishingly beautiful, with colorful yet delicate cross-stitching on a midnight blue background. Nok and I wander over, and we learn that it took the village ladies, working in turns, three years to complete. The asking price, non-negotiable, is 5,500 baht, or about $170. The money will go to help the entire village.
“If you girls don’t buy it, I will,” I say. A piece of handiwork like this, and for the ridiculous price of $170, needs to find a home. And knowing the proceeds will help the village is enough incentive for me to motivate the buyers. I put on my best saleslady hat and fawn over the details, trying to discreetly convince the French girls that something like this should not be passed up. “And it took three years – three years! – to make.” My ploy works, and the French girls buy the tapestry.
Our group heads to a tea plantation and wander about the fields, learning about the cultivation and fermentation process while taking in the majestic scenery around us. But it’s a short stop, because we have a long drive to Mae Sae, the Golden Triangle where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos come together.
While the French girls take a longtail boat ride around the river and the others explore the Opium Museum, I wander the streets of Mae Sae, heading toward the giant gold Buddha that overlooks the Mae Kok River. Mae Sae is not a destination I would visit again. There’s not much to see and do except for the anti-climactic experience of saying you were at the center of the Golden Triangle, the Four Corners of Southeast Asia.
Everyone is very quiet during the hour-long ride back to Chiang Rai, and I actually doze off for a little while. Around 7 pm the minivan arrives at our guesthouse, where I make a beeline for Muang Thong Restaurant and order my much-anticipated meal of garlic chicken. My hunger sated, I head to the Peace House where there’s live reggae music tonight featuring Zam’s band, the groovy rasta with the perfect dreads. By the time I arrive, the band is in full swing and I get close to the stage so I can say hello. When the song is finished, I wai him, and he holds both my hands and smiles broadly.
“My friend,” he says.
I feel so at home in this place, full of young Thai hippies with their waist-length dreads and tie-dye attire. Mimi is tending bar, ebullient as ever, and always offering a smile for every person who comes to the bar. Ot asks a woman to take our photo together, and I also hand her my camera so I can remember my Chiang Rai friends. It’s midnight, and I’m tired from the long day. I need to call it a night. A very good night.
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