Bullitt's Bros

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Thai Food

I would have offered this post on Thai food earlier, but I wanted to wait until about the last day to get an overview of things. This strategy has an advantage: I have a fairly clear impression about Thai food, which is the hard-won fruit of my eating a whole bunch of stuff. On the other hand, there is a disadvantage: I don't remember half of what I ate, at least in any detail. Nonetheless, I'll give it the old grad school try.

I start with some disappointment: by and large, the Thai food in restaurants is, in my opinion, nothing special. Wife and I went to some recommended restaurants in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Ko Lanta, and Ko Samui, and almost none of them blew my socks off. Generally, the fancy restaurants are pretty pricey--say, $100 for two people, which is a lot in Thailand--and in most cases they're not the kind of place you'd rave about to a friend.

Now, I want to qualify this "nothing special" assessment. The food in many of these restaurants is still Thai food, and Thai food is delicious. So I don't want to give the impression that the food is not good. It's very good, if you like Thai food, but it doesn't blow away the Thai food in the States. With one exception: the mango sticky rice here is to fight over. Wife and I had several sticky rice wars, in fact, with us usually evenly dividing the spoils. Some of the mangoes here are very fresh, the sticky rice is always well-cooked, and the sauce they put on the whole concoction--heated coconut milk with melted palm sugar and sesame seeds--is divine. It's salty, sweet, and gives the dish a soupçon of yumminess. More than just a soupçon, actually; more like three to five soupçons.

Soupçon.

There is a flip-side to this disappointing verdict: while the restaurant food is nothing special, the street food surely is.

Just in case you don't what I mean by street food, I'm talking about small vendors with carts, frying pans, portable heaters, etc., who cook up one or more kinds of dishes and charge a small fee (between 30 cents and $5) for them. There is a lot of street food in Thailand. Like, it bespeckles the streets and is available at most every hour of the day. There's a fair number of mango sticky rice vendorsa--always worth a trip--and lots of people selling roti filled with bananas, or honey, or chocolate, or jam, or some combination of the above. In most cases, the roti were like a cross between crepes and pancakes. Thicker than crepes, but chewier than pancakes (and greasier. Yum!). Never more than $1 either.

The most impressive areas for food, though, were in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. In Bangkok the place that thrilled was the food court of the Siam Paragon, reputed to be the fanciest mall in Bangkok (and, I assume, Thailand). There were, first of all, all manner of restaurants: portuguese chicken purveyors, Thai-Italian fusion, Thai-French fusion, Mexican food, Japanese food, Indian food, New Zealand food; but there was also a strange semi-circle of booths, each of which sold intriguing food. There were white, boiled chickens (headless), as well as red, long-cooking ducks (headful) hanging from hooks; lots of stews, most of them clear, but at least one dark, and floating with crispy pork; coils of fried noodles; lots of dumplings, some steamed pale, some fried brown, all apparently filled with deliciousness; and all manner of vegetables. Today, I ate at Siam Paragon, and had some dynamite chicken Tikka Masala and garlic naan. The naan was buttered, and the chicken was charcoaly and high-quality, while the sauce was mild but still had a bit of kick. To wash it down, I had, first, a guava juice, and second, a blueberry smoothie.

Siam Paragon is good--I plan on having some more later today--but the place where the street food really sang was Chiang Mai's Sunday Walking Market.

Chiang Mai's Sunday walking market is a delight. Every Sunday, the city of Chiang Mai cordons off one of its more interesting streets from car traffic and just lets in foot traffic. It's set up on a fairly long street, Ratcha... Rama... well, it's some massively besyllabled name beginning with an "Ra". It think it's Ratchadamuran, but I can't be bothered to find out right now. I'm writing from an Internet cafe, and time is money. Anyway, Ratchawhatever gets filled up with happy Thais and tourists interested in seeing what's all this, then? Along the way, there are wats--Buddhist temples--with Thais giving offerings, burning incense, or praying (on the night we went, there was also a 70-year old Thai Elvis impersonator sitting right outside the front of one wat; we tried to get a picture, but I'm afraid it's rather blurry), and Westerners looking at the nice designs. Most important from my point of view, though, was the food.

It was the best food I had in Thailand.

First, wife got the best roti-dessert I had ever had. It was crunchy, chewy, and filled with bananas and chocolate. It was just a step beyond all the other roti. But I got the best dish I ever had: braised, sweet pork literally pulled off the pig, laid atop a bed of rice with a soupçon of a mildly sweet sauce. Trust me when I tell you it's better than you or I. In addition, I had a perfect strawberry shake (take twelve sweet strawberries, put them in a blender with ice, and blend. It works!) and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff. Moreover, there was some really tasty-looking roasted honey chicken that I didn't have room in my stomach for, and an odd black jelly, supposedly coming from a tree if I remember correctly (and I never do), gooped onto some crushed ice and syrup. It didn't look good, but it did look weird.

So much for the Chiang Mai Sunday Walking Market. So much for street food. I just have a couple odds and ends to add.

First, worth its own mention is the Thai proclivity for juice. They love the stuff. Seemingly every foodery has fruit juice, fruit shakes, and fruit smoothies, and they come in all manner of flavor: watermelon, kiwi, guava, lychee (my favorite), mango, jackfruit (it tastes like a cross between an apple and sugarcane), orange, dragonfruit, and others. They are good. We need to do this in the States.

Second, wife and I discovered one of those delicious holes-in-the-wall you always hear about but rarely find; a place called Da's kitchen. It was an Indian restaurant in Ko Lanta run by a family of Thai Muslims, and they had maybe the best naan and certainly the best roti I've ever had. I hesitate to describe the naan as the best I've ever had because it was so different. Really chewy, not crunchy, and sharp in flavor.

Third, Thais cannot make a hamburger to save their lives. Which leads me to conclude:

U-S-A! U-S-A!!!

SOUPÇON.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Superthai, Part 2: He Is Real

In my haste to write down my main findings regarding the mysterious creature known as "Mr. Sexyman", I neglected to add some other details about my hike, also important. 

1. Did I mention, for example, that he picked the lock to wife's and my room? It's true. The door had accidentally been locked from the inside before we got there, and so we couldn't open it. I don't know what he did, but he took a key--not the key to open the lock; we could have done that--and slipped it against something in the door and opened it. Not that impressive, I know, but it adds to his mystique somewhat. 

2. He's a waiter. And a very good cook. In addition to being superhuman. Not that impressive, I know, but remember, he does more besides waiter and cook. He also catches fish with his bare fucking hands. 

3. He took most of our pictures for us. I know, anyone can take pictures, but it was nice!

4. He speaks limited English. But get this: he also speaks just as limited French and German. 

5. Remember how he got no mosquito bites? Well, he also never gets bitten by leeches. His explanation? "I am too dark." 

6. Remember how he caught a chameleon with his bare hands, and it squeaked when he caught it? Well, really, the most impressive part of that is the fact that he SPOTTED. A. CHAMELEON. In fact, he spotted three, though he could only catch one. 

7. While he was catching fish, spotting chameleons, and building vine-bridges, he also smoked. Like, the whole time. Moreover, they were hand-rolled cigarettes, rolled in dried palm leaves. 

8. He honeymoons in Munich. 

9. He envied our upcoming 18-hour plane ride. His reasons: "Relax, go to bathroom, sit." 

10. After the 7 hr. 30 min. trek with wife and me, he had another trek, that night. It was a 3 hour trek. He saw some barking deer. The next morning, he had another long trek. 

11. Unsurprisingly, after our adventure with Mr. Sexyman, I had to learn more about him. So I talked to Sherry, our friendly, well-speaking English Thai. I asked her what the deal was with Mr. Sexyman. Like, what's his real name? It's not Mr. Sexyman, is it? 
Well, yes and no. The thing is, because Thais have such a thriving tourism industry, and because Thais have enormously complicated names, many of them have nicknames. For instance, Sherry's real name isn't "Sherry". It's something complicated, but it sounds vaguely like "Sherry", hence her nickname. Mr. Sexyman's real name is "Sum Ium", which means "gentleman." Naturally, he transmogrifies it to "Sexyman." 

12. It turns out that Mr. Sexyman has been working as a guide only for a year. He's a freak of nature when it comes to trekking, and he's been doing it only for a year. How the hell is that possible? 
Well, before he was a guide, Mr. Sexyman was a hunter. In fact, his father was a very good hunter, and when Mr. Sexyman was young, he lived in the rainforest with his dad. Let me repeat: since the age of five or something, Mr. Sexyman lived in the forest. That's right, Mr. Sexyman is Blanca from Streetfighter 2
He and his dad specialized in hunting elephants. Legend has it, in fact, that one killed a man, and he and his dad walked to Burma to kill it. It's like The Princess Bride, except the six-fingered man is an elephant. 
Eventually, though, the Thai government made hunting elephants--who are the national symbol of Thailand--illegal. So he and his dad had to close up shop. After that, he hopped from island to island, working in beach resorts. Then he ended up in Khao Sok National Park, helping steward the rainforest, along with a lot of other former hunters (only he, though walked along the jagged rocks barefoot). 
13. So that explains Sexyman's super-powers. In addition, I also learned--and I admit, the details are hazy--that he rescued some German hikers who ran out of water by cutting open the right kind of vine that happened to have potable water running through it. On another occasion, he built a make-shift tent for himself out of tree-branches in the top of a tree and slept there. 

14. During the trip, he asked us where we were going to stay when we got to Ko Samui. We said "The Library", which is where we are now (it's fantastic. One of the most luxurious hotels I've ever stayed in). He said, "No...stay at King Bungalow! Very cheap!" We said sorry, we already paid for the room. He later asked us again to stay at King Bungalow. We once again declined. Later, we asked Sherry why he was so hot for King Bungalow. Turns out he wants to work on Ko Samui. So he's got a good instinct for selling!

15. One last thing: after the trip, we were dirty, wet, and tired. We each took showers. So did Mr. Sexyman--in the river. Remember, he's a legendary monster from the rainforest. 

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Superthai

I know I promised a posting on food, but this is too good to not immediately write down. Here we go:

Ed, the father of my friend Mikey Y, is the stuff of legends. I don't remember too many specifics, but I'm pretty sure he's beaten up two guys at once and wielded a chainsaw with one arm while standing on a ladder. And, he's, like, a nuclear physicist or something. (Mikey can elaborate in the comments.) Despite Mikey's earnest claims, I never fully believed everything he said. I felt that his tales had the air of embellishment. People like Ed just don't exist, or if they do, then books are written about them and we've all heard of them (e.g., Bo Grice).

But count me a doubter no longer. Why? Not because I met Ed. No, because I met another man. His name? Mr. Sexyman.

Now, you might think that "Mr. Sexyman" is not Mr. Sexyman's real name. And you would, I'm sure, be right. But whatever his real name is, it's lost to the sands of time. For even fellow Thais refer to him as Mr. Sexyman.

So what's this guy's deal? Well, to tell you that, I have to step back and explain something about my situation.

Let me inform you a bit of my itinerary for this Thailand honeymoon. Wife and I started in Bangkok, then we went to Chiang Mai, then we went to Ko Lanta (a small island with incredible beaches--The Beach was filmed there, or somewhere very near there), and then we want to Khao Sok national park.

Khao Sok national park demarcates the oldest rainforest in the world--160 million years old. It's an ecological treasure, of course, but more important from my point of view: it has monkeys.

Monkeys are hilarious. I've seen them before in zoos and on nature documentaries, but I've never seen them when they've seen me. Along with eating really good movie popcorn, this is one of my dreams (I'm a man of very attainable dreams; wife has even more attainable dreams. Her great wish is to one day drink a margarita near the beach or a pool. She has lived the dream something like fifteen times). So, I was an interested party in Khao Sok.

When we got there, we were greeted by Sherry, the most helpful Thai I had (up to that point) ever met. She spoke excellent English and knew all about how to get from one part of Thailand to another. She hooked us up for tours and such.

Then we were shown to our room. Wow, it was terr... uh, it was rustic. It cost something like $15 a night, so we were doing pretty well. After settling in our room, we made our way to the inn where we were staying and had some food.

It was there we first met Mr. Sexyman.

He didn't seem like anything much. A very dark-skinned Thai who loved drinking and smoking. He looked fit, and he was very good at Jenga. That was pretty much all I got from him. Oh, and his English was pretty good. He informed us that he would be our guide. He also tried to convince us to go on a more demanding tour than the one we were signed up for. But since we were sick we declined.

It was a good move.

The next day, we met Mr. Sexyman in the inn, and it was off from there to Khao Sok national park. Now, Khao Sok has two areas: a path, full of small, separated rocks, and the rainforest, full of brambles, snakes, and what-not. We were informed that we'd need a lot of bug spray and good hiking shoes. We duly obliged. And what about Mr. Sexyman?

No bug spray. Barefoot.

What?

Yup. He insisted on walking the entire time, on jagged rocks, barefoot.

It must be a Thai thing! Surely all the other guides were barefoot?

Nope. Just him.

I thought to myself, "what a badass."

As we walked further--maybe half an hour--Mr. Sexyman suddenly started up. He heard something. I heard nothing. He then started making some kind of call.

Nothing happened.

Then, about five minutes later? Monkeys.

Yup. He can call monkeys. He can also tell when they're in a 1,500 foot radius. In fact, not only can he tell when they're near and draw them out, he can see them (and point to them) when we haven't the foggiest idea what he's seeing.

Anyway, the monkeys came. Dream fulfilled. They skittered down to the forest floot, and a baby monkey scurried toward some pineapple Mr. Sexyman had cut up for them. He carried it away eagerly.

Wow. I'm starting to get very attracted to Mr. Sexyman.

Then, after walking us for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, we took a break. I thought, "this isn't so bad." Then we got on the real trail.

This was the most treacherous, draining hike I've ever been on. Let me spoil the surprise and tell you that the hike lasted a total of 7 hrs. 30 min. And the terrain! Holy crap. The steepest inclines and declines I've ever walked up or down without having to literally climb (sometimes I had to literally climb). Mr. Sexyman walked it all no problem. In fact, throughout the course of the hike, he lost his balance just two times, for incredibly brief periods of time.

I can't communicate to you how amazing that feat is. Just trust me--the man has the balance of a land-ninja.

After about twenty minutes walking through this territory, wife and I were pouring sweat. It was wetting my shirt, dripping on my glasses, mussing up my hair, etc. Mr. Sexyman? Didn't break a sweat.

Ever.

Not for the whole hike.

Then, we got to the main sight of our hike: a nice waterfall with a pool at the bottom where you can swim. So wife and I swam--we needed to cool off, and good Lord it was cold. Like, you never get warm in it, you just get numb. And while we swam (and ate lunch) Mr. Sexyman kept to himself a bit and carved something. What did he carve?

Two bamboo cups.

Yup, he just made two cups for us while we were swimming.

Then he caught a fish with his bare hands.

That's right, some real Tom-Hanks-in-Castaway-near-the-end-of-the-movie shit, he just reached his hand in the pond we were swimming in and caught a fish. In fairness, it took him three tries to do this.

After that, we took a different way back. Along the way, he swiped suddenly at a tree. I heard a strange squealing sound and then I looked into his hand.

He had caught a chameleon with his bare hands.

Then, for the topper, we took a different way back, and came to some rapids. Apparently, most people swam across these rapids, because the rocks you had to traverse were too separated to step across.

So I guess we have to swim?

Nope.

Mr. Sexyman cut (with his machete) some thick vines from the forest canopy, hooked one set to the trees on our side of the river, skipped across the rocks, hooked another vine to the other canopy, skipped to the middle and tied these thick vines together with his bare hands, and made a rope hanger for us to hold on to so we could cross the rapids without getting wet.

It took him half an hour. Maybe twenty minutes.

I am not making this up.

So I believe Mike about his dad. I've met Mr. Sexyman. I might even believe that Aleks Emelienko hunted a bear with nothing but a knife. After all, I've met Mr. Sexyman.

He's not perfect, though. He asked a lot of personal questions.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Chiang Mai Adventure, Part 3

So, we last left on a cliff-hanger.

I bet you were worried.

Well, as I told mom in a separate email, it really shouldn't have ended with "the horror. the horror." More like, "the mild discomfort. The mild discomfort."

Here's what happened:

After seeing the tea-leaf demonstration, it was time to go to bed. So wife and I retired to our home-stay and took a better look around. We were pleased to find a light in our room. That was the last bit of pleasure.

The bed was rock-hard, like my abs, in my head. It was not comfortable, like standing very close to me. The pillows wrapped little rocks. Why wrap rocks? Why not just put the rocks there?

(OK, they weren't rocks. Rocks would have been more uncomfortable. I'll grant that.)

The bathroom was a fucking enigma, man. Don't get me wrong--I knew what I was supposed to do, and where I was supposed to put it. There was a toilet bowl and even a basin behind it--no squat toilets here!--but there was no flusher. Like, once you were done, what were you supposed to do? All I could was a shower nozzle and two dark-looking buckets of water. Was I supposed to squirt myself off? Was I supposed to have gone in the bucket? I didn't know. Wife couldn't figure it out either. So I just went and let God sort it out.

Then there was the extreme coldness. Although Chiang Mai is hot by day, it is uncomfortable at night, unless you (1) wear a lot of clothing and (2) move around a lot. I had (1) totally covered. It was (2) that's the problem. Moreover, (1) wasn't all it was cracked up to be. It's not comfortable sleeping in a jacket under any circumstances, but when your jacket is very thin, and your covers are not covers, but a patchwork of 1'x1' quilts, you get cold. There was a lot of snuggling that night. But not out of love. It was a purely mechanical, no funny-business kind of snuggling.

Hmm. I guess the word "snuggling" is inapt, then. Let's call it "need-based snuggling."

But I haven't gotten to the best part: the roosters.

Now, earlier that day, I found the village roosters hilarious. "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" they'd shriek, and then I'd have a laugh as they skipped from rock to rock. I looked forward to having nature's alarm clock wake me up.

And by God, they woke me up. At 2 am.

Here's the thing about roosters that you might think if you haven't spent much time around them. You may think, "roosters only cock-a-doodle when they wake up, right?" No, sir. Roosters never shut the fuck up.

They start at 2 am and they finish at 6 pm. And it's like they have some kind of rooster-off. Who can piss the humans off the most? And they all win.

So there I was, cold, back-pained, and driven mad by roosterdom. And then? 6:45 rolled around. Wife and I got up, angry ghosts of our former selves. Hair mussed, hungry, but very confused. You know that kind of confused--that "I'm so drowsy I forgot who I am" confused? That was me.

And then Arree greeted us.

She had breakfast ready, and what was it? Well, new, sweet breads. Fairly yummy, I'd say. Also, some coffee. Thank God. And ... stew? OK. I mean, it wasn't new stew--it was the two soups we had last night and mixed together. And there was a lot of rice. And fried eggs, on white bread. And fruits! It was actually a lot of breakfast, now that I think about it.

To thank her, I wanted to say, "that was delicious." So I took out my Thai phrase book and looked that up. I found it, but I had no idea how to say it. So I gave the book to her, pointing to the phrase I wanted her to understand. In other words, I wanted her to read, "that was delicious" and then say to me and wife, "you're welcome. Sorry about the roosters."

Now, there's a funny thing about communication; there's a lot of shared principles that enable even rudimentary versions of it. For instance, if I don't know how to say "I want something to drink", I'll point to me and make a drinking motion. People always understand this. But what if they didn't? What if they though I was saying there was something wrong with my arm? Nothing rules that out. So, when I give someone who's never spoken a word of English a Thai phrase book and point her to the word I want her to read, what does she do? She points to her eye and closes it.

What??

She points to her and closes it, and then opens it, and finally wife says, "oh! She can't see well enough to read!" Sure enough this was right. So I gave her my glasses. She took them and put them in front of her face, sort of. They were actually diagonal across her face, because she was 4'10". And then what does she do? She starts reading, out loud, all the words in the book. So, when I pointed her to a word and asked her to read it, she pronounced it and every other word.

Oh well.

The rest of the day was devoted to white-water rafting and a trek to a waterfall. White-water rafting was a lot of fun--the most fun part of the honeymoon, up to that point. We travelled, once again, with the Dutch family. But travelling with us was also Ian Williams, the chief Asia correspondent for NBC. It's not often you get to meet the such a person. But when you do, you know by hearing him that you needed to hear about many more world events from him. I would listen to him read the weather.

There's not much to say about the white-water rafting, alas. I felt as though my rowing skills improved, that I saw neat parts of Thailand, and that it was good that I re-learned how to swim in August. And as for the waterfall: eh. It's a waterfall.

So ends the Chiang Mai adventure. Next up: the food of Thailand!

Monday, January 05, 2009

Chiang Mai Adventure, Part 2

So first, a word of explanation: i haven't blogged for the last few days because i've been on an island, koh lanta, with spotty, limited internet access. More important, though, the keyboard available is rubber. This means that it's really hard to type on. It also means that this post will probably have lots of orthographical and punctuation-errors. capitatlization, as you've no doubt noticed, will also fall by the wayside. so be it.

when we last left off, wife and i had just arrived at our home-base for our "flight of the gibbon adventure". today, we were scheduled to do ziplining and a home-stay, that is, to stay overnight in a dilapidated village with a host from the village.

the first thing to do was the ziplining. we were set up on the ziplining with a dutch family, the dufornees, consisting of a mom, a dad, and four teenage children--three boys and a girl. I was a bit worried about hanging out with three teenage boys, but as it turns out, they were amazingly well-behaved. that was nice.

our guides for the ziplining were "tiger" and "leo"--these were not their real names, but they were easy for us to pronounce, and they were named after local thai beers.

here's how the ziplining worked: you were strapped to a line via a harness, and part of your harness was a small wheel that rolled along the line. you were also given a brake in case you built up too much speed as you approached your destination. regardless of your speed, though, you had to raise your legs as you approached your destination so that you didn't bump your ankles on the wooden platform you sped towards. plus, you were given a helmet and a fifteen minute talk before hand about safety. the overall effect of everything was to worry you. you thought of two things: "make sure to apply the brake correctly" and "raise my getaway sticks so they don't get clobbered by wood."

wife and i courteously and fearfully let the dutch zipline first. no casualties. good sign! then i did it.

it was fairly nerve-wracking. i didn't look down, but i did hang, however briefly, over a pit filled with brush, trees, and brambles. i certainly would have broken something had i fallen, and i would have been very terrified. moreover, as i ziplined across the pit, i found myself spinning around, such that my back faced the platform i was speeding towards. this unnerved me, because i couldn't see if my legs were raised high enough. plus, right before setting off, leo screamed, "wait, wait!", giving me the impression i forgot something very important, like the anti-monkey repellent. But i hadn't. and overall, i didn't really 'speed" towards the platformed. more like a quick gambole (sp?). so it wasn't really that scary.

Also, as it turned out, leo was a nutty thai who screamed "wait, wait!" at least once during each ziplining session. It started out scary, then it got funny, then it got to be something you tune out.

i don't know how many ziplinings we did in total. maybe 10, maybe more. it was a nice experience, though. our guides spoke better english than the average thai, the dutch were nice, we got lots of pictures, and nothing was too scary.

then we got back to the village.

we were supposed to have dinner with our hosts that night. wife and my hosts were two older thais, mr. nong and arree. mr. nong and arree spoke no english. not even yes, no, and thank you. nothing. that was ok enough, though, because wife and i could point to things on the dinner table, raise our eyebrows questioningly, and wait for a forthcoming thai vocabulary word. i don't remember what we were told, but it passed the time.

truth be told, i was a little nervous before the dinner--in the village square, there was a butcher selling fresh meat. the thing is, the meat was not in any way cooled. it was just sitting out in the sun, while flies swarmed to it, batted away occasionally by the butcher. one guy bought a piece of raw meat and put it into his coat pocket. is that sanitary? moreover, what else do thais put in their pockets? anyway, this was enough to make mrs. dufornee swear off eating anything for dinner, and enough to worry me a bit.

what was a typical thai village dinner, you may ask? i of course dont know, but i can tell you what we had. let's see: two small, cold omelettes, a bowl of rice drenched in a sweet syrup, water, tea, two bowls of stew--one with ground up beef or pork along with something that tasted like a combination of water chestnuts and spinach, and one with ground up beef or pork along with something that looked like kale. there was also rice.

now, there's a thai custom where finishing your food is an insult to the chef, sort of. it shows that he didn't make enough food for you. so even if you want to finish it, you should refrain. with arree things were different. as soon as you got close to finishing your bowl of stuff, arree insisted you have more stuff. so in order not to insult her, you had to take a second portion and finish almost none of it. seems like a waste to me.

after we had dinner, we went to the town square to have drinks with the villagers and listen to them sing.

let me tell you, those guys get drunk. think american Indian reservation. and they sing. badly. and they ask you for money. for the village, they say.

after hanging out with them for a bit, one of the drunken villagers, "singh" (named, as always, after thai beer. i was starting to wonder, given their drinking habits, whether these were their real names), took us to see how tea was made.

it was somewhat interesting. they took lots of tea leaves, heated them, and rolled them up, tying them up afterwards in a misleadingly simple way with bamboo shoots. also, they did this while drunk. i tried to do it, but i couldn't. of course, i had velcro instead of shoelaces until i was 13, so a knotsman i am not.

whatever. as weird and, uh, strange, as things had been, it held no candles to what we would experience that night sleeping at arree and mr. nong's house.

the horror. the horror.

to be continued!

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Chiang Mai Adventure, Part 1

The last night I spent in Bangkok was the one where I saw kickboxing in Lumphini stadium. Although I had a got time watching young boys get brained, wife and I were not so keen on Bangkok. Too much pollution, too many people, too many loud noises, too much untrustworthiness...all that leads to too much stress. So we were happy to take a trip for the next few days to Thailand's second city, Chiang Mai. (And a distant second it is: Bangkok's population: 8 million; Chiang Mai's: 150,000.)

Not to put too fine a point on it, Chiang Mai is lovely. It's people really are friendly, the scams are easier to avoid (because less agressively pursued), the street food is bananas (as in: it's bananas how good it is. Also, there are a lot of bananas), and the city is very walkable. It's like a Thai college town. Moreover, there are great deals on all sorts of clothes, art, nick-nacks, etc.

I shall cover Chiang Mai--especially its labyrinthine zoo--in a little more detail in a later post. For now, I want to tell you about my outdoor adventure, officially entitled, "Flight of the Gibbons."

Flight of the Gibbons is an outdoor adventure consisting of four parts: a ziplining experience, a whitewater rafting part, a trek to a waterfall, and a stay overnight with some Thai villagers. The first adventurous element, though, consisted of being picked up.

Supposedly, we were going to be picked up at 8:30 in front of our hotel. So we woke up at 7 am (or maybe even 6:30, I forget), got to the front of our hotel by 8:15, and waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, at 9:20, the shuttle arrived to pick us up. Only one problem: it didn't arrive to pick us up; it arrived to pick up a bunch of other guests from our hotel. But not us.

We talked to the agency and they assured us another shuttle would be by to pick us up in twenty minutes. So we waited.

20 minutes. I read my philosophy book.



40 minutes. I'm really into my book now.



60 minutes. I'm sleepy. Can I go nap nap?



70 minutes later, the shuttle arrived. If we weren't in Thailand, we would maybe express our displeasure. But that doesn't work in Thailand. You're supposed to display "cool heart", and if you don't--if you get visibly angry--the Thais just check out. They're done talking to you. So we didn't get visibly angry. We get on the shuttle.

About an hour later, we arrived at the village where we would be staying that night (population: 400). It was a rickety little place, full of irregularly constructed sidewalks, antique houses, outdated plumbing, and satellite TV dishes.

We got to the building that deals with Flight of the Gibbon, and inside we found a pretty little Thai lady with what seemed to be foot-long eyelashes. Beautiful, in their way. We were supposed to pay 11,300 Baht for the adventure. So we gave her 12,000.

She thought for a second.

She looked at the price. Then she looked at our money.

Finally, she took out her calculator.

She thought some more.

Finally, she figured out that 12,000-11,300=700. She gave us back 700 Bahts.

At this point, we figured out why they were two hours late.

To be continued!