April 3 (Entry #17)

Posted by Howard Simpson at 4/4/2008 5:21 AM
Categories: uncategorized
Warning: Grab a cup of coffee, this is a long one
Warning 2: The content in this entry is suitable for mature audiences only

On my own again, I headed up north to Chiang Mai, a major northern city without the same hustle and bustle of Bangkok.  Despite it being much smaller than Bangkok though, it has almost as many wats (temples).  I spent my first few hours there walking around the ancient part of the city, surrounded by a wall and moat, and saw a lot of wats.  I mean, how many wats does one city need.  I saw so many wats it left me thinking, “Wat the fuck?...”  (Get it?  Get it?!  I crack me up).

With the desire to see any more wats behind me, I signed up for a Thai cooking class.  This was an all day cooking class teaching you the basics from picking ingredients at the market to preparing and serving everything.  This class also happened to take place at the same time as one of UCLA’s tournament games.  Prompting a friend of mine, when I texted him asking for score updates because I was in cooking class, to ask, “Will you need help reattaching your testicles when you are done?”  That’s fine though.  I’m secure in my masculinity and I know who won’t be sampling any of my cooking when I get home.  In the class I cooked tom yam soup, panaeng curry with chicken, chicken with cashew nuts, and pad thai.  As a group we also  
 made papaya salad, spring rolls, and sticky rice with mango.  This was easily the best
  Thai food I have ever had, if I do say so myself.  I was quite impressed.  Now, there’s probably no way I will ever be able to recreate any of this on my own…there’s probably no way I will put in the effort to recreate this on my own…but at least I know on this one day I was a Thai cook, and a good one.

 Because of its surrounding environment, Chiang Mai is a good hopping off place for treks.  I decided to do a three day trek that included spending a night in a village populated by the Lahu Tribe (originally from Tibet).  They seemed like nice enough people.  Their village was high up in the hills and all the structures were made  
of bamboo.  I saw one girl, I would have guessed to be around 12, carrying a baby boy.  I assumed it was her little brother, until I saw her lift her shirt and start breast feeding him.  I later found out that girls in the village usually start having kids at around 14 years of age and usually have about 15 children!

Of course with trekking, and traveling in general, there are always dangers of eating something that doesn’t agree with you.  In the interest of keeping this blog as transparent to my real experiences as possible, I must share this story, but I apologize for it in advance.  When we reached our stop for the second night we sat down to relax.  I was talking to one guy on the trip and he was completely fine, drinking a beer, laughing, etc.  I swear you could see the change in his face, and within seconds he gets up and goes to the bathroom.  This poor guy was so sick.  All night through dinner and the campfire you could hear him moaning from either his bed (which is just a mattress in a big room that we were all sleeping in) or the bathroom.  Now, the bathroom was a solid 50 yard walk in complete darkness over dirt and rocks from where we slept.  And the bathroom itself was literally just a hole.  With this in mind, and the amount of times he was getting up and making the trip to the bathroom, I guess the decision was made to just bring a bucket in the room and let him go in there.  His girlfriend would then go and dump it out after each time…now that is true love.  At first, I didn’t mind.  I wasn’t in the room for most of it and because it was made from bamboo, there was plenty fresh air circulating.  When I went to bed I fell asleep right away not even noticing the bucket.  But then I woke up at one point in the night and opened my eyes to see him from the backside knelt over the bucket.  It was just about the worst thing I have ever seen with my own two eyes.  I’m talking “2girls1cup” flashbacks!  This happened one more time in the night.  After that I would wake up and lay completely still, refusing to even open my eyes for fear of what I may see.  I was so happy that it wasn’t me though and remain hopeful that I will make it through the rest of my trip without getting anything remotely that bad (I hope I didn’t just curse myself).

   That aside, the trek itself was pretty active.  I had thought that maybe there would be some driving here and there between points, but it was an honest to goodness trek.  We were dropped off at one spot on day one, rode some elephants a small distance, hiked to different villages each day, and then finally to a river on the last day where we took a bamboo raft back down to our original starting point.  And these villages were high in the mountains, often requiring hiking up steep inclines for
hours.  Needless to say I was quite tired by the end.  We also hiked through a forest fire!  Right along our path was a fire that looked like it had already engulfed a good section of the forest.  Our guide said it was not common and was probably set illegally by an elephant herder who wanted to clear the area.  I find it hard to believe it wasn’t common though, because no one seemed to care about the fire and we walked right through it as if it was supposed to be there…  

   After the tiring trek, I needed some relaxation so I headed to the city of Pai, which is just a really small chill town in the mountains.  I got a nice hut near the river and spent my first few hours just sitting on the porch reading.  After that I decided to explore some of the areas surrounding Pai…and I decided to do this on motorbike.  I know after the jeep/bus incident I said I wouldn’t drive on this trip again, but I figured, “what the hell?”  As I
jumped on the bike and started to ride I had two thoughts flash in my head: 1) Don’t go too fast and be a ‘hot rod’, whihc is what my used to call us when we were driving too fast (this is the same grandfather that broke his leg while riding a motorcycle…or maybe that’s just a story my mom told me to convince me not to ride motorcycles); 2) The first and last time I rode a motorbike was in Greece 10 years ago when a friend rented one.
He let me try it and within literally five seconds, I was on the ground…  With all this in my mind, I hit the road on my motorcycle (ok, scooter) with the wind in my hair (ok, with the wind over my helmet).  If I said I went over 50 km/hour (about 32mph) I’d be lying, but it was still fun.  I was able to check out some of the canyons and hot springs in the area, which is exactly what I needed for my still aching body.  Pai was a nice relaxing way to end my Thailand trip (at least for now…).

Thailand Fast Facts Part 1 (I come back to Thailand in a month or so):

Scuba dives: 2
Cooking classes: 1
Kilometers traveled by scooter: about 70
KFC visits: 0
Pad thai eaten: way more than I want to remember
Conversion rate when my lonely planet guide book was published (2006): 1 US$ = 41 Thai baht
Conversion rate today: 1 US$ = 31 Thai baht (meaning things are costing me about 33% than it would have two years ago…thanks US economy!)
Avg price of a plate of pad thai: still only $2.00 (in 2006 it would have been $1.50)
Friends from home: 3
Most exciting purchase: A bottle of one of Jack Daniel’s ‘scenes of Lynchburg’ commemorative bottles. (when I was at the JD distillery they told me it could only be purchased at the distillery)
UCLA tournament wins: 3
Lakers record: 3-3
Accidents while driving: 0!!
Blog entries: 2
Days: 13

Click here to see pictures of Northern Thailand
 

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