Happy Tour Of Northern Thailand : Part Two

[orang37]

4. Day 2 (Sunday) ... continued : Doi Mae Salong, the "quest" for millipede-whisky : on to Mae Sai, night at the Wang Thorn Hotel, Mae Sai.

... continued from Part One ...

After our visit to the Wat and the caves, we had some light refreshment and, Khun P. feeling very well, decided to press on to Doi Mae Salong. Weather was perfect : somewhere in the eighties F. with brilliant sunshine and very clean air, clear skies.

As we began to climb up, having passed through Fang and Tathorn, we began to see lovely small sunflowers in bloom along the road. About 10 km. or so outside Tathorn we had to get off the road because some procession was coming.

To my surprise here came a group of about 100 Thai men, ages roughly very late teens to maybe forties, wearing the yellow shirts in honor of HM, two or three carried large Thai flags. They were not uniformly dressed (i.e., pants, shoes didn't match.

They were moving fast, with a lot of energy, but not in any military or "drill" organized formation. I definitely had the impression of some form of "patriotic fervor" : this is around 11am in the morning and the sun was very intense : the marchers were, in the main, not wearing any hats.

Given that the yellow shirts that honor HM are usually worn on Mondays, not Sundays, the thought crossed my mind that this might be something related to the PAD, but they passed quickly, and I was in no mood to get out and ask the accompanying police vehicle, or bystanders, what this was about.

Many of you here, undoubtedly, already know the beauty of the high road up to Doi Mae Salong, and it would take a poem, not a travel article to express my awe and joy at the dramatic scenery and luxuriant trees and flora.

So I won't (enclose the poem) since I hate to see Farangs cry in this season when the Ping River is already high enough

We stopped for the "classic experience" of encountering a group of young Lisu along the road selling trinkets and hand embroidered small chatchkas. Trite as that sounds, for my friends, it was a great chance to interact with some children, and for Nong G. to interact with some children around his age. To say their smiles "filled us with delight" is both a cliche and very true.

By this time, this humble blade of grass (your narrator) had developed real cracks in his carapace of slightly jaded cynicism that has developed like a "spiritual callous" (this happens for many Farang living here long-term, imho), and had begun to vicariously relive his own first experiences in travelling around the far north which were so magically numinous. As my friend from Oz might say : I was "chuffed to my <deleted>."

I had made a "mental note" prior to the journey to see if I could find a bottle of the medicinal whisky you sometimes find being sold along the road around Doi Mae Salong that have long poisonous millipedes in them. While I can't afford a shrink to explain why (being a total non-drinker of alcohol [makes me ill]) I wished to acquire such a thing, I wanted one.

A slightly golden-yellow, very translucent, clear whisky (I assume a form of lao kao, or distilled from rice wine) holds the floating monster which makes any American centi-or-milli-pede I've seen look wimpy. Called "Ta kup" in Thai, "Ugong" in Chinese.

No millipede-whisky sighting on the road this time, however. When we reached the main (Chinese) settlement of Doi Mae Salong, I went into a few shops selling tea and herbs and inquired. Second shop : I lucked out and walked away with my ten-inch beauty floating in his golden soup. I have a strong intuition this bottle will come in handy some day, just a hunch

At this point (around 4PM) our little group parlayed and we decided to skip going to Doi Tung next and proceed straight to Mae Sai for our overnight stay. I was concerned if we visited Doi Tung and spent an hour there (and it's well worth an hour there !) that we might end up doing more driving at night than I was comfortable with.

We reached Mae Sai around 6PM just as it was getting slightly darker, checked into the Wang Thorn hotel. Room rates : 850 baht for me, 1100 for my friends which included an extra bed for Nong G. They had the more direct view into Burma in the morning than I did, but I was fine : because we arrived with no reservations, and I personally do not know of another acceptable quality hotel (for my friends) in Mae Sai. As usual, that price included breakfast. Given the time of year, the large number of people in the hotel, I felt that price was quite fair, and it is possible, that the hotel staff remembered me from before, I think.

My friends were tired after so many windings-up, and windings-down and decided to stay in and get room service and sleep early.

I went out to an Internet cafe on the second floor of a shopping arcade that lines the small soi running from Mae Sai's main drag to the Wang Thorn (and on to the parking lot of the Wang Thorn). This shop advertises a "4mb" connection, by the way.

When I waited more than two minutes and the Bangkok Post home page did not come up on the computer I rented I beckoned the manager (owner ?) over and commented (in Thai) that he must be having a problem with his server since this was a website in Thailand I was accessing.

And then happened one of those very rare times when, for unknown reasons, I really pissed off a Thai. He seemed to take this as a personal insult and got angry. He grabbed the mouse and went to the Google home page. I explained to him (I thought in very polite Thai, using "Khrup" frequently) that I did not want to see Google, but the Bangkok Post home page.

To make the story short : he lost his temper and started shouting at me : "you problem-man, you go, you no pay."

And I left, found another internet rental facility on the main street of Mae Sai and was viewing the Bangkok Post home page in under 15 seconds of having navigated to it.

The next day I talked to an old friend of mine (Burmese-Thai) who has a shop in the same arcade, and he commented that the owner of the internet cafe was Burmese, not Thai, and that he was "baa" (nuts). While this episode shocked me, the owner's reaction to me was so far off the scale, that it was easy for me to write off his aggressive behavior. Maybe he was just having a bad day and I was the lighted match that met his gasoline.

I am in the habit of examining my behavior, and I thought over what happened and tried to think if I had, in any way, non-verbally communicated hostility or whatever. But I couldn't find fault with myself so I just put the guilt in the guilt-buffer for use later

Next day, after breakfast, we sight-seed around Mae Sai, watched the flow of people across the bridge, my friends did some minor shopping for gifts for their friends, and then we parlayed : deciding to stop next at Wat Rong Khun on the outskirts of Chiang Rai, near where the road forks to Payao and Chiang Mai. I thought about going into Chiang Rai to visit the Oum Kham private museum, but wasn't sure it was open Monday, and also we had to be back in Chiang Mai by 9PM that night, and I didn't' want to be driving in the dark.

As many of you already know Wat Rong Khun is a remarkable innovation in Thai Temple architecture by renowned artist Chalermchai Kositpipat :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wat_Rong_Khun

You can read Khun Chalermchai's bio here and find some of his art on display :

http://www.rama9art.org/chalermchai/bio.html

I am already "nuts about Nagas" (Thai : phayanak) : and I love to look at this Temple which, to my eyes, is like a snow-white hallucinatory visitation made of snow-flakes from one of the "celestial abodes" (devaloks) from some level of Mt. Meru I am sure I will never see from the depths of the hel_l (nalok) I will surely be going to next

Next stop : the Charin (sometimes spelled 'Charoen') Garden Resort in Amphur Mae Suai on the main road to Chiang Mai for the world's best coconut pie while sitting on a table next to the Mae Lau river which, this time of year, while no longer "in spate," is still muddy and high on the banks.

I discovered this place on my first drive to Chiang Rai many years ago, and was delighted to see the owners start selling their incredible pies in places like Tesco Lotus in later years.

Okay, not much to say about the drive back to Chiang Mai other than we were waved through all police check-points without being stopped, and the weather stayed perfect. Traffic moderate, with occasional slow-downs as we got stuck behind a truck on the grades (not being Thai, I am afraid to pass on blind turns).

5. Conclusions and after-thoughts

My friends and I talked about the trip several times over the next few days in Chiang Mai : we agreed that it would have been better, with hindsight, to have spent one more "night on the road," slowed down a little bit more, perhaps one night in Chiang Rai, or, perhaps, a side trip to Chiang Saen to see the Mekong and visit the National Museum there, then a night in Chiang Rai. Another excellent alternative would have been to the long easy high-speed drive to Payao with a visit there to Wat Si Soon Khum and the small (very high quality) regional-level museum left of that Wat, then a night in Payao somewhere near the lake before coming back to Chiang Mai.

I was exhausted from the driving I did on Monday, but then (dammit) I am no "young buck" anymore

That's all folks.