Chiang Mai, 1987: the Good Old Days

[khwaibah]

Chiang Mai, 1987: the Good Old Days Steve Merchant. Tha Ton Nov 7, 2013

Features

No superhighways, ring roads, or concrete roads. The main roads to Hang Dong and Doi Saket were tree lined 2 lanes...No Tesco, Carrefour, Big C or Makro. Tantrapan and Niyom Panet catered to consumers but TVs made in Japan cost $450. $1 was 25 baht.

End of Ratchamanka Road and moat in late 80s (All Photos David Unkovich)

Traffic was mainly trucks, buses, working pick-ups and Honda dreams. Lots of students rode bicycles. Cars cost a small fortune and were confined to the very rich. Westerners couldn't own a car. A big bike was a 125 Honda Wing. Then 150 2-stroke racers came out and they were the fastest local bike on the road. Big bikes were available from Japan but it was very hard to get spares and repairs, waits lasted 4 or 5 months, officially they were illegal.

The fax was taking over from the telex but phone lines were scarce and offices charged $10 to send a page to England. An overseas phone call took hours at an office. Beer was a choice between Singha and Amarit, and it was cheap, $1 for a small bottle. Thai brown alcohol with ice and coke was the 'get drunk' drink.

More here and source - CityNews

Edited November 7, 2013 by Tywais
Trimmed to follow fair use laws and added link to the publication source.

[Greenside]

Anyone got a time machine?

[philw]

Great post mate.

Phil Williams

[MESmith]

I had to check google streetview to see if Bier Stube was still around. Even the little motorbike rental next door is still there. Shows how much I get into town now.

[Ulysses G.]

IMO, it is better now with lots more entertainment and decent foreign food, but it was more of an adventure back then.

[philw]

I was going to start a thread on this, but may as well do it here.

Who remembers Karen hut, the original PD's ( pappa dicks ), Lotus Hall ( with all the drama that that entailed.....) and the free for all (only 500 to 1,000 baht ) sexfests in the party room at cozy ??

Caddies at Gymkhana who were also players..........

[khwaibah]

I was going to start a thread on this, but may as well do it here.

Who remembers Karen hut, the original PD's ( pappa dicks ), Lotus Hall ( with all the drama that that entailed.....) and the free for all (only 500 to 1,000 baht ) sexfests in the party room at cozy ??

Caddies at Gymkhana who were also players..........

They still are by all reports..

[MESmith]

IMO, it is better now with lots more entertainment and decent foreign food, but it was more of an adventure back then.

Wasn't it the adventure, & the difference from back home that brought us here & kept us here?

Mind you, now a bit older, married with kids, the western comforts & facilities are appreciated.

[Tywais]

I have cut the article down to satisfy fair use laws regarding copyrights. I have also added a link to the source of the article. I do not want to see complaints again from publishers about copyright violations and not giving credit by direct linking to them. Also, these news article belong in the Chiang Mai News and Events sub-forum.

If I have to spend time searching for an article to find the source link due to copyright violations and not contributing the source I will just remove the article from TV. This puts Thaivisa in a bad light and a potentially legal situation.

Please follow these guidelines in future news article postings.

//Admin

[CMHomeboy78]

Steve Merchant - whoever he is - has written an interesting short article on Chiang Mai.

A few points need correcting, however.

"Westerners couldn't own a car."... I had a Toyota pickup myself. and I knew a lot of other farangs who had cars and trucks. Maybe he means that the title couldn't be in the name of a farang. I think [almost sure] it was possible, but it involved a lot of redtape. So much easier to put it in your wife's name. That's what I did.

"Marriage to a Thai was rare."... Nonsense.

"It was a quiet drive through the countryside to get to the university or zoo."... That was true in the late '70s, but by the mid '80s, Huay Kaew had become a vast construction site. Mostly five-star hotels going up. There was an army of Burmese workers in Chiang Mai then, but they were very quiet and well-behaved people.

"Beer was a choice between Singha or Amarit."... There were many others as well, but you weren't spoiled for choice the way you are now.

"Foreigners didn't have proper jobs [finance, insurance, real estate]."...Farangs were employed in a lot of different kinds of work in those days, some proper, some improper.

"The main source of decent western food was the Bierstube..."...There were others. The Pub, Coq de Or, Babylon, to name a few other restaurants. Also the "supermarket" in the basement of Tantrapan in addition to the Kasem Store which he did mention.

But all in all it's a nice little stroll down Memory Lane.

Thanks for posting.

[Beetlejuice]

I was here during those times and well before.

Yes, there were none of the availabilities of farang food and Western type venues that there is now and some of the roadways were pretty basic and slow going back in those days. There was no Internet, no mobile phones and no satellite TV. We had to rely on SW radio BBC World News and a few far and between English language newspapers to discover what was happening abroad, that`s if we could get them. It could take up to 6 years to have a telephone installed in the home.

But at the time the adults entertainments scene was thriving in Chiang Mai and one did not have to break the bank for a night out that included wine, women and song. It was a party every night and more or less anything goes was the attitudes back then.

I would still prefer those good old times in Chiang Mai compared to how it`s transpired today, when everything was cheap and cheerful, and I mean CHEAP, compared to all that was taken for granted then has now been commercialised with hyped up prices today.

[asdecas]

I don't remember the name of the bar - was it the Oasis pictured above? - that was owned by an American oil worker and his wife. They hated one another with a vengeance and spent most days having filthy loud arguments. He drank Mekhong or Sang Thip with M150 chasers all day and night, didn't take him long to die.

[Ulysses G.]

But at the time the adults entertainments scene was thriving in Chiang Mai and one did not have to break the bank for a night out that included wine, women and song. taken for granted then has now been commercialised with hyped up prices today.

The farang bar scene was worse than it is now, but there were thousands of dirt cheap Thai brothels with indentured, underage girls trying to pay back their parents debts with mostly poor Thai men as customers. Of course it was cheap.

Edited November 8, 2013 by Ulysses G.

[Roota]

>> No superhighways

In fact there was a 'superhighway' and it was even called that, though with some irony as it was a big empty four-lane road too far out of town to be of much use.

1987 was a fairly momentous year for CM. It was the first 'Visit Thailand' year, which proved surprisingly successful in starting the tourist boom (and, eventually, the expat boom). I think it was also the year that the tuk-tuks arrived, en masse literally overnight. That was my cue to get out in search of some good old days somewhere else.

That first photo by the way looks to have been taken from right in front of David's shop at the time. Anybody who motorbiked around northern Thailand back then should remember it.

[Just1Voice]

Almost 6 years ago my wife and I purchased a house on 121 (Outer Ring Rd) in a small development just north of 1008. At that time 1008 was 2 lane, and only a few businesses east of Inner Ring Rd, and almost nothing along 121. I wish I'd had the foresight, and the money, to buy up about 50+ rai back then. I'd be a very wealthy man today. Restaurants, more housing developments in what were once rice paddies. More 7/11's (naturally), restaurants, Promanada mall, home improvement companies, etc., etc. The city has found us!

[egypte]

Here are some views from 1978, Chiang Mai, Doi Suthep, Doi Inthanon, sorry for the quality, these are 35 years old slides that have been moved a lot around the world and that I just digitized.... The road to Doi Inthanon was just a one way track at the time....

[Card]

1987 was the first year I visited Chiang Mai (and Thailand and SE Asia). Can't remember much as it's all a drunken haze. However, I do remember that Thais didn't wear shorts - only T-shirts and blue jeans. Oh, and the UK pound was about 40 baht. The Thais seem the same to me and everything else is about the same apart from new buildings and roads.

[Frank James]

My former wife and I visited Chiang Mai for a few days in May, 1977. We came up on the train, and it really seemed to be the end of the road. She was wild to buy some silk fabric, which seemed to be a much bigger deal back then than today. It was fifteen years before she ever made the fabric into a dress.

We were backpackers. All the way across Asia overland, we gathered with others of our kind and swapped books, and it seemed there was a lot of one-upping going on about who had visited the most remote places, and even more so, who had spent the least amount of money.

Calling home was financially out of the question. For mail we relied on "post restante", and it was so good to actually find mail waiting at General Delivery in the next town. I remember using American Express Travelers "Cheques" a lot. Haven't seen any of those for years, and would imagine that most merchants here would balk at accepting one today.

I remember suffering from the heat a lot, and all of the food seemed MUCH spicier than the "Thai food" we loved in Seattle. I don't remember any air conditioned public buildings, and our cheap rooms had maybe a beat up noisy old fan.

If you had told me that one day I would live in Chiang Mai, and love it, I would have had a good laugh in your face. This city has its irritating features, but I can't think of anywhere I would rather be. These are the good old days.

[wileycoyote]

Those were the days ,3 course Thai meals with Beers for 3 of us & change given form £3.00

[taotoo]

There was no Internet, no mobile phones and no satellite TV.

They really were behind the times back then!

[Beetlejuice]

But at the time the adults entertainments scene was thriving in Chiang Mai and one did not have to break the bank for a night out that included wine, women and song. taken for granted then has now been commercialised with hyped up prices today.

The farang bar scene was worse than it is now, but there were thousands of dirt cheap Thai brothels with indentured, underage girls trying to pay back their parents debts with mostly poor Thai men as customers. Of course it was cheap.

I totally disagree.

The bar scene was much better back in those days, we were spoilt for choice and there were many lady houses. There were live stage shows, I can even remember the Spotlight girls touting for business wearing see-through vests outside the main entrance. There was the Nine Stars (I think it was called) The Paradise bar, and the Las Vegas bar was in it`s heyday, plus too many more to mention.

Although the girls were definitely much younger, I never witnessed any under aged girls plying for trade, unless of course there were those who went looking for that sort of thing? As I have no doubts they existed, but certainly not out in the open.

Does anyone remember the Smiling Monkey restaurant? And the Wild Orchid bar run by Hill Tribe girls in the arcade?

[Sydebolle]

Times have certainly changed since then and not all changes were for the better :-)

[CMHomeboy78]

My former wife and I visited Chiang Mai for a few days in May, 1977. We came up on the train, and it really seemed to be the end of the road. She was wild to buy some silk fabric, which seemed to be a much bigger deal back then than today. It was fifteen years before she ever made the fabric into a dress.

We were backpackers. All the way across Asia overland, we gathered with others of our kind and swapped books, and it seemed there was a lot of one-upping going on about who had visited the most remote places, and even more so, who had spent the least amount of money.

Calling home was financially out of the question. For mail we relied on "post restante", and it was so good to actually find mail waiting at General Delivery in the next town. I remember using American Express Travelers "Cheques" a lot. Haven't seen any of those for years, and would imagine that most merchants here would balk at accepting one today.

I remember suffering from the heat a lot, and all of the food seemed MUCH spicier than the "Thai food" we loved in Seattle. I don't remember any air conditioned public buildings, and our cheap rooms had maybe a beat up noisy old fan.

If you had told me that one day I would live in Chiang Mai, and love it, I would have had a good laugh in your face. This city has its irritating features, but I can't think of anywhere I would rather be. These are the good old days.

I did the Hippie Trail in 1976, but didn't get to Chiang Mai until 1978 on another trip.

Istanbul to Katmandu was a mind-blowing experience in more ways than one. I'm sure you'll agree from your own travels.

We all have our favorite places. For me it was, at the time I visited them, Istanbul, Tabriz, Ishfahan, Herat, Kabul, Peshawar, Delhi, and Katmandu.

But there were many, many, other places that I passed through in a daze - either from the hash, or sensory overload, or maybe it was the shits. The trip was just too much for a young guy in his twenties to take it all in.

When I first saw Chiang Mai it beat the other places that I had been to by a factor of ten.

[Ulysses G.]

I totally disagree.

The bar scene was much better back in those days, we were spoilt for choice and there were many lady houses.

The girls in the Western oriented bars were not attractive at all ,in general, although - like now - there were a few nice looking young ladies, if you really looked. The farang-oriented scene started getting much better when Somchaii opened Cozy Corner Go-Go bar around 1993 and after a few years Spotlight expanded and got better too..

The Thai oriented lady houses/brothels were full of underaged girls until they closed most of them down for that very reason in about 1995 when the Bangkok police sudenly "discovered" a bunch of them on Kumpang Din Road. It was in all the newspapers and that is when Chiang Mai's night life started to change drastically.

Edited November 8, 2013 by Ulysses G.

[Beetlejuice]

I totally disagree.

The bar scene was much better back in those days, we were spoilt for choice and there were many lady houses.

The girls in the Western oriented bars were not attractive at all ,in general, although - like now - there were a few nice looking young ladies, if you really looked. The farang-oriented scene started getting much better when Somchaii opened Cozy Corner Go-Go bar around 1993 and after a few years Spotlight expanded and got better too..

The Thai oriented lady houses/brothels were full of underaged girls until they closed most of them down for that very reason in about 1995 when the Bangkok police sudenly "discovered" a bunch of them on Kumpang Din Road. It was in all the newspapers and that is when Chiang Mai's night life started to change drastically.

The main reasons given for the closures of the lady houses was because it was believed that these establishments were the main sources for the spread of HIV and aids in Thailand and that the diseases mostly emanated from the North. These brothels were unregulated and no health checks were imposed on the sex workers.

I can remember that back in the early 1990s was a time when the aids virus had run it`s course for many and people were dropping like flies, there were funerals taking place everywhere. Many of the brothels closed even before the government clampdowns due to the facts that sex workers were dying on a mass scale and the clienteles also became infected or stayed away. In was in the days when sex workers and customers had not realised the implications involved by the practices of unprotected sex, plus there was a wide spread use of cheap low quality condoms made in India that were virtually useless.

It was a tragedy for many, because sex workers actually believed that farangs were clean and were somehow immune from the virus. Hundreds of farangs, ex-pats and tourists unwittingly took aids back home with them; some spread it to their partners, as did their Thai counterparts and later died in their home countries.

There were raids on some bars and brothels in the search for under aged sex workers and quite a few were successful. A large quantity of girls came from Burma. Some of these Burmese under aged and legal aged sex workers who became infected with HIV were unmercifully thrown out of Thailand to try and cover up this sordid trade and actually physically escorted over the border back to Burma. When they arrived back in Burma, in many cases these girls were quietly executed and discretely deposed of as being unwanted and the whole matter was swept under the carpet.

As for the Spotlight, years ago that was the place to go for nightlife in Chiang Mai, but today that bar is only a relic of used it used to be, even the owner will admit that.

You can check out all this information for yourself.

[Ulysses G.]

As for the Spotlight, years ago that was the place to go for nightlife in Chiang Mai, but today that bar is only a relic of used it used to be, even the owner will admit that.

It is terrible compared to the late 90s and early 2000s, but still quite a bit better than the late 80s and early 90s. The Western bar scence was pitiful back then, but quite affordable.

[harrry]

Here are some views from 1978, Chiang Mai, Doi Suthep, Doi Inthanon, sorry for the quality, these are 35 years old slides that have been moved a lot around the world and that I just digitized.... The road to Doi Inthanon was just a one way track at the time....

Might have been 1984 when it became a nice wide road all the way. I remember riding a honda 70 with my daughter up to the top and having to race down as the afternoon passed on and the light tshirt and shorts were not enough for the cold that kept following us down the mountain. Then the smell of blood and bone most of the way back to town in the dark.

[egypte]

I don't remember the smell of blood, but what I do remember is that I had to change the spark plug on the "bike" halfway to the top.

The "city plug" would not work after 1200m on the bike pictured. It was a long ride then, lots of good memories.

[Johnpound46]

I was in Chiang Mai for seven months, from October 1988 until April 1989. The Superhighway had just been constructed, but traffic was not yet the nightmare it is now. Lived down the street from the Rincome hotel on Nimanhaemin, in a beautiful three-story split level house, for 3,000 baht a month. Nimanhaemin was not yet the hotspot it is now, just a relatively quiet residential street (with the DEA-compound just 200 meters from my house). Went swimming in the pool of the Rincome every weekend, for 20 baht a pop, and always enjoyed the great views on Doi Suthep. The only supermarket that I know of was in the basement of Robinsons on Mani Noppharat Road, but that Robinsons has long since vanished. The only baker that made whole wheat bread was on Moon Muang Soi 6 or 7, if memory serves. The train between Bangkok and Chiang Mai was still very comfortable and almost always pretty punctual. I remember really clear blue skies, hardly any pollution or haze.

Now when I come to Chiang Mai (especially around February/March) you can hardly see the mountain any more, or not at all, there is so much haze and pollution, and clear days seem to become more and more rare. The house that I lived in on Nimanhaemin is long gone, was already abandoned and a ruin in 1998. I find the traffic horrendous. Last time I was in Chiang Mai (2011) the Rincome had closed, so no more swimming there.

And yet I will always have a soft spot for this city. I had an amazing time there in 1988/89, came back many times and have many happy memories.

[adamchiangmai]

Who remembers the "domino" bar at thapae gate with the west-brothers and maybe the "blue moon" restaurant

of Max near todays lucky bar and nearby a 24 hours restaurant with crocodile and snake dishes. Not forget

the so called "ambush alley" behind the prince hotel. The exchange rate was about 12 Baht for 1 "deutsch mark".