Chiang Mai, Thailand

At the Chiang Mai Airport, we were met by a driver from our guesthouse and Jack Giles, a Rotary friend who lives in CM and wanted to welcome us. Upon arrival at Pak Chiang Mai B & B we had  glasses of blue butterfly flower juice and settled into our rooms. Jack came to pick up Larry and Hal for a Rotary dinner and Barb and I headed out with Dave and Alan, our ‘spares’ as we affectionately call them, to find a recommended restaurant. Unfortunately, it was closed, so we headed back to a street restaurant that we had passed earlier. We were encouraged by the fact that there were about 30 local thais eating there under the stars on folding tables and plastic stools. The specialty was plate sized fritata type dishes that were filled with mixed fish or veg or mussels or ???  We ordered all of the above, while the men headed for a store to buy beer to bring back. This was actually Barb’s second venture into street food and she was getting the knack of it...and the good news is no tummy issues. I think the beer cost more than the dinner, which was about $3 each.

The next day Barb signed up for a cooking class and I took ‘the spares’ to visit a Buddhist site with both old and new shrines/temples and to join the ‘Monk Chat Club’ which is an open area with concrete tables and benches where one is encouraged to help the local monks or novices practice their English. We soon had a group of local girls join in and we could have spent hours with them as enthusiastic as they were to speak English. We eventually headed to the ‘anything BUT Buddhist shopping mall’...yikes!...to do some shopping for the wives left at home. We took one of the red trucks, the back of which resembled an open air paddy wagon. Our evening adventure was a trip to a huge open air market...Barb and I shopped while the men drank beer and took in the local color. The area is known for fish restaurants, and dance performances by zeigfield costumed transvestites...something for everyone!

The wives and the spares were invited along with the Rotarians to visit some hill tribe villages that are being considered for improved water supply projects. The format was to gather in the village church or meeting hall and listen to the villagers’ current experiences of hauling water, broken pipes, the dilemna of water not running up hill, etc. in an effort to convince the Rotarians that they need help. We never heard a drum, but in no time at all the venues were full and lots of opinions expressed. The women were obviously the force behind the men and were clear that the labor would be provided by the villagers if Rotary could come up with an engineering plan and the materials, ie the money.

Obviously we were NOT priority passengers! 

Upgraded to a suite because other room noisy and too light.

Fortunately there was also a shower!

Monk and student chat...good fun!

Via paddy wagon truck taxi to the Mall.

Rice candy at the daily food market.

Dave and Alan meet a leader of a hill tribe.

\

This was the REAL leader!

This house was having the floor replaced with new boards.

Washing your own clothes starts at an early age.

Lunch was one of the best meals yet at a crossroads open air ‘restaurant’ with big pots of simmering curry and precooked noodles just reheated quickly in pots of boiling water. This was followed by one more village and a quick drive to the Burmese border and then thru a Chinese refugee town which was once a shanty town and is now quite built up, but the inhabitants are not allowed to expand beyond their restricted area. I wish them luck in trying to keep the Chinese from expanding!! Remember TIBET!! 

One of the Rotarians with a small upscale cafe treated all of us and about 6 more people who were officers of their Chiang Mai clubs to another great meal...hits were the salmon in a red curry sauce and a fish that had the meat cut out in pieces, sort of tempura’d then restacked on top of the tempura’d head, skeletal body and tail...interesting presentation and melt in your mouth.  A photo would have been helpful!

Jack’s wife, Yohan, then took Barb and I to the night market along with the entire population of Chiang Mai for a crushing stroll thru the rows of vendors. Fortunately they closed down at 11 or we might still be there!

Packing up, lunch with Jack and Yohan and then off to the airport headed to Bangkok for the night were followed by an early departure for Kathmandu the next day, Sunday, October 14. Larry and I were wide eyed looking at all the changes, Hal had been there in '03 and '08, Dave hadn’t seen it since the late 70’s and Alan and Barb, along with the rest of us, were experiencing the usual sensory overload that Kathmandu always presents. Our guest house is in a residential neighborhood, clean and comfortable with a nice lounge that we easily manage to take over for our gin and tonic and everest beer happy hours.

Thai Adventures

An old draft once lost and now found...

Apologies to my readers...going non stop in hot humid weather left little energy to write and this is the first day in Nepal that the internet has worked for me in our guesthouse.

We have now traveled from Osaka to Bangkok where we met Barb and Hal.  Our hotel, or serviced apartments, was perfectly located to be able to jump on a boat for several different destinations along the Chao Praya River or the Skytrain  to take us to destinations inland...both of these modes of transportation enable the traveler to avoid traffic on the roads.  We experienced the wisdom of this when we went to meet friends at a restaurant not accessible by boat or skytrain that should have taken 15 minutes to get to and we sat in a taxi for 1 1/2 hours!#$%&!  Interesting conversation with friends Thomas and Hilda Fisler, who are Swiss, lived in Nepal when we did, have lived in Bangkok for five years while Thomas commuted to Myanmar every week and are off to Northern Korea for the next four to five years...not the shopping mecca that Hilda loves, but certainly will top up the retirement account!

We enjoyed introducing Barb to the sites of Bangkok including the Reclining Buddha, one of the royal palaces built in 1900 that is the largest golden teak building in the world and a wild ride with 4 of us squeezed into a tuk tuk.  Our efforts to find a particular market in Chinatown resulted in ending up in Indiatown where we stumbled upon a wonderful Sikh temple.  We found covers for our heads and took an elevator up to a huge hall where people were praying and listening to classic Hindi music being played on the tabla drums and a harmonium accompanying the singing.  Reading various posted papers we learned that the Sikhs are an inclusive group who believe in clean living, helping and receiving any and all people, including feeding whoever comes into their temple where lunch is served every day without cost.  Because they are from India, they spoke beautiful Queen's English.  I am always surprised that so few Thai people speak English given the importance of tourism.

Our dinner destination, the Queen of Curry was recommended by fellow hotel dwellers, and it did not disappoint.  It was some of the best Thai food we have ever eaten...and washing it down with plenty of Singha beer helped replenish the moisture levels sweated out during the day.

We received an email that our intrepid traveling duo, David Painter and Alan Pomatto, who were to have arrived in Chiang Mai a day ahead of us, had misread their tickets.  So after arriving early for what they thought was a 1 PM flight, it had rudely departed on time without them at 1 AM!! After lots of scrambling and a huge dose of Asian courtesy and accommodation, Cathay Pacific Airlines arranged a later departure and they arrived about an hour before we did.   It has taken more time than that to live it down, however!

A view of our hotel thru the ever present mesh of wires.

Photographer, yours truly, on the floor of 3 seater tuk tuk!

We at least refrained from licking the plates!!

The Queen of Curry herself!

Dinner with the Fislers

Could have filled the whole page with flower market photos!

A mosaic lotus thrown for one of many Buddhas.

New Sikh recruits...application still pending!

Young street performer...his brother in lavender on other side of screen.

Amazing detail work applying tiny crystal beads to the lace...

...and I mean tiny!!

24 hours in Osaka and now on our way to Bangkok.

WOW!!  first class lounge in SF was amazing...smoked salmon, shrimp wraps, sliced rare beef, sushi, and on and on.  We kept telling ourselves that there was going to be a lot more food on the plane, but the food was changed and replenished every 30 minutes and just kept getting better and better.  I can see the vacation photos now...brown hair fades to blond and add an extra 10 lbs...as the United purser said, " some people begin their trip as a passenger and end as cargo!!"

Pods not conducive to sharing a shoulder!

First class 'pods' were very comfy and cozy.  I will have to get new 1st class glasses, tho, because the screen is not at quite the right distance for the ones I have.  It's always something!!

We walked out of the terminal in Osaka and across a bridge to the spotless train station, where we boarded our rap;t (that's how it is spelled) express with reserved seats for the 40 minute ride into town.

Our hotel was low key and well located for the favorite activity of Osakans...SHOPPING!!  Not sure I have ever seen more opportunities to shop, including the underground floors below the train station and huge shopping complexes above ground.

Pachinko madness

Add to that a plethora of Pachinko Halls with flashing lights, pedestrian streets with endless sushi counter restaurants, bicycles, neon lights and herds of people...only saw one other westerner!...and you have Osaka. We walked into one of the Pachinko halls and immediately grabbed our ears to protect them from the incessant roar of the machines...think thousands of metal balls rattling around in a conservative estimate of 1000 machines and voila! an audiologist's dream of future patients!!

Loved the classic Japanese quirky style of layering puffy skirts over tights with rhinestones on the cuffs, pointy toed high heels in crazy prints with lacy socks.  I told Larry that it worked because they are all size petite! There are more and more with dyed hair that seems to work better than in the old days when it was just not quite right for their skin coloring.  And speaking of coloring, it is hard to not stare at the porcelain complexions of the women...stunningly beautiful faces.

Now I don't mean to be indelicate here, but a review of a visit to Japan would not be complete without mentioning the toilet seats!  I am a convert to the warm toilet seats with all the buttons that activate 'bidet or spray'. Then there was the button that had a musical note on it and while i expected music, it replicated the sound of a flushing toilet to mask any other noise...and sounded not unlike the Pachinko hall!!

Don't recall seeing John Wayne with that tie!!

It was 90 degrees when we arrived.

Another feast for the eyes was the food hall in the Takashiyama Department Store.  As far as one could see and gorgeous prepared food, with a focus on Italian goodies for the Italian Food Fest!!  We encountered the $55 cantaloupe and picture perfect bunch of grapes, exactly like the one we saw in Kyoto a few years ago.


We lunched on a noodle goodie with squid and pork and what sounds weird, but was quite tasty, cole slaw mixed in egg and probably thick cream, put on a griddle in a huge mound,  pressed flat, fried, then flipped to brown on the other side before folding over and sprinkling dried shaved smoked salmon on top.

Back to the airport via train and passed the hotel that wins for the best name:  WHITE CHAPEL CHRISTMAS HOTEL complete with an enormous Santa Claus on the roof!!

Dotonbori Shopping Area

31 Flavors : 1;  Starbucks:  lost count!

   

Arrived at the airport with time to spare and got to observe the opening of the Thai Airways ticket counter.  The 10 female employees gathered in a circle to look over the day's paperwork and then lined up in front of the counter, bowed and welcomed the waiting passengers with the classic Japanese bow of respect.  Very nice.  We are now in the Thai Airways Business Lounge, which is not SFO First, but hopefully the food on the plane will be thai and I can continue working on my 'travelers' ten'!!

A grand kids fix, new chrome book and one last repack...

Grands are great and Erin and Justin arrived after dinner, baths and stories, so we had special time with the boys all to ourselves...when they are perfect!  Today we did the school drop offs...Carter is literally able to direct us from one side of San Francisco to the other!  Friday is a special morning assembly in the courtyard at Carter's school .  All the men teachers wear their guayavaras or Mexican Wedding Shirts, lively Mexican music is playing as the students grades K-5 stream in with their classmates and teacher.  The greetings and responses are in Spanish first and eventually in English.  A special treat was a visit from two La Luche Libra wrestlers, picture latex face masks and 12 inch wide belts.  They were treated like rock stars, and a reminder was announced to much applause that a fund raiser with more wrestlers would be happening on Sunday.  The Marshall School song was sung both in Spanish and English, awards were given to the students of the month and a myriad other recognition reasons, including one girl who was recognized for being talkative..."in a good way", clarified the principal!  I never had a teacher who thought my being talkative was a good thing!!  The ambiance at the school is wonderful and Carter rattles away in Spanish with his new friends.

Last minute purchases for the trip:  Larry a new backpack with so many pockets, it will be fun to watch him, like me, try to remember where he put everything!!  My little old travel 'puter has the slowest processer in the world, so it was time to upgrade.  I checked out the Google Nexus 7, sort of between an iPad and a phone, consulted with our in house tech expert, Justin, who recommended a Google Chrome Book because "it's all about the user interface", thank you very much, and I like a real keyboard, so here I am.

Tomorrow morning we take off with first stop Osaka, Japan for 24 hours.  Will try to actually put in a photo from there.  Adios!