One of the dudes from Mae Sot became ill and has been recuperating in Chiang Mai, which has given me the perfect excuse to stay here longer. I also got my Laos visa this week. And now the weekend is upon me, so even more of a reason to stay in Chiang Mai!
So what is there to do here? Well, I've been eating good food -- a little Mexican, Italian, Indian, and Mediterranean. I've gone mall crawling, got a Thai massage (no shady business), and bought some souvenirs.
I also ventured into a strip club (for investigational purposes), which was an interesting experience. This is the shady part of SE Asian travel that I had heard about! The "club" has a stage with a bunch of women dressed in negligees dancing like the Robert Palmer girls. They are totally expressionless. It is not just a little creepy. They have numbers pin to them, and you can request one of them over to your table. You get to chat them up, and if you want to, you can pay the "bar fine" to relieve them of their responsibilities for the rest of the night. Then anything else that happens is up to you and the girl. No, I didn't get further than sitting in the corner with my friends, sipping orange juices, and not getting any love from the ladies. Was it the orange juice, the fact that I was the only Asian tourist there, or the fact that we didn't look like a bunch of overweight wankers trawling for ho's? I guess I'll never know. Back in the States, the strippers put on a pretty good show because that's the limit of the action. In Thailand, they don't put on ANY show, because they want you to buy them for the night. Wierd.
We also went to a couple bars where the bar girls would call out to my Americano friends but wouldn't give me any eye contact. Wierd how that is.
I already mentioned the numerous transvestites as bar girls and bartenders. Just like riding a motorbike in Thailand, the best policy is to play it cool, like Fonzie.
Okay, I realize this may breach the whole PG-rating of this blog, but this is the type of stuff my friends want to hear about. Go figure.
Friday, July 08, 2005
I'm still in Chiang Mai!
Thursday, July 07, 2005
More sticker photos!
Six moods in the photo booth. Print this photo out and make a cube out of it; it's like a magic eight ball!
Stylin' sunglasses at the Central Mall
I'm thinking Bono during the Zooropa tour. We met Sandra, on her third (and last) month of holiday from Berlin. I used to think three months was a long time, but not anymore --it's a good start!
Yet another visit to a hospital
Someone had to get their rabies vaccination, so we dropped by the Chiang Mai Ram Hospital. Here the registration ladies are giggling at something Ben wrote down.
Music at Brasserie
If you make it to Chiang Mai, and you like rock 'n roll, check out Khun Took's mastery of classic rock at Brasserie. It reminded that there really is rock 'n roll, not just whiny falsetto singing alterno/pop.
Sunday market in Chiang Mai
Starting at the east gate, this market extends down several blocks into the city center. Lots of cool stuff and great food.
Mall crawling in Chiang Mai
This is something that could never happen in Mae Sot. When let loose in a mall, the volunteers flocked to the lazy boy/back massager display at the department store. It was air-conditioned and clean.
Later on in the night, somewhere else...
Afterwards, Emily, Ben, Tap (Alex's Thai friend), Alex, and Heyman (teaching anatomy at the Mae Tao Clinic) headed to the Fashion club afterwards where Tap's brother was playing bass in the band.
Good times in Chiang Mai
Alex had spent a year in Chiang Mai five years ago teaching English. We were able to find some hotspots for partying with his local connections. This place had opened up this year. No other tourists were here.
Time for meditation
I spent a whole day trying to feel a single hair move under my nose, but all I felt were the mosquitos biting my legs.
Sticker photos
All the rage over Asia a few years ago, I'm not sure this ever caught on back in the States. We climbed into a photo booth at a mall and had these pictures taken -- all for 39 BHT!
Night Bazaar stalls
They sell pirated DVDs, CDs, Xbox & PS2 games here. They have name brand watches and clothes at rip-off prices. There are also a lot of hand-made goods here, as well as cultural and traditional clothing that only farangs wear, like my fisherman clothes.
Night Bazaar
A great thing about Chiang Mai is their night bazaar. Loads of stalls open up and they pretty much sell the same crap, so you can bargain hard and get that favorite woodcarving you've always wanted.
Asia is the land of technology!
Peter is posing by a display of hi-tech goods at a mall. This boom-box plays both sides of a record without having to flip it over. This was so ahead of its time, back in the day, that none of them made it to my neighborhood!
Well-behaved dogs
The dogs of Thailand. This is an impressive display of intellect and training. I watched the dog change seating positions so that it could look in the opposite direction. Most dogs don't exhibit such delicate training. The dogs of Mae Sot, for instance, attacked four or five volunteers during my stay there. They all proceeded to get their rabies vaccination (a relatively cheap series, costing about $50 as opposed to $1000 in the States). Even I got bit by a dog on Ko Pha Ngan. I chose NOT to get my rabies vaccination; no signs of rabies have set in yet!
The Land of Tuk-tuks
These propane-powered beasts flood the streets of Thailand. They emit a cloud of black smoke and rattle away with a rapid-fire "tuk-tuk" sound.
Jackfruit tree
There was this enormous jackfruit tree at the temple. Jackfruit, a fruit not unlike the durian, but with small spikes and green not brown, grows on trees like this. Imagine one dropping on your head!
Gilded Buddhas
This may not have been what Gautama Buddha had in mind...but with the blue sky and the sun reflecting off the gold, it was a pretty sight.
Gilded Stupa
It doesn't seem quite right for everything at the Buddhist temple to be gilded in gold, but there you have it.
The duality of man
Visiting a Buddhist can invoke different reactions in different people. Ben is contemplating the capriciousness of life and the frailty of human integrity in the modern world. He is pondering, "Can I live a life as an ascetic in a monastery?" Emily is wondering what monks wear under their robes.
The top of the stairs
They say a elephant was carrying this temple on his back and then DIED here, so they built the temple here. And the elephant's last words were to make this temple FREE to all Thai's like all temples, except farang's (foreigners) should pay 30 BHT to enter.
Stairway to the temple
This was a pretty nice hike up the stairs to the top, where the temple was located.
Overlooking Chiang Mai
A couple days later we took the scooters up the mountain and got a great view of the city below.
Dinner at Drunken Flower
Our first night in Chiang Mai, we headed to Drunken Flower -- a place recommended by the Lonely Planet, and frequented by NGOs. There was a banjo-playing farang and a Thai singer -- good music. Alex ran into one of his friends from his stint in Chiang Mai five years ago -- this reccurred a couple more times during weekend.
Sunsetting behind the mountain
Another gorgeous sky. On the top of that mountain is a temple that we visited a couple days later. Here we were looking for Batman Begins. This is one of the malls in Chiang Mai. We ended up going to the spectacular new mall near the airport.
Stairway to the Stupa
This naga-lined stairway was at the temple and went up to a large stupa at the top.
No, guys, act like you're still sweeping...
I asked permission to take their photos, but they refused to continue sweeping. What can you do? I read somewhere that a lot of Thai males (most of them?) join a monastery at some point in their life. So, it is not uncommon to see a lot of kids walking around in bright orange robes. In the mornings, it is a beautiful sight to see lines of orange robes walking the empty sidewalks with their buckets, receiving food offerings from the businesses and people.
Buddha with his head
There were a series of tunnels at this temple, which made it not so boring. I'm really not into temples, but I like the ones that look like they're from Indiana Jones.
Wat U Mong
Our first destination after the gas station was to this temple on a hill. Besides hordes of mosquitos, there were inspirational sayings written in Thai and English nailed to the trees in the forest. There was also this collection of Buddha heads.
Where do we go now?
(Nice butt shot, Alex) It took us a bit to get started. We had to figure out where the gas station was, and how to get there. The inner loop around the old city center goes counter-clockwise, and the outer loop on the other side of the moat and brickwall goes clockwise. It makes for some interesting navigation. Driving in Thailand, you have to be relaxed, and not make sudden moves as the whole system relies on everyone NOT getting excited. You have to be like Fonzie.
Getting our motorbikes
We got into Chiang Mai around 1400. After getting lunch (I had some Mexican food!), we hired some four bikes. Riding sure beats walking in the heat!
Strange bedfellows
A cozy shot of Alex and Peter getting to know one another on the bus journey to Chiang Mai. Interestingly, I think homosexuality is expressed as cross-dressing a lot in Thailand. I was pretty skeeved out by this when I first arrived, but I've really gotten used to it. I played billiards with Alex and a couple of bar girls while in Chiang Mai. He was teamed up with a cute girl, and I was teamed up with a "girl" with man-hands. Whenever she gave me the cue stick, her hand would not-so-accidentally brush against mine, but I was like, whatever. That's Thailand, man.
A boring bus ride?
It was a six-and-a-half hour bus journey from Mae-why-am-I-still-here?-Sot to Chiang Mai. There was little to do except watch the scenery pass by. I actually noticed our driver was falling asleep for the first hour climbing the steep mountain (Magic Mountain?) road. He kept playing with the stereo dial to keep from nodding off. I was pretty relaxed about this, but I made the mistake of mentioning this to Emily, who was a bit gripped for the rest of the hour. It helped when the driver had a bottle of Red Bull and put on some sunglasses for the rest of the trip.
What did I do for two months in Mae Sot?
My days in this Thai-Burmese border town started with waking up to tinny brassy music blaring from a loudspeaker in the distance followed by some Thai mumbling. I roused myself from slumber quite easily; my room was really bright even at 0630. I slept under a mosquito net with a fan blowing every night, but it usually became quite cool in the early morning hours. I started taking warm showers again while in Mae Sot. There was a small water heater in my bathroom which did an okay job at warming things up. My bathroom had a western toilet, but it was set on top of a squatter; so sitting on it was like being a kid in an adult's chair, legs hanging free. I didn't like this set up so I bought a step stool for my feet during my first week there. My bathroom was shared with some cockroaches and ants. That was nice.
I spent my mornings typing in my journal, listening to the birds in the trees around my house. It was really relaxing -- a good way to start the morning.
I had breakfast most of the days. I kept a box of granola cereal and yoghurt drink in the fridge down in the common area. Sometimes there were new guests having breakfast, and it was fun to discover what other people were doing in town. A lot of vistors were volunteers on brief missions, stopping for a couple days before moving on, while some were there for a few weeks. When June hit, a lot people came to stay all summer. We had some guests who were working for the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) -- real high brow stuff. A lot of the guests were volunteering at the Mae Tao Clinic or teaching English to Burmese groups. There were a few who were working towards their Masters Degrees in Public Health or International Development or other humanitarian stuff that I never heard of back in college.
Mae Sot had an interesting mix of NGO's (non-governmental organizations) including Medecins sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders), Aide Medical Internationale, the International Committee for the Red Cross, and the International Organization for Migrant Workers to name a few. These NGO's were referred to by their acronyms not unlike the acronym soup we used on deployment in Baghdad. When I first arrived, people slung those acronyms around me with an air of indifference, as if their meaning was common knowledge, certainly for any experienced NGO volunteer.
I usually made it to the clinic by 0930 via my motorbike. My first impression of the clinic: I walked passed it and had to ask for directions. It was located at an inobvious gated dirt road off the main road that looked like a bus stop; there were covered benches for the motorcycle taxi drivers and for sawngthaews. Walking into the clinic grounds, I thought I had stepped into a refugee camp. There were lots of Burmese in traditional clothes (longyi's), but many of them were somewhat dishevelled. There were stands selling food (an assortment of deep-fried foods on a stick, e.g. a whole fish on a stick and a mass of unshelled shrimp fried into a large frisbee-sized disc) and the line for the registration was packed, as was the waiting room. There were mangy dogs everywhere. People were sleeping on benches. Add to this image all the mud, dirt, and flies. There were random kids running around barefoot screaming with laughter. There were sick people lying the shade. I had the distinct feeling of "what did I commit myself to?!"
The inpatient wards were hardly any better. Imagine a large open ward (no doors, cement wall that don't go to the ceiling for ventilation) with three rows of wooden tables as beds. Some patients were on the floor. The TB patients are separated from the rest of the patients by a four-foot low wall. There were a few iv's hanging, but everyone is wasting away. The other wards were pediatrics in/outpatient, adult in/outpatient, reproductive health in/outpatient, and trauma (surgery). In trauma, the medics ran a couple cases everyday using some spinal anesthesia and Valium. And they didn't gown up -- just gloves. They could not take care of anything above the belly button.
I spent six days a week in the adult OPD clinic from 0930 to 1600. I parked myself in a different every week, getting to know the medics and nurses in that room, and trying to teach them a little. It took about a month to get to the point where I had figured out their approach to their patients. Back home, we would admit many of the patients they see at the clinic, and at the very least run some blood work, but their management of patients is very different from back home. In spite of the differences, they do a fantastic job. Their approach works for their patient and their diseases. Even with the mud, dirt, and flies, and the whole refugee camp look, they stamp out disease. These medics have about 18 months of training, then the rest of it is OJT. The senior medics move, talk, and joke around like medics and physicians back home. It was fascinating to see these similar mannerisms replicated in a different culture. Is it universal?
I saw some crazy walking pathology there. There were a lot of late stage abdominal masses, goiters, nephrotic syndrome, cirrhosis, TB, and, of course, malaria. A lot worm infestation, gastritis, and mental stress. It wasn't until after a few weeks of being there, I realized their diagnosis of "generalized weakness" was mental stress in a patient. The typical patient would be a young woman in her mid-20's complaining of intermittent palpitations, fatigue, dyspnea, back pain, insomnia, and loss of appetite. The treatment? Vitamin B complex, which was their panacea or their placebo. It was fun being grabbed to see a patients in other rooms. I got to see a lot of wierd cases that way, but most of the time it would be a late-stage presentation of a terminal illness.
At lunch time, I bought snacks for everyone. All the snacks were 5 BHT, which is about 12.5 cents. I brought my crappy dietary habits from back home to the workplace at MTC. We snacked on potato chips, rice crackers, and other junk food. "Don't you eat lunch back home?" Nope.
The afternoons were usually quiet in the clinic (except for Mondays when we would get crushed, just like in Biloxi). Twice a week (Wednesdays and Fridays), we had didactics and chart review. My first lecture was on reading EKGs (they have an EKG machine, but they can't use it because it has a three-pronged plug from Canada). I thought it would be a review for them, but I think it was their first lecture on reading EKGs. My first day, I bombed. First of all, there is a language barrier as most medics have only a basic grasp of English. They do their charting in English, but beyond that basic level of "5 days vomiting. no fever or chills" they have a tough time. Then, there is the concept of positive and negative values on an x and y graph, essentiallyalgebra, which I think were new concepts to them. Well, we got through it after two more days; it was really challenging.
I asked them about their education back in Burma. I had ignorantly assumed that basic algebra was taught in public schools, but it was explained to me that education was limited to the wealthy and privileged, even the most basic of education. Most of the medics live at the clinic or nearby. They live five to a room and have little or no privacy. And they live in what looks like a refugee camp. Why would anyone want to leave their family, friends, and home for a interminal life at the in Mae Sot? The incredulity of such a decision to me is probably the best condemnation I can imagine on the oppressive government and lack of opportunity for the pursuit of happiness in Burma.
I usually got out of the clinic by 1600, sometimes buying a snack of pork & noodle salad from a food vendor close to the clinic for 10 BHT (about 25 cents). Most of the time, I would hangout at Ban Thai, my guesthouse, just shooting the bull with some friends as the sun set behind the driving range next door (while being serenaded by the droning chanting of the temple close by). Othertimes, I would run errands (buy stuff for clinic, get photos developed for the medics, or surf the net) or I would go on short rides in the countryside right before sunset, my favorite time of the day. The light would be perfect streaming through the clouds before diving behind the 6,000-foot peaks in Burma. A magical hour. Riding a motorcycle was something I fell in love with in Mae Sot. Who would have thought?
Dinner time (around 1900 to 2000), was usually shared in the company of other guests at Ban Thai. Considering how long I was in Mae Sot, I did not explore too many places; I pretty much ate at the same places over and over again. I am a creature of habit. There was the night market (loads of food stalls under corrugated tin roofs, and cheap plastic stools, but I only tried four of them), Round Table (actually named something else, but it was called Round Table by the Ban Thai guests because of the round tables there), 69 (the all-u-can-eat hot plate/pot place called 69 because the only thing you could read on the sign was "69"; it cost 69 BHT a person to eat there), Aiya's (slow service, and a few customers would get sick for a few days after eating there), SP's & Casa Mia's (SP's delivered Thai, Burmese, and Western food, but then the Burmese employees seceded and started their own place at Casa Mia's where five people can order different dishes, all of which happen to be the same thing -- quaint at first, but mildly annoying as well), Canadian Dave's (a big Canadian who has been there for seven years. Everything there is deep-fried, which explains his largesse.), the roti stand across from the mosque (great samosas in the morning, murturbaks in the afternoons, and lecherous looks from the other customers are free for the farang women), the Burmese curry noodle place (the closest thing to Malaysian Laksa noodle soup I could find), and Bai Fern (the best pizza in town). Food at the night market 20 BHT (50 cents). You could get chicken and basil on rice, chicken and chili on rice, pork noodle and wonton soup, fried rice, or fried noodles; it was all really good and really spicy. I got to the point where I didn't taste the spiciness, but I would be sweating up a storm. There were a couple great Burmese dishes I had. One was lipetho, a salad made of fermented Chinese tea leaves (fermented for three years they say), crunchy peanuts, peas, beans, and sesame seeds, with garlic, oil, and cabbage and eaten with tiny chilis on the side. Awesome. The heartburn is awesome too. Great stuff.
Sometimes I had Western food which was served at a few places (Canadian Dave's, Bai Fern, or SP's). These were the joints that a lot of NGO's frequented. I definitely knew the places I liked to go to in Mae Sot.
Some evenings, I would go drinking at the local watering hole called Koon's. A lot of NGO's went there too. I discovered another nice beverage called Sang Som. It's a Thai Rum, but it's pretty tasteless, so one tends to mix it with Coke. (Ahh, that's much better. Some ice, please. There you go.) Instant party. A small hip flask of this stuff is about 80 BHT ($2). Many a nights were blurred by this stuff, but no (knock-on-wood) hangovers.
I learned I could only carry on like that for so long, and my limit was about a month, after which, I practiced some maturity for a change, and plodded on for the next month, which became more and more boring and tiresome.
Despite the great cheap food, not riding a bicycle (unlike the rest of the volunteers), and not holding back on partying, I lost quite a bit of weight in my two months at Mae Sot. I weighed myself in Chiang Mai, and I am at a strapping 123 lbs. That's 9 lbs less than when I left New Zealand, and 20 lbs less than when I left Biloxi almost a year ago. I am at the same weight I was at during college. I've been trying to eat more in the past three weeks. Maybe I can convince my parents that I'm not doing drugs here. Haha.
Sundays were supposed to be special in Mae Sot, because it was my one day off. I should have done more with my time, but I ended up doing a lot of nothing on Sunday. On the first weekend, I went out to visit some waterfalls and a gibbon sanctuary (read: freakshow. They were looked worse than the patients at the Mae Tao Clinic.) After that, I did nada. I am sure I did something, but it was pretty immemorable.During the second month, the temperature cooled down quite a bit; the rainy season had arrived. It struck me as odd to think of these "summer months" as cooler months because of the rain. It rained almost everyday, turning the clinic into a muddy mess, but the rice paddy fields were flooded, reflecting the shrouded mountains in the morning. It was a change from the sunny days and parched earth that had greeted me when I arrived in Mae Sot two months ago. It was a good time to leave.
Monday, July 04, 2005
Goodbye to Mae Sot
What a strange and wonderful trip. A week ago, I was just starting to think about making my exit out of Mae-why-am-I-still-here?-Sot. My room being rented out already forced me to commit to a departure date, which, from my San Diego experience, proved to be necessary. I'll admit, I had mixed feelings about leaving and heading onwards. I really wanted to get out, but, like San Diego, there was a comfort in being there. But, no, I really wanted to get outta town, I just didn't know where I was headed.
Doug, a friend I made in Mae Sot, told me to trust my intuition. Right on. As the week panned out, I ended up making some new friends and got invited to head to Chiang Mai with them for the weekend. What a great idea that turned out to be. It has been a perfect transition from my Mae Sot life to the travelling life I had a few months ago.
Chiang Mai is a touristy town in northern Thailand because it was once the capital of one of the kingdoms in Thailand. It has loads of temples, but not the overwhelming urban congestion of Bangkok. The city center is surrounded by a moat and the remains of the walled city and lies at the foot of a mountain. There are loads of good restaurants and street vendors and tons of shopping for souvenirs (at awesome prices).
Peter and Alex, a couple of the guys in the group, lived here for a few years ago and speak Thai, so it was great having them to show us some cool places and to meet their Thai friends. We went to some clubs and bars and listened to some awesome classic rock. We rented motorcycles and cruised around in heavy traffic (wow, what a difference from that one-horse town of Mae Sot!). This place is so good that their two-night trip turned into three nights for some and four nights for a couple others. To think, I might not have made it up here if it wasn't for this group (and I certainly would not have had as good of a time). Serendipity.