Monday, March 23, 2015

Chiang Mai Part Two: Searching for a Slowdown and a Dose of Reality

Apologies for the slight changes in the post.   For some reason, it got taken down and reverted to a previous state and I've had to rebuild it from scratch.  This is part two of my experience in Chiang Mai.  You can read part one here.  

While Chiang Mai is the second city of Thailand after Bangkok, the two couldn't be any more different.  Bangkok is a modern metropolis, Chiang Mai is still very much traditional, having avoided mass urbanization that has defined the capital. The old city is still protected by a moat (although multiple bridges make breaching it incredibly easy) and is abound with temples. The rhythm of the city rarely breaks allegro, and by and large, is, on the surface, easily manageable.



Temple in the old town of Chiang Mai
However, there is something superficial about the old town itself.  In between the temples are countless western bars, restaurants and tailors, doing their absolute best to wash out whatever traditional charm that gave Chaing Mai its stellar reputation as a must-see destination.   I counted at least five different places serving primarily tex-mex (for the record, I have absolutely nothing against this; the world needs more places like this, it just seemed weird to find that Chiang Mai has more of these places than Brussels).  

The tuk-tuk drivers were relentless in their hunt for white people to ride with them.  It was extraordinarily rare to go more than five minutes in the old town without being honked at or asked if I needed a taxi.   By the end of our stay there, I had almost lost my patience with this constant harrassment.  Look, I understand that they're out to make a living and driving around all day isn't exactly easy office work, but still let's keep in mind two points:  1) these drivers never badger Thais for rides, as if they know better and 2) practically everyone in the world understands the concept of a taxi and its universally accepted that if someone needs a ride, they simply have to flag one down for it to stop.    I almost got to the point where after a taxi driver asked me for a ride, I was going to loudly Nathalie's arm, point, take out my phone/camera and sarcastically exclaim in the best slackjaw accent I could muster "WELL LOOK AT THAT, HONEY, IT'S A TAXI CAB!  WE SURE AS SHIT DON'T HAVE THOSE BACK HOME! LET'S TAKE A SELFIE WITH IT!"

Unfortunately I didn't have it in me to pull it off.  Instead, I held a silent protest by walking nearly everywhere.  It really wasn't that bad; our hotel was ten minutes away from the eastern gate and the whole old town could be crossed in 30.   

But looking deeper, it was easy to see why these taxi drivers felt so ambitious.  The western-friendly
orientation of the city wasn't created for the Thais. Rather it was a reaction to the copious amount of gringos who have relocated to the city searching for an oriental enlightenment,  self-redefinement and home away from home comfort.  Add in the hundreds of thousands of tourists who make their way to Chiang Mai each year and the entrepreneural spirit of the Thais, and its easy to see why the town is so accomodating.   

I guess the reason I'm circling this subject is that the whole experience left me a bit disillusioned about Thailand and my purpose here.  I've had the immense pleasure of having lived abroad for a large chunk of my life.   For me, I prefer to do more local activities than gimmicky attractions.  Maybe that's what I like about Brussels.  The city has one of the tourism rates in all of Europe, yet the underlying charm of the city lies not in the Grand Place nor the Atomium, but in its different and diverse bouroughs, away from the center and on its anonymous (if dirty) streets.  I try to find similar places wherever I travel as it gives me a much more accurate sample of what a place is actually like.   Real tourism, for me, isn't about seeing the well established sites.  Rather, it's about learning what makes that place special; it's people, it's customs, it's daily life.   With that in mind, I wanted to have a more realistic impression of the city and get a sample of what it's about.  

As you'll recall from my first post on Chiang Mai, we had spent the majority of our time with Max and Daphne, who were visiting from Belgium.   On the last night of their stay, we set out for some bar hoping.   Thailand doesn't party late, at least not according to Belgian standards (we hit last call in two different bars, all before mid-night).   As we felt that our time was limited, we decided to head back out of old town and move closer towards our hotel.  

Sang Son and Club Soda:a classic Thai drink 
Away from the old town and near the river, the four of us went into a trendy looking bar for a night cap. When we entered, we were greeted with by excellent live music, with an 8-piece band playing both Thai and western covers. The bar was overwhelmingly filled with young Thais celebrating Saturday night.  Everyone was incredibly friendly. We took a table towards the back of the bar, continued our conversation from earlier and took in the sights and sounds of Thai evening life. 

After last call and the band's final encore, the staff brought out chicken and rice soup for everyone to eat. I've never seen that before in a bar, but the idea is to help settle the stomachs of those who had drank too much. I enjoyed every second of this as it was real. This was Thailand, and not a pumped up image of it designed to get my money. This is the type of tourism I love and I realized that this should be my goal for wherever I go: see something real.  

The next morning, Max and Daphne left to head down to the southern islands.   Nathalie and I weren't exactly sure what we going to do next.  We had booked a diving trip off of the Similans islands, but that wasn't for another ten days.   We decided to head back to the train station and book a return trip to Bangkok and go from there.   The walk from the hotel to the train station takes about 25 minutes.  During that entire walk, Nathalie and I started to discuss what we were going to do next.   Slowly, we began to work ourselves into a state of mild anxiety.  We began arguing about where to go, and how to get there.    When we got to the ticket counter at the train station and were about to purchase our tickets, it both hit us: we were in no state to go anywhere. 

We told the woman at the counter that we needed to just a minute and we stepped outside.   Both of us almost said it at the same time,  but at that moment, we realized that we were exhausted and needed to stop.   We began thinking back on the past few weeks and calculated that we had changed cities/hotels/countries nine times in seventeen days.   Through most of that we were on our feet and spending long days walking, trekking, kayaking, and getting my teeth fixed.  Somehow, our collective subconscious pushed us to stop.  Our bodies and minds were exhausted and after going beastmode for nearly two and a half weeks, we had both had enough, even if we weren't consciously admitting it.  We heeded the warning and made our way back to the hotel.  

When we got back, we booked another night, giving us two more days, and set out to figure out what we really wanted to do.   It took us a good 36 hours of self-sequestering in our room to decide our next move.   There was something gloriously satisfying about sitting in the room and doing nothing all day, and at the end of it, we figured that we should just bite the bullet and head south.  We had a week to get to Khao Lak for our diving trip and decided that we'd both enjoy sitting around more if we did it somewhere tropical.  We wound up booking a flight down to Krabi, en route to the infamous island of Phuket. 

Doing nothing in the hotel room
After seeing Max and Daphne, we realized that we missed living.  We had spent the first seven weeks of our trip living in hotels and largely spending our time just the two of us.  We needed something familiar and, maybe more importantly, we needed to at least pretend we had a home.  We turned to Air BnB and booked a week in a furnished apartment in the central Kathu district of Phuket, away from the tourist crowds of Patong and Phuket town.    In order to prepare for our temporarily return to normality, we took a cooking class before leaving Chiang Mai, learning the secrets of Thai cooking (here's a hint: they use soy sauce in many dishes). 

As I write this,  we're nearing the end of our stay both in Phuket and in Thailand.  From tomorrow, we're heading to Vietnam.   Chiang Mai certainly was enlightening for us, but not in the traditional sense.   We learned what we needed, realized some of the mistakes we were making, and more importantly, that slowing down is the key to our sanity.   At one point, we felt that were more tired from traveling than from working.  And if that was going to be the case for the rest of this trip, then neither of us saw the point of continuing.  Hopefully we'll carry these lessons into Vietnam.  We have one month to do what we want there.  And if we don't see it all, it's not like the country is going anywhere.    Who knows, maybe we'll park ourselves on the beach near Da Nang for four weeks and go from there.   

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