Sunday 28 June
See the gallery Out & About in Chiang Rai for photos from this post.
A great and marvelous thing about Chiang Rai is that there is no McDonalds here. It’s one of the only places I’ve ever been to that doesn't have the all-pervading golden arches – I think it’s one of the things that helps the place keep its own identity. There is, of course, a proliferation of 7-11’s, but that’s just convenient for everyone!
The twice-weekly trips to the market keep turning up new discoveries for me – most are delicious, some, not so much…. It’s hard to go past the fruit, which is SO cheap… Mangoes & Papaya 15baht/kg (AU$0. 60); pineapple 10baht for a small one, peeled & sliced, & sold in a plastic bag with a skewer so you don’t get your fingers sticky! I’ve become addicted to giant lychees; about the size of a golf ball, maybe a bit bigger, and are about the biggest and juiciest fruit I’ve ever had – 30baht/kg. But all things end, including fruit seasons, and sadly the mangoes & lychees are on the way out, going by the quality & prices at the market. On the flip side, it looks like dragonfruit are on the way in. And not the kind I’ve had before which are white inside & are kind of boring. Those ones look very appealing but don’t really have any flavour, & I’ve always found them thoroughly disappointing. No, these ones while also pink & dragon-y on the outside and with zillions of little black edible seeds inside, instead of white flesh, are a brilliant pink & have an incredibly delicate smell, nay – perfume – which also translates into its flavour. It’s almost rose-like. Amazing. And did I mention, 10baht/kg? I’ve also become a big fan of durian – the devil fruit despised & feared by many! The ones I’ve tried have almost no aroma, which is what earns durian so many enemies, but the flesh apparently tastes the same as the stinky one. It’s creamy & rich, like a custard or mousse, & best eaten cold – I don’t think it would be all that crash-hot at room temperature (especially when room temperature here is about a million degrees).
I’m over the ducks. They make pigs look clean. Their pen reeks & needs a lot of maintenance, which it didn’t get for a little while, so they staged a protest & stopped laying eggs & I’m convinced made their pen worse than necessary on purpose. Lucky us, got to spend 2 days shoveling all the stinking mud/crap/soaking straw out of the pen & transferring it down to the vegetable garden. I guess the good news is that they’re gradually starting to lay eggs again, so they must be kind of happy.
There are some funny sights that you see here, most of them involving dogs; dogs that look like 5 different kinds of dog in one; dogs in the basket on the front of scooters; dogs standing on their hind legs in the step-through part of a scooter with their front paws on the handlebars; one day a woman was crossing the road with her poodle in a basket, kind of like a plastic supermarket basket…. I wondered if I’d seen the Thai (much older) Paris Hilton… Poodle in a basket – sounds sort of like chicken in a biscuit….
Quite a few of the children are very creative and are very good at drawing. One of the boys in particular is an especially talented artist, and his sponsor pays for him to take art classes from a local artist (who has 16 dogs!!) some Saturdays. Recently a bunch of other boys around his age – about 9 to 13, decided that they wanted to have a go too, so we took a group of them to see if they liked it. It was really nice to watch them try something new, & especially for some of the rowdier ones, to see them be still & focus on practicing what they were being taught. They were mainly just learning a brush technique so there weren’t any masterpieces produced that day, but they did learn how to do bamboo, and a couple of them gave me their work.
I took my second day off when I’d been here for 6 weeks, & spent most of the day checking out some of the temples around the place. We live very close to one (Wat Doi Phra Baht), so I started there. It’s on a bit of a hill & is in a little bit of disrepair, but I liked it. The grounds are pretty nice & would be a good place to take a book for a quiet read under a shady tree. Next I walked into town (about half an hour) & to Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha), the city’s most adored temple, which is stunning. The famous Emerald Buddha statue which is now housed in the Grand Palace in Bangkok was apparently originally revealed here when in 1434 lightening struck the temple stupa which broke apart, exposing the statue inside. Actually carved from jade, it was sent to Bangkok in 1678, and in 1990 Chiang Rai had a replica sculpted from Canadian jade. There is also a beautiful Lanna museum - Chiang Rai was founded in 1262 as the administrative centre of the Lanna Kingdom, a powerful empire for 600 years until it was eventually annexed by Siam. Then it was on to Wat Phra Singha, which was a bit of a let-down after Wat Phra Kaew, but it does have a very impressive set of drums. To be fair, it started raining just as I arrived, so I sat under cover for an hour, passing the time by trying to photograph the circles made by raindrops in the ever-growing puddles that surrounded me, until the subliminal messages I was picking up by sitting inside the walls of something called “Singha” got too much & I decided to head to Coconuts bar for a beer.
It’s funny the places that you sometimes find yourself when you least expect it…. One of our co-directors had their birthday on a Tuesday at the beginning of June, so when the people who take very good care of us at Coconuts were having trouble keeping their eyes open at 1:00am, we headed off to somewhere else, which turned out to be a nightclub called Where Else Disko, and was absolutely cranking when we arrived, until we left not long before 4:00…. We were quite the feature – half a dozen farangs (Thai for foreigner) shaking it on the stage next to the DJ booth. The music was Thai & overall quite bad, but it was lots of fun.
Actually we get quite a lot of attention wherever we go. There aren’t many Western people in Chiang Rai, so we definitely get noticed, and I very much notice the occasional other Westerner that I might see around the place. Mostly the locals are very friendly & make a big deal out of saying hello when you pass them on the street or whatever. This is how amazing this place is : one night at around 8:00pm I was walking back to the centre by myself, and a woman with 2 kids on her scooter pulled over & started talking to me in Thai. I told her that I don’t speak Thai, but she said something to me again, also in Thai, so I repeated that I didn’t understand. She then started motioning for me to get on the bike (so 1 small kid in front of her, one about 12 years old behind her, then me behind that kid, & off we went. She didn’t ask where I was going & I didn’t tell her, but she took me to the bottom of our driveway, & when I got off, she turned around & drove away…. I don’t remember ever seeing her before. The next day, I was once again walking back to the centre & was trying to beat the rain home. Before it rains here there is almost always a big gust of wind, & then down it comes…. I was still 15 minutes away when the gust blew & I quickly started pulling my raincoat out of my bag as sprinkles of rain encouraged me to hurry up… The next thing I knew, another woman (this time on her own) who I recognised but couldn’t figure out where from, pulled over & told me to get on & once again I was delivered to the bottom of our driveway, just as the rain started to come down…. Amazing.
However, the best ride back to the centre that I’ve had was with the ice cream guy. Kate & I had just left McLovin & were headed home (a 35 minute walk), when our ice cream man drove past. Of course he gave us a wave, but he also slowed down & questioned with a gesture if we were on our way to where we live. We nodded, yes, & he stopped & told us to get on! So, me on the back of his scooter & Kate sitting on the ice cream freezer, we put all the bogans who cruise up & down Bondi Rd on Saturday nights to shame, as we drove the route that we walk every day, past all the local shops, internet cafes, food market – our entire community. All the locals thought it was a great laugh, & everyone was waving at us all along the way, as though we were part of some whacky cavalcade. It was quite the entrance when we arrived at the centre – everyone was in hysterics & no one could really believe that we got a ride with the ice cream man.
We’ve got a ridiculous number of boys in the wars at the moment. Two of them have recurring ear infections and are almost always on medication. One is waiting to get surgery to have his ear drum rebuilt or something like that, but can’t until he’s got no infection. The other one had surgery this month to remove his adenoids; we’ve got the one with the pin in his hand from punching his friend in the head & is still in bandages; there’s been a spate of throat infections & head colds, but that seems to have stayed fairly contained; and the latest is one of the boys put a hoe through his foot when he was doing a bit of spontaneous landscaping next door – barefooted of course, so that needed a few stitches…. I went along to the hospital where eardrum boy is spending 4 days to be on a drip every 6 hours, and don’t plan to spend anytime there myself. It was the first time I’ve been inside a Thai hospital & it’s no Chelsea & Westminster….
Another very left-field thing happened to me walking to McLovin in the last week of June… A guy pulled his truck over, jumped out & asked me if I speak Thai. I said no, so he started talking to me in English, saying that he has been looking for someone to help his 12 year old daughter with her English. I told him I’m not a teacher, & he said he’s not looking for a teacher, she learns English at school, but he wants someone to speak with her so she can practice her conversational skills. He asked me how long I’ll be in Chiang Rai & if I’d be interested, & what I’d charge. I was a bit in shock, so I asked him to phone me the following day so I could think about it. His name is Toom and he teaches art & music to private students at his home studio. Anyway, long story short, I went to meet him a couple of days later & now I have a job – a paying one. It’s not going to make me rich at 250 baht ($10) for one hour each week, but it’ll let me have a night out once a week, so that suits me. His daughter’s name is Kwan & it was her birthday the day after Toom & I had our meeting, & I was invited to her party, which I went to for a little while. She’s very sweet & I’m looking forward to this little side venture.
Time continues to go by very quickly here. I guess it’s because I’m always so busy, but the weekends fly by, then before I know it we’re off to the market on Monday morning… next thing it’s Friday & market day again, & the kids are home for the weekend…. I can’t imagine spending only 1 month here – it would be over before you really knew you were here… I’m enjoying getting to know Chiang Rai & some of the wonderful people who live here, even if it is ridiculously hot.
