Free food!

I went to visit a friend of mine, who recently started working at a new bar. The bar is fairly swanky. Big, comfy leather chairs. Pricey, frou-frou cocktails. Lots of pretty girls to make conversation with customers.

Unfortunately it's on the notorious Street 136, where all of the quote-unquote hostess bars are. These are the bars where male tourists go to find young ladies to take home. We'll see how long a bar with more legitimate intentions and non-working girls can last surrounded by sleaze.

It must have been happy hour because there was a complimentary pile of fresh fruit. In the bathroom.


Why buy urinal cakes when you can use a couple pieces of fruit for the same effect?

In a previous blog post I wrote about a German professional photographer named Michael Riehle that I traveled with in Chiang Mai. One of the reasons I liked Michael so much is because even though he has seen more of the world than anyone I've ever met -- including some of the worst parts -- for him travel was still fun and exciting. He was delighted to find lemon slices in the urinals in a bathroom in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I was struck how someone who has seen so much could be so amused by something so small.

So many travelers get jaded. For some their unwillingness to enjoy travel is almost a badge of honor. No matter what they do or see it only reminds them of something they've already done or seen.

Oh yeah, you see them everywhere in Indonesia. The best ones are on a little island in Malaysia. You've probably never heard of it. But that was 10 years ago before tourists ruined the place.

That kind of nonsense. I will never see or do as much as Michael has, but I hope I retain his ability to be surprised and entertained by the little things.

Mardi Gras, Thailand-style

I really knew it was time to leave Chiang Mai when I saw the sign for this convention.



You know how crazy things can get when the International Workshop on Sustainable Management of Disused Sealed Radiation Sources gets together.

Chiang Mai

From Lampang I went to Chiang Mai, the tourist hub for northern Thailand. Everyone that I've met whose been there loved it. I met a retired American couple in Lampang and a retired American man in Siem Reap who had gone to Chiang Mai for a visit and ended up buying homes there. So I was excited to get there.

And really disappointed when I did. It's a great town for ex-pats, with lots of Western-style restaurants, Starbucks, bookstores, etc. But it could be a town anywhere. It didn't feel like Thailand. It felt pretty sleazy, in fact.

There wasn't much I was interested in doing. It's the jump-off point for lots of outdoorsy type things like rafting and rock climbing, but the main reason people go there is to go hiking to visit the hill tribes.

There are groups of non-Thai ethnic groups living in the hills trying to maintain some semblance of a traditional lifestyle. But they've also figured out that there is money to be made by making themselves available to tourists. From what I've read, and heard from people who have been there, is that the encounters with these people feel staged (which they are), and that they are being exploited by the tourist companies.

For instance, there's one particular group that tourists love to see because the girls there wear a stack of metal rings around their necks. As they get older, they add more rings, so their necks become abnormally long. This obviously causes serious health risk, because the neck becomes too long and weak to support the head on its own. The practice was apparently falling by the wayside, until the tourists started showing up. Now the practice is back in full. I didn't want to contribute to that.

So everywhere in Chiang Mai you see travel agents with signs outside advertising treks to "Visit Longneck Karen", Karen being the name of the tribe. But I can't help but imagine a longnecked woman named Karen sitting in her living room watching TV while a parade of tourists passes through. Now THAT I'd pay to see.

Since time is becoming a factor, I decided to get out of Chiang Mai and head to Laos.

No ... more ... temples

I've covered a lot of ground since I left Bangkok. I wanted to make my way to northern Thailand and visit a few of the historical sites along the way. I took the train to Ayutthaya and spent a day there. I took the bus from there to Sukhothai and spent a day there. I took the bus from there to Lampang and spent a day seeing the town and the Elephant Conservation Center. Now I'm in Chiang Mai, the tourist hub for northern Thailand.

The temples at Ayutthayah and Sukhothai aren't nearly as large (or impressive) as those at Angkor but they're also not as crowded. The sites are elaborately landscaped and dotted with canals and ponds. The weather is unusually cool here so I was able to spend a couple relaxing days riding a bike around the ruins. But my brain is full to the brim with temples and it's time to see something else.

I've got lots of good pix but I'll update the blog and respond to email when I have the time and a decent connection. In the meantime I'll probably be sitting on a bus, to where I haven't figured out yet.

I'm online with a lousy connection doing some research for the next leg of the trip. I've got a little over a month to spend before I have to be back in Bangkok to meet a friend who's coming to visit, so I need to prioritize what I want to see and plan wisely.