Travel Diaries #25 - Chiang Mai
The time I visited Thailand because I literally thought it would be rude not to.
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Temples, temples, temples everywhere. There’s one on almost every street, sometimes two, some big, some small, all beautiful and adorned in gold. The first one is always impressive, though I find no matter where you are, once you’ve seen the second one you’ve seen enough, maybe even too many and begin to resent them.
All beautiful, all impressive and the religiosity of all profoundly impactful in ways that even the most cynical and atheistic of visitors will appreciate, but sometimes none of that cuts it, does it, and despite being in the presence of an enduring wonder of spiritual architecture you just want to leave and go grab a cool drink somewhere.
I’m convinced to pay into my second temple of the day despite there being no make-upped sales rep handing out flyers at the door, as a crowd have gathered in this one and I’m curious as to what they’re looking at. The central spire of the structure is full of cross-legged tourists and Thai punters gathered to observe as a school full of young monks line up at rows of lengthy tables for what looks like grace before meals. I worry that I’ve upset a lady who’s seemed to detect in the air the smell of the socks that I’ve worn for two straight days making my way here from Bali before I’d later have a chance to bury them in my backpack, though I think she was leaving anyway.
Off to another temple, no doubt – some people just can’t get enough of these things.
The atmosphere of Chiang Mai is a million miles from my home of Hanoi: long wide grids of streets with just about enough traffic and life gliding down them to sustain a feeling of liveliness. Subtle but abundant elements of the local culture glide by: tuk-tuks and monks in brown robes. Unlike Hanoi, the street vendors have ample space for their businesses in the surrounds of their indoor premises, the spacious footpaths aren’t needed for spillover of small blue plastic stools and tables. An uncluttered, meandering, open-aired network of alleyways works its way out behind the streets, unlike Hanoi’s cramped warrens which often have the sun blocked out by clusters of electrical wires or simply a lack of space.
I wander along quiet alleys in the north-east of the city littered with backpacker hostels, massage parlours and travel agents, which I guess makes it the backpacker district, but it doesn’t have the tacky, seedy, depressing feel of backpacker districts in other cities. A bit of space goes a long way, and Chiang Mai has it in abundance.
It also has old western men in abundance. I’d been told that the creepy presence of sex tourists was as omnipresent as Hanoi’s motorbike traffic, and that after a period living there one became inured to the sight of it just as the hum of engines fades into the background in Vietnam (though I always sided with the research which indicates that it’s impossible to become truly immune to stressors such as background traffic noise on a physiological level).
I can’t help but think that every 60+ year old white guy is a sex-pat (like an ex-pat, but… you know…). They all just kind of have the look. There are a lot of such men, far more than in my home of Hanoi, enough it seems that I found it worthy of making a note of, though of course I wouldn’t be the only westerner who has visited Thailand with at least some small prejudice about the whole so-called ‘Mail Order Bride’ phenomenon, along with the typical bag of intriguing third-hand stories about ladyboys and ping-pong shows.
I should make clear that sex tourism is absolutely not my abiding memory of Chiang Mai, though it was obviously enough of a thing for me to write it down in my notebook. And sure don’t you only see what you know, as Goethe said. This was obviously a case of spending part of my holiday confirming or rejecting pre-held notions, rather than being open to seeing the reality in front of me.
Elder prejudices aside I was quite enjoying Chiang Mai. What else had I in mind about the place before I came? Food, definitely. Full moon parties and tropical islands, though not in this part of the country. Buddhism and Muay Thai boxing and elephants and buckets of amphetamine-laced alcoholic drinks.
Sure isn’t that enough to get you going anywhere?
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I’d come to Thailand as part of my summer of backpacking during my school holidays. I’d arrived from a quite relaxing holiday in Bali, and upon my subsequent return to Vietnam, I was planning to ride from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City on my newly purchased motorbike.
I’d wanted to visit Thailand because I really felt like I should. I was in South-East Asia, after all. Surely I couldn’t spend a full year (and counting) in the region and not visit its most renowned country? It’d be like spending a year in Europe and not visiting France. I wasn’t sure what the word for it was, but it felt like some kind of moral crime, or at least a spiritual travesty for a would-be world traveller.
“Aw, how could you not have gone to Thailand?”, I imagined the hypothetical interrogations, though in reality, not a single person would ever ask about my summer holidays, of course. There wasn’t anything in particular about Thailand that screamed out to me from afar and made me feel like it was a ‘bucket list’ destination. Other countries had perhaps appealed more in terms of culture, history, tourist sights to see or just ephemeral attractiveness – Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia were all in the region and had had more of an initial intrigue to me as places to visit from Hanoi.
Next thing I know I’ve a week free and I’m off to Thailand.
I had heard nice things about Chiang Mai and the nearby mountain village (and ‘holistic hippy backpacker’ destination) of Pai.
But for whatever reason I felt like I ‘should’ go to Thailand. I mean, it’s not like it suddenly filled me with dread or pangs of regret once I’d arrived and came to reckon with my reasons for being here. And of course, going somewhere well-known or popular just to see what it’s like is as good a reason to go as any.
It’s just that, walking around Chiang Mai in the sun and a t-shirt and a pair of flip-flops, I kind of started to wonder what I should be doing with myself.
Mechanics work away in open-fronted shops, looking like they’re working more on improving the vehicles with artisan modifications, compared to in Hanoi where they’re busily hammering and welding away banging something onto something else to try and patch the vehicle up to any sort of standard that might pass as ‘road-worthy’ as quickly as possible, with limited resources, space and time. From my limited view the appreciation of aesthetics seems to be more of a facet of life here. So much of Vietnamese architecture and engineering is functional and austere, and resolving problems, whether mechanical and physical or abstract and philosophical, is tackled with a “get it done any way possible” mentality.
Throughout the week a couple of Thai people snickered when I told them I was living in Vietnam – “Ah the Vietnamese are so weird. They’re like the Chinese – all they do is work work work!” – or something to that effect, I was told more than once.
“In Thailand life is more about relaxing and enjoying yourself” they’d inform me, sometimes with a Buddha-like gesture of praying hands and serenely closed eyes. Comparing the two did make me think of, more than anything, the effects of population density and availability of space have on people’s way of life and by extension, their culture and attitudes.
Why do I keep comparing the two countries, which don’t even share a border and are 600km apart at their nearest point? Write what you know, I suppose. Vietnam was my home on the other side of the world and would always be my reference point the more I travelled away from it and back. It’s normal to compare, the same way it’d be a useful mental model for a Japanese or Ethiopian visitor to Ireland to compare it to France or Germany.
I only found out I got to Vietnam that Thai-style curries were not a part of their traditional cuisine.
And just as I’d visited Vietnam with preconceptions that were often entirely dreamt up just by staring at a map, what I knew of Thailand was little, really, only stories from other travellers about Full Moon parties and tropical islands. My lack of interest in Thailand (or any other country) was driven by the same ignorance which informed my interest in other countries. It’s all lies and projections and consumerist envy, when you get down to it.
But you travel to update such preconceptions.
I eat a lot of food – it’s incredible. Without any sort of fuss or hullabaloo – an attitude which the city has in every department, to be fair – Chiang Mai has to have the highest proportion of amazing food available, everywhere, that I’ve ever been. Every meal I had was fantastic, whether street-side snacks or sit-down meals, or in cheap to mid-priced restaurants (I’ll admit I’m not a high-end traveller). I basically spend my time walking the entire length and breadth of the city, up and down and up and down its grid-patterned streets, enclosed by a preserved city wall (you can’t beat a good city wall), sometimes ducking the ropes and venturing out and further into the suburbs, before I’m gently caressed back inside by some sort of internal observance of a central gravity, that nagging feeling you get when visiting somewhere new that its central and busiest parts are the ones you should be paying most attention to, a sort of loneliness and submission to the popularity and lowest common denominator mediocrity of a city centre, that’s just too hard to resist and escape as an outsider and fleeting visitor.
Every so often I sit and eat and drink something.
It’s quite an enjoyable way to spend a couple of days, to be fair.
I wander around some more, this time at night. Eating and drinking, a nice slow Thai-paced shuffle. The roads are lined with buildings with simple open-planned living spaces that double as cafes/bars/restaurants (there must be local Asian words for this sort of use of family space, Thai/Viet/etc variants of the Indonesian ‘warung’) that open onto the street. Teenage girls recline in 70’s style vinyl armchairs, watching football on flatscreen TV’s in a living area the size of a transit van, with the side removed. Walking by you can’t help but catch glimpses of cross-sections of typical scenes from any number of places in Asia.
‘Anywhere in Asia’, because all I am, as most of us are, but a fleeting glimpser of life here.
A Coca-Cola branded fridge filled with select beer bottles, a couple of aluminium table and stool sets with pairs of lads in backwards baseball caps and slider flip-flops drinking beers, smoking cigarettes, keeping an eye on the football. Trading new favourite Youtube clips on their phones propped up on cigarette packets, chatting with animated fervour, always under oppressive fluorescent lights, life continues slowly yet unabated.
There’s something missing though. It’s all every lovely and all, though I kind of wonder what I’m supposed to be doing. I walk around and eat some more. I get a massage at a place staffed with ex-inmate women, which is also fantastic. I drink the odd beer, swim in the pool at the hostel.
I ask for more chilis in my chicken curry though that doesn’t quite hit the spot either – I’ve an itch I can’t scratch. It was all well and good in Bali, this doing nothing – that’s kind of why I went there. Here though, I’m in a real, living city, not a holiday resort. It kind of feels like I should be doing something – I’ve no idea what though. There’s an elephant sanctuary out in the hills somewhere though I can’t be bothered – not really interested in zoos.
I write in cafés and eat some food. I make an effort not to talk to a single other backpacker in the dorm of my motel. I call home and take lots of photos on my phone, none of which survive today. I walk past more temples, though I’ve seen too many and am starting to resent them.
There is something missing, though maybe it’s not possible for it to exist.
After a couple of days of this meaningless – yet thoroughly enjoyable, don’t get me wrong – existence, I get on a bus and go to Pai, because I’d heard that was good too.
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