Author Archives: Jack

A loud grating sound came from somewhere high above me. It rudely brought me close enough to consciousness that I could open one eye. Darkness, nothing but darkness. Eye quickly closed, I began to slowly drift down into the ether. Sweet Jesus, there it is again. In the name of all that is holy, surely someone will turn that damn thing off. But wait there’s more. Now in a strange juxtaposition, a disturbing ascending wave of sound, over and over in seeming endless repeat, but now there’s that klaxon thing again with, oh my god, I actually know this one, it’s the iPhone classic Apex.

Well that puts paid to my night because, by now, I’ve remembered why we need to get up before dawn. It rained last night and with any luck at all, we have a date with Fishtail and the Annapurna range of the Himalayas.

Pokhara is nestled lakeside between high hills that tend to trap it’s considerable smoky-foggy air pollution so it takes a little rain and proper air currents to see the big boys.

Hot coffee in hand we eagerly wait for dawn’s early light, sitting on the edge of our bed staring through a large picture window, trying to make out what looks like the outline of the Himalayas. Minute by minute the view coalesces into a sharper image. The mood is buoyant. We see the first of the sun’s rays strike Fishtail.

Without a word we head to the elevator and punch a higher floor, climb the spiral stairs and out on the frosty roof we behold magnificence.

So much higher than the surrounding hills, it almost seems like a massive set of rogue waves, white with frothy foam, topping the hills only to topple and inundate Pokhara. It was kinda mystical.

We spent about two hours. In that time the Hotel Orchid’s manager stopped by to make sure we were up and enjoying the show, which was awfully nice. Ultralights, airplanes, and hot air balloons were all up too.

At this point of the story, dear Escapees, I’m reminded of our fat old black cat Margaret. Once, in an effort to get her to exercise, we bought a Wacky Wall Walker, a jiggly gummy bug-like toy that “walks” down the wall. We were told cats love them. Surprisingly, Margaret perked up and waddled over to the wall and attempted to jump up and grab the Wall Walker, except that her bunty little legs couldn’t lift her caboose off the ground. We also had an athletic calico cat who came over to see what the fuss was all about, waited for the toy to get within her range, gave a mighty leap, snagged the Wall Walker and trotted off with that smug expression she used. Margaret remained there waiting for the magic bug to return. From that moment on we would periodically see her sitting patiently beside the wall, quite content, watching for that magical Wall Walker. Let’s agree to call this the Margaret Method, or MM.

For the rest of our stay in Pokhara we practiced the Margaret Method as applied to the Dawn Himalaya Reappearance. MM mainly consisted of an alarm at dawn, two cups of coffee using our Aero-Press, which is a fiddly thing to do at dawn, and a fruitless wait with little to show for it. You have to admire the family’s tenacity.

I’ve been searching for Kathmandu. The real Kathmandu. Prowling the narrow streets and alleyways almost every day. It’s dirty work. Maybe even a little dangerous. There are stone culverts running along the sides of the alleyways that you are sharing with fellow pedestrians, scooters, cars and trucks, that you are expected to repair to if the hell-bent-for-leather scooter heading straight at you decides he needs the space you’re currently occupying more than you do.

Dirty work. Every morning the shopkeepers brush yesterday’s dust and dirt into the street where you’re walking, using a broom made out of natural grasses. I see the broom man pushing his impossibly overstacked bike everyday. I marvel at the skill needed to keep ten feet of brooms stacked on a bike without using any line.

You can really get lost In Kathmandu but I’ve noticed that each street has a different character or special product. While name-brand technical gear can be found spread around just about anywhere, it’s mostly found on a specific street. Some of it is even real. After all, Kathmandu is staging for serious trekkers.

The city was hit by the 2015 earthquake more than I would have thought. Most buildings had some damage, some just slumped down into a pile of rubble. (The Netflix 3-part documentary Aftershock about the quake is worth watching.)

I had my first mo:mo, on a five floor walk up restaurant in Durbar Square.

Make sure you get them fried, not just steamed!

I find myself warming to Kathmandu.

Lately on my walks I finding certain parts of Kathmandu to be almost charming.

It’s said that travel changes you and I’d have to agree with that. I know it has me. We’ve spent so much time in Asia that now I have to smile if a mall has a fourth floor and I’m surprised if the elevator has the “unlucky” #4 button. In Penang we lived on the 29th floor of a high rise and on the way down the floor readout had a hiccup at the 24th floor which read 23b, 14th floor read 13a, and the fourth floor read 3ab, just to be safe. We got down just the same. My hospital in Penang had no 4th floor even though I had physical therapy on the fourth floor every day. Yours Truly found that a little disconcerting.

I’m not about to reach out for the chicken bones to find what it all means but I find I’m a little more aware of things like how the flow of my day seems to be going or why an older gentleman dressed in denim who also just arrived at the Kathmandu Airport just asked me where I got my shoes. Turns out that’s a long story but, “No, I’m not going trekking. These Merrells are my everyday shoes.” The affable Dutchman named Peter wished us good day and with it getting dark, we all busied ourselves with procuring ground transportation.

Ours turned out to be to be another yellow 4-door Speck with doors as thin as a sheet of corrugated cardboard. The driver applied himself diligently and soon we were being tossed about like dice in a dice box.

Outside the cab a horrible scene had developed into the intimidating kind of nighttime chaos that would fit right in to that river night scene in apocalypse now. You know the one. The traffic was horrendous but there were thousands of people partying out in the streets, bundled against the cold. It was an “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” moment.

That’s when I recalled how everyone reacted when we said we’re going to Kathmandu. “It’s a shithole.” Hard to believe it could be that bad. Well, everything looks worse at night. We hadn’t yet arrived but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad omen. The driver, all things considered, knew every path and alley in this city but he could not find our hotel. Ok, that’s an omen. Finally he stopped in an alley to call our hotel while completely blocking the knife & dagger shop we were practically stopped inside of. The hotel sent out a search and rescue party to find and guide us back on foot so our taxi left. The alleyways are paved in rough brick which caused our wheeled duffels to flop over but I liked the clickity-clack sound. I told Marce that we’d laugh about this later.

Eight flights of solid marble stairs later, we had arrived. Kathmandu. Yeah, so far it’s a shithole.

In the morning another flight of stairs led to al fresco breakfast on the roof. The temperature was a reach for us but I enjoyed the raven’s company.

Stepping out of our alley who should be the first person we see? It’s Peter, the affable Dutchman from the airport. Like us he’s a head taller than anyone else. He quickly suggested an afternoon foray to the Pashupatinath Temple on the Bagmati River. Of course, of course, sounds great.

The taxi let us off at the top of a ridge that led down to a tiny river where a great pall of smoke and incense lay in the valley choking us.

The heavy air is the kind of thing that Marce hates.

It quickly got serious though. Oh my god, these are funeral pyres.

It’s the Hindu festival Maha Shivaratri and lines of faithful chant and dance through the temples.

Meanwhile, down at the river families are performing rights and ablutions before our very eyes.

Some have to be instructed, some corrected, some families stand there stunned.

What a scene. Sobering to think about what we’re breathing in. I’m told some are brought to a low lying building to await death. Too real.

We eventually hiked our way up the hill past every huckster in the valley to the temples on top and some of them still show serious damage from the 2015 earthquake.

By this point the grounds were overwhelmed with people making taxis fairly scarce so suddenly negotiating with them became much tougher. That’s how it goes in Kathmandu. It’s tough, but maybe it’s not a shithole.

The trip from Bangkok’s railroad station was long but mostly uneventful, and I remember thinking, other than pulling up in a bright yellow two door speck, this could be East Harlem USA. The hotel lobby was almost impressive in a marbly sort of way and with an elevator, on our budget unheard of. With virtually nothing within easy walking distance we knew that we’d have to decipher Bangkok’s convoluted hodgepodge of overlapping attempts at mass transit. A weekly pass would be our typical modus operandi but a sky rail pass means nothing to the rickety bus driver even less to the river ferries which as near as I could tell there may have been at least three or more different classifications. So it’ll be pay as you go for a week.

Bangkok is an old city and like most old cities they grew up around transportation and that would be the river. Pouring over wildly inaccurate transit maps we soon noticed that most of the things we wanted to see were on or near the Chao Phraya river, or canals. Good to know. I really wanted to see the Royal Barge museum and it looked like a good fit for an adventure on the river ferries. The first problem is that it’s quite a hike just to get to the ferry landing but we figured how hard could it be from there? Typical of Thailand neighborhoods there’s a surprise around nearly every corner. The way I see it that’s true art.

Who makes knick-knacks on such a massive scale?

I’d like to say that the ferry nudged up to the dock but unerringly they never missed an opportunity to slam against the pier. I guess it’s their signature method. As we pulled away I noticed the river was still chocked with large tree bits, floating junk, and about as bad as I’ve ever seen and I’m from Pittsburgh, but the good old Monongahela has nothing on this river except maybe traces of heavy metals.

Being the quick studies that we are we soon realized that we were in fact at the canal but on the wrong side and the only way to cross the canal was a mammoth hike up to a six lane highway bridge. Feets don’t fail me now! Finally we gained the bridge after ascending four flights of concrete stairs and descending a similar number on the other side of a three hundred foot span. We were left without a clue, but at least we were across. After a few fits and starts, assuming that the museum was somewhere back the way we came except now we’re on the correct side, we found nothing but nasty little pathways through I think it would be safe to call it a slum.

Zig-zagging through the hood for a while I noticed our first clue.

A small blue arrow drawn on a piece of paper tacked to a vertical dirt wall. I was convinced we were on to something. This went on for quite a while when turning another corner I saw a sign that said tickets. Damn we’re good at this. Apparently one is expected to buy a ticket for a canal boat, where I have no idea, and then you are comfortably deposited at the museum dock but where is the fun in that?

So you pay a camera fee and hang a tag around your neck as the designated photographer and wonder at the magnificence of all of this.

The original royal barge marina was bombed during WW2 and several royal barges were badly damaged. The king tasked the museum project and barge maintenance to the Fine Arts Department and National Museum of Royal Barges. Great idea to dry dock these treasures. Eight of the most significant royal barges are housed here but there are 51 considered royal starting as early as the 12th century.

The king’s Golden Swan is considered to be the largest single trunk dugout in the world.

Royal procession of barges had a very strict protocol and it was notated in the big book. Special uniforms, flags, and detailed instructions on positioning protocol.

Finally it was time to leave but a young couple said they knew an easy way out of the maze so we followed them and sure enough came out of the slum at the ferry landing.

We often give in to the inexorable pull of the road not taken. One hundred feet from Wayside, our Chiang Mai home, is a charming sun-dappled alleyway that on this day I just could not resist. It’s not like I had someplace to be. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have a place to be. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve walked past.

Courtyards to places that I could never have imagined were on one side of the walkway but on the other side were the high walls that surround what I like to think of as “our” Temple. I could hear muffled voices, and looking over a locked gate, I could see a monk and a few people in discussion. I’d never seen anyone in this back corner of the temple grounds, even though we spend a little time here nearly every day.

Entering the grounds, we humbly approached the group and instantly figured there are major reconstruction and upgrades being made to this backwater orphan of the temple complex.

The pool over which the temple was built is still falling apart but we could see magnificent undulating creatures taking shape on a bridge over the water. We asked a young woman about the work going on and she said she’s a volunteer and pointed out the sculptor. He’s well-known and was brought in to create the traditional Naga staircase. The figures are sculpted completely freehand in concrete.

The artist was mixing concrete in a little pail and his young helper said he was sculpting according to the pictures in his mind.

He has done 16 temples and sculpts in wood as well. This project will take six months start to finish. One naga is male, the other female, and when finished one will be painted silver, and the other gold.

We never saw any plans or drawings.

The elephant temple adjacent to the pool is the oldest and most sacred in Chaing Mai, often seen with several dozens of monks surrounding it, so it’s easy to see why this temple is getting a serious upgrade.

We made it a point to visit every few days to watch the fascinating progress. The artist came to recognize us and always greeted us when we arrived. He didn’t seem to mind the audience.

With our visas expiring soon it’s a shame we won’t see the finished work.

It’s been a while, but I wanted to take this time to talk about local Thai transportation. There’s this conveyance here called a songthaew. It’s essentially a pick-up truck painted bright cadmium red with two hard longitudinal bench seats and a bit of a roof, but open to traffic out the back.

I include this information by way of explaining that this is the cheapest way of moving about Thailand. Designed for eight souls, I’ve never seen one with less than twelve or more cramped backpackers while circulating Pai looking for more. You go nowhere without a fully packed truck. Remember, there’s always room for one more. Somehow this all works out unless something goes wrong which would cause a lot of fun-seekers to tumble out the open back of the pickup. So far we’ve managed to avoid the songthaew.

We signed up for the rare, for us, “tour” to Pai Canyon and sure enough, it was time to become acquainted with our very own bright cadmium red songthaew. I will admit that the first step up through the doorless open back was challenging while simultaneously avoiding giving the very low roof a righteous head butt, it was obvious that first we’d be wandering around picking up more adventure seekers. Rarely has driving 12km through the Pai countryside seemed so long. We arrived just before sundown to the classic Thai carnival atmosphere. Music, food, balloons, cheap plastic Buddhas but the job at hand was a frontal assault climbing a surprisingly steep pathway up a long hill toward what I hoped was the correct way to Pai Canyon. We were fairly confident because we’ve developed a good nose for sniffing out the right way to go, and at least it wasn’t 360+ stairs.

Breathlessly summiting a dusty hilltop we were met with a strange scene of uncommon beauty.

The only thing left for all sunset lovers is to negotiate one’s way back to your ride in absolute total darkness. There simply are no lights at Pai Canyon.

Loving Pai, but in the interest of full disclosure, Yours Truly has had the unsettling sensation of being observed by a mysterious presence. Hair on the back of your neck kind of thing. In a few days, after having had the best khao soi known to man, I had a duh moment. High on a mountain overlooking Pai I couldn’t help but notice a massive white seated Buddha tucked into a sea of dark green jungle. It never failed to catch my eye. We decided to make a day of it. We would watch the sunset from the great white Buddha.

Guessing that there would be an inordinate number of stairs involved I wouldn’t have normally chosen to walk all the way to the mountain first but that’s what happened.

The walk through town was the usual exercise of dodging scooters and cars but soon we were tramping a dusty path on the edge of a well-used narrow asphalt road. Kind of the burbs of Pai.

We saw a large open air Muay Thai academy where mostly white women were showing no mercy while kicking the shit out of heavy hanging bags. We past a pool association, a weed club, where the “real party gets started” and more massage parlors than you can shake a stick at. Every step left its own cloud of dust.

The approach to the Buddha stairs was frankly intimidating. Overhanging trees hid the top of the stairs from view and I could swear it got steeper the higher you went.

I couldn’t understand why the stairs looked so unused. I use the go slow, don’t stop, head down, don’t say anything that you’ll regret later approach. As I began to flag, aching for breath, I looked ahead and sweet Jesus, the stairs we were climbing were not the actual Buddha stairs. These were just the stairs to the fancy Buddha stairs. We crossed a road and sat down, breaking a rule, I’m sure. I guess most everybody rides up to the top, leaving maintenance on the lower stairs to fend for themselves.

This began to hurt as we plodded our way up. Each step individually considered and dealt with.

Finally we summited but instead of a celebration, I had that sinking feeling. For instance where’s the White Buddha? I peeked around a little temple and to my horror, off in the distance, I could see the real staircase to the Buddha.

Things were close to mutinous but I was damn well going to see the sunset from the White Buddha. That’s just who you’re dealing with. Marce, being the loyal soldier, followed along. We were running out of time.

There were a lot of people watching from the base of the great White Buddha as the sun began to set.

Marce set her own pace and made it just in time.

On shaky legs we started down the mountain. The thing about going to see a sunset is you’re going to come back in the dark.

We’ve had a week of relative home-like routine in Chang Mai when a travel directive came down from on high. After careful bean counting, a few baht were found surplus to our immediate needs so we turned travel arrangements over to Jackie, the patron saint of wayward wandering pilgrims and owner of the Wayside Guest House, our home away…well, the closest thing we have to a home. Jackie booked us a Hi Ace Toyota minibus to Pai which arrived promptly the next morning and began wandering through the narrow alleyways of Chang Mai neighborhoods picking up fellow pilgrims, stacking up their massive backpacks behind the fold down seats in the back, until we were packed in like spam-in-a-can and like every “chicken bus” I’ve ever been on. There’s always room for one more.

Before long we started up into the mountains and switchbacks announced their presence with authority. Back and forth we swerved, left and then right.

I checked on Marce and she was doing fine but a young boy up front was lime green. With impeccable timing, while rounding a tight turn, our driver handed his mother a barf bag and he filled it to the brim. Marce held fast. I was proud.

We found ourselves firmly at the epicenter of the backpacker “Banana Pancake Trail” where we were once on the yachtie “Coconut Milk Run.”

Rolling into Pai we had to dodge hundreds of backpackers as we fought our way into the middle of town.

In Thailand this is called a walking street, but it doesn’t mean you won’t be run over by a newbie trying to corral an out of control scooter.

Marce and I instantly felt comfortable with the anything goes, hippie vibe; after all we were once, a long time ago, flower children. We found our guest house; do they still call it a pad?

From weed to wonton, every kind of ingestible is available in this tiny town.

We decided on Khao Soi for lunch at the Sugar Cane eatery, which turned out to be the best we ever had.

No recipe, an old lady in Pai makes it for them. A quick turn around town revealed tours for any variety of extreme adrenaline-fueled activity. We chose a walk to the bamboo bridge that crosses the picturesque Pai River. Not exactly white water but then it hasn’t rained in over a month.

The character on the other side of the river is quite a bit different.

Every evening the walking street converts to a night market

As luck would have it we ran into Wayside friends dining streetside and made a date for lunch. Pai is that kind of place.

The good news is that as our grumpy driver negotiated his way down the steep and twisty mountain temple road, we knew that our last stop, the opium museum, was right at the base of this mountain. In a Come to Jesus meeting with the powers that be we agreed that we had to be on the road back to Chang Rai by 3:00 or be subject to certain unspecified penalties. As Marce and I pointed to the Opium Museum clearly visible on the right, our driver said no, he knows where the Opium Museum is, and apparently it’s down the permanently clogged two lane road to the left.

After 45 minutes of bumper to bumper stop-and-go crawl we broke free of town clutter and pulled into an impressive edifice featuring a large wide open parking lot that, now that we’d arrived, had exactly one car in it. After slogging up a long humbling staircase we arrived at reception barely able to speak. They wanted 400 baht apiece! This can’t be the right place but we paid because we were already there and the clock was counting down.

The place has an interesting uphill corridor with Hieronymus Bosch-like bas-relief sculpture on the walls. I think this is probably an attempt to dazzle you with distracting footwork because of the longish uphill hike.

The creepy figures seemed to be rising out of the walls, setting the tone of a web of pain due to addiction.

Turns out the backstory to the orientation film is royal propaganda about how the queen rid the nation of opium turning dope into tea. Aside from some great old film footage, this was not what we came for. What’s more, the film suggested the visit would take 2-3 hours.

Marce stormed out of the little welcoming film and demanded our money back. The tiger of Philly wins again! I will say it was quiet in the car going back but the traffic, if possible, was even worse. Chastised, our driver went where we originally said, parked where we said, and waited where we said. He even tacked on a half hour to our drop dead time.

Entering through the gift shop we paid a very small fee and entered poppy land. Ah, this is the place.

Turns out that there are just four main types of poppies that are used.

First things first was a display of the stages of poppy growth and quick D.I.Y. lesson on how to make opium. Does anyone think this is a good idea?

There is a proscribed proper position to smoke opium and apparently this is it. What you can’t see is the block under the head and the feet are in the proscribed position tucked into the butt.

Whimsical weights and scales were invented for the commerce inevitably becoming quite creative with fantastical creatures.

A few tools of the trade.

Some of these pipes are works of art.

Exiting through the gift shop we found beautiful antique pipes and paraphernalia for sale. Sounds a little like buying a prison sentence to me.

It was a frustrating day but we got the most out of it. Then it was back to Chiang Rai and a last visit to the night market for dinner.

The next day we hopped on the first class bus for the long ride back to Chiang Mai, our home base in Thailand. It was good to be back.

I don’t know if it was a language problem or just a breach of our driver’s comfort zone but it caused a certain inflexibility of attitude. We had already done many of the things on the typical Chiang Rai tour list, which seemed like poor value for money, so we booked our own driver and car which we thought would allow us to construct our own far-reaching itinerary. Like many things it started out smoothly. Or maybe we should’ve realized when he wouldn’t take the more scenic road we preferred, to our first stop. He still managed to get us to the Baan Dam Museum, better known as the Black House.

Free from temple dogma Thai National Artist Thawan Duchanee felt unrestrained to plumb the darkest recesses of his mind. I was vibrating with anticipation and gladly paid the entrance fee that seems to be the first thing you do at one of these projects. Oddly, the entrance to the Black House seemed peaceful, almost reverential but at least you can leave your shoes on!

Not actually black but a dark dull stain, the Black House seems rather small, almost humble, as one enters the great hall but magically expands as you cross the threshold and your eyes follow the ladder-like steps nearly four stories up into the rafters.

One shudders at what the view from up there might do to your bladder. That’s when the assault to your senses begins to overwhelm. It’s kind of a gothic perspective on Buddhist art.

The exhibits mostly consist of the skin, horns, and bones of dangerous animals arranged in artistic patterns that seem to change their meaning somehow.

This menagerie is accompanied by a massive hoard of old Thai collectibles worthy of a Cracker Barrel restaurant in the U.S.

Many of the 40 some-odd buildings can only be viewed from outside the structure.

Duchanee is said to occasionally spend the night inside his personal apartment in what is known as “the whale.”

Volunteers and backpackers stay in these concrete yurts.

As seductive as inspecting Duchanee’s gothic nightmare is, we’ve miles to go to our next stop. We soon realized that our headstrong driver had his own ideas about our itinerary and we found ourselves taking a huge detour to see a tea plantation which was the last priority on our list, only if we have the time. All things being equal I like tea plantations, but we’ve seen the terraced valleys of Bali and you just can’t touch that for scenic tranquil beauty .

So we lost an hour and a half while trying to convey our disappointment at how this was progressing and we really ought to head north to the rescue cave as soon as possible. Our thinking was our car, our driver, our rules.

Now we dolly back, then we fade to black in preparation for round two.