Escape Velocity

After two months in beautiful northern Thailand, hot and dusty Bangkok isn’t quite hitting the sweet spot for us. We scour top ten lists of things to do and not much is piquing our interest so we’re reverting to our default travel mode, randomly exploring by public transportation, shopping, and eating.

We found an Ethiopian restaurant — one of our favorite cuisines — but getting there was going to be a bit of a challenge. We started with the riverboat, which was supposed to connect with a canal boat but when we got to the canal landing some locals told us the boat wasn’t running. A hot walk lead us to a bus stop and eventually to the restaurant. It took nearly two hours to get there but it was worth it!

We wisely sprung for a tuktuk ride back to the hotel.

One thing on everyone’s top ten list is a visit to the Golden Mount Temple, and while we’ve seen some fine temples during our time in SE Asia, this one promised a panoramic view of the city. So it was back on the riverboat and the long walk up the steps to the top.

In 1820 Bangkok suffered a cholera epidemic and so many bodies piled up that in some areas they resorted to allowing vultures to reduce the backup. This monument below the temple commemorates that gruesome period.

It was another oppressively hot day but luckily the temple grounds hosts a cafe with cold drinks, cooling towels and welcome shade.

As always we explored local markets.

One of the best ways to cool off in hot Asian cities is to go shopping in one of the massive malls. This is also an opportunity to get ice cream, always a noble pursuit.

This mall had the largest Starbucks we’ve ever seen, three levels plus an enormous outdoor patio with a fantastic view of the city.

The heat and dust are really getting to us. It’s time to move on.

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.

Longterm travel brings joy and adventure but also challenges and frustration. I guess we haven’t been paying attention but we discovered that Jack’s debit card expired and mine is about to expire. We use our cards to get local currency wherever we go and without them we have no access to cash. This is especially critical right now as we’re traveling in areas where credit cards aren’t generally accepted. So now what?

Our replacement cards are sent to our mailing address in New Jersey. The bank will sent us replacements directly but only after canceling our one remaining working card. We chose instead to have my sister mail the New Jersey cards to us in Thailand. But where? And how long will it take?

This scenario threw a spanner into our Make It Up As We Go approach to travel. We spent a few days deciding where to go that could receive a DHL package and getting the address to my sister so she can start the ball rolling on her end.

We are Bangkok bound. A hotel accustomed to business travelers seemed like a good choice and after phone calls to the front desk to alert them to our incoming mail all we had to do was just get ourselves there.

We booked the overnight train from Chiang Mai and splurged on a first class sleeper cabin. Unfortunately the newer train was fully booked so we were on the older, shabbier, but still clean one. For the same price, I might add. That seems unfair.

The seats weren’t particularly comfortable, there was no room for our luggage, and since Covid there’s no food service. But it was about a third the cost of flying and we’re always up for a new experience.

The train pulled out of the station just before sundown so there will be no scenery to look at. We brought our own food and water, and when the train attendant made up our beds we just settled in to read for the evening.

The air conditioning was on full blast despite all efforts to turn it down or block the vents. We both shivered most of the night and we were glad to arrive at 6am and warm up.

We had booked the hotel for a week expecting to wait for our DHL delivery but as it turned out the package beat us there. Now we’re in a comfy hotel just beyond our normal budget for a whole week. We hadn’t planned to spend any time in Bangkok and don’t really know what to do here. But we’ll figure it out. We always do.

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.

We seem to keep missing Lunar New Year celebrations wherever we are. In Sydney in 2017 we enjoyed an unexpected dragon dance through a market but missed the big day, and in Singapore in 2020 we watched decorations pop up around town in preparation for the event but we had to leave before the actual festivities.

This year we were determined to catch the real thing, or at least what we could, given where we are. We figured Chiang Mai is our best bet so we reluctantly left delightful Pai for the minibus journey back over the mountains to our home base in Chiang Mai.

Most of the celebrations would be in Chinatown, a long hot walk from the Old Town, so we chose to get up early and watch the start of the official kickoff parade at the East Gate.

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.

We’ve grown to love Chiang Mai. We love the neighborhood we’d randomly picked online, and we love our wonderful host at Wayside Guesthouse. We have favorite cafés and restaurants, a temple down the street we visit nearly every day, a routine of market visits depending on the day. We’ve introduced ourselves to the local cats. When we walk down the street vendors greet us like friends.

After nearly six weeks in Thailand it’s time to apply for a visa extension. There are two options for this, one being a return to the immigration office near the airport, and the other going to a new office in one of the big fancy malls. We’re always up for a mall visit wherever we go, mostly to patronize some of the western food emporia that have infiltrated most countries. Auntie Annie’s, Baskin-Robbins, here we come.

Jackie, our guesthouse host, helped us print and copy the paperwork for the extension and despite a brief hitch because one of the printouts cut off essential info, we were on our way in about 45 minutes, with 30 more days to spend in this wonderful country. The charge was about $55 each. The cost of visas and extensions is something we need to budget for now. Of the countries we visited by boat we rarely paid anything for entry, and usually were granted 90 days on entry, sometimes longer.

Business done, it was time to explore the mall. There are three modern malls in Chiang Mai and this is our favorite. It’s got the biggest Uniqlo we’ve ever seen plus Marks & Spencer, H&M, and all the usual international brands you can imagine. We rarely buy anything but we both enjoy windowshopping. There’s also an indoor version of the ubiquitous street market where you can indulge in any of the foods you normally see in a night market. We still don’t know what half of it is, but the market is always busy.

I’m a sucker for stationery stores, and this one had me walking up and down every aisle, inhaling the smell of paper, examining the craft supplies. I don’t need any of this stuff but I had to touch everything nonetheless. Jack waited outside.

We were lured by the sound of a musical instrument that we initially took to be recorded but as we got closer we found this woman playing a guzheng, a 21-string Chinese instrument similar to a harp. I failed to capture a video, but it was beautiful and she’s obviously a master.

We don’t think of ourselves as tourists but rather travelers who plunk ourselves in a place and enjoy whatever comes at us. On our wanders around town we always read the tour offerings to see what people on a schedule come here for. Most of it doesn’t appeal to us. Bus tours are almost always nixed as I have an aversion to being herded and we generally manage to make our way to places of interest on our own. One place we haven’t visited yet is Doi Suthep, a large temple complex high on a hill overlooking Chiang Mai. “High on a hill” are the right words to entice Jack, who never turns down an opportunity to reach the top of anything.

Instead of a tour or a series of local buses, we took an inexpensive ride-hail car to the base of the hill where we faced the 309 steps to the top.

The temple is magnificent and there’s lots to look at.

But the real reason for us to come was the sweeping view of Chiang Mai. Even with the haze it was nice to see it from this perspective.

We soaked in the view for a long time, then wisely took the funicular down the mountain to save our knees.

And then, being the Schulzes, we ended our excursion at a café. Chiang Mai delivers.

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.