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Published: August 5th 2012
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Arriving in Thailand the airport was cool and comfortingly inexepensive looking, and stepping out into the street it felt warm and humid. We were met by someone associated with the charity, and took two taxis to our hotel. Bangkok seemed huge and industrial-with lots of billboards associated with computers, which I hadn’t realised was big business there. The hotel was big, cold and empty, and we headed out to have a look around the market nearby. Life in bangkok seemed to hold on around lots of large ugly concrete structures, with lots of stalls selling fruit and various basic things. The other side of it seemed to be a really prominent tourist industry, with western-style bars commonplace. The young Thai woman who met us at the airport took us out for a meal that evening and we enjoyed chips and beer (it was someones birthday).
The next day we went out to see some of Bangkok at large, taking the elevated railway to see the big Buddha, big river and everything else we could fit in. A nice woman asked me to write a no smoking sign for her stall, and gave me a leather belt. We went
to see the royal palace, in a little convoy of tuk-tuks. It’s a huge area of lavishly ornate buildings, administered to by large numbers of orange-clad monks. Its opulance was massively contrasting to the rest of the city, which was generally pretty cheap and shabby, or modern and austere. This seemed to be mainly the case in Thailand, ugly cities thronging with life, ornate temples and some degree of expensive modern buildings such as hotels and banks. The tourist secor mixed in with the real life of the Thai people in the cities, and outside of them was mainly very rudimentary agricultural communities and towns. I’d later find out some of this could be explained by the social system’s basis in Theravada Buddhism, though more about that later.
I ws pretty keen to leave Bangkok by the time we got on a train to Chaing Mai, in the north-west. From the train I could see rice paddies and I can’t remember what else. It was beautiful however, and I felt really glad to be away from home for the first time.
Off the train in Chiang Mai we were all apparently in a bit
of a mood, and managed to argue our way into a taxi and to a guesthouse. We had a week or so to explore before being taken to our respective villages in the jungle. Chiang Mai has a large square moat and crumbling walls, lots of old temples and a really strong tourist life. I took quite a lot of opportunities to take off on my own, eating and drinking around Tha Pae gate, close to our guesthouse. As a group we got up to quite a lot of stuff, though the acutal order and accuracy of things is a little unclear.
Chris and I went out to a ruined stupa (temple) somewhre in the city, where we ‘talked to a monk’, something we had found in the guidebook and thought might be a good idea. I was feeling a bit worse for the wear and he could probably tell-it defninitely seemed like quite a clash of lifestyles. I think, not being sure of whether this was on the same day, we then stopped in another temple on the way back. A little street kid was hanging around looking shifty outside, and we left our sandals before
entering as is the custom, and had a little look around. It wasn’t really a visiting temple, there was a young monk watching T.V. and nobody else about really. Stepping back outside of the temple we observed the non-presence of one of Chris’ flip-flops. Remembering the shifty kid that was outside beforehand, we scouted about until we found an old monk and related the situation. Apparently this had happened before, and he pointed us in the direction of another temple which this kid was supposed to normally take his ill gotten gains. Honestly I don’t know how but we managed to track down this kid and persuade him to give back the flip-flop, though after quite a lot of remonstrating. If I remember right we got to this other temple and tried to explain to another monk that a small and grubby child had run off with a flip-flop of ours. They wern't at all surprised, and the translation was made easier by the clear and obvious fact that this had happened before on several occasions. We then spotted the kid high-tailing it out of the temple gate, and we gave chase. Slowed down by Chris’s one flip-flop we thought
we were going to lose him as he sped off through the back-streets. When we eventually did we thought we would return to the original Temple of the Stolen Sandal(flip-flop), where we found the old monk and the grubby kid, looking unapologetic. We go the sandal back through pointing at the one on chris's foot and the one on the kids foot and trying to calmly explain that he couldn’t keep it, although we were sure it was an honest mistake that he had taken it. He fidgeted a lot and gave a very true to life performance of complete misunderstanding, which might have been the case anyway. When he gave it back he was pretty nonplussed, like he had expected more drama, or at least a bit of money. Perhaps it was all some kind of elaborate scam organised by the monk and the street kids to embezzle some of the stupid loaded touristos. Anyhow that was quite enough adventure for one day, we decided.
Chaing Mai, or ‘Changers’ to me and you and whoever said it first, had quite a lot to offer, particularly in the way of food. I got quite addcted to toasted
cheese sandwiches and beer at one point, and there was this American burger joint on a street-corner that did the most amazing burger I'd ever had, a massive lump of beef and cheese and relish. As for acutal Thai food there were little eateries where you could eat pre-prepared basic noodle dishes such as Pad Thai for almost nothing. At restaurants you could sample exquisite Thai curries made with coconut milk, lemongrass and ginger, with perfectly cooked fragrant rice. Thai curries come in Green and Red, so you are never short of variety. We all took in a Thai Beatles cover band at a riverside restaurant, which was even better than the real thing. Some bust up I cant remember the reason for at the guest house meant we had to move to another, less interesting one a couple of streets away. Chris and I seranaded some locals in the street from the balcony. Soon enough it was time to hit the road again, and we loaded onto a bus.
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