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Published: April 13th 2013
A night at The Good View
Looking so much healthier than our last night in Koh Phangan!I'm getting the overnight train from Butterworth in Malaysia to Bangkok. And I feel good. The sleepers to and from Bangkok are comfortable and in my experience, safe affairs. Just don't go for the cheaper option of a top bunk. I ususally like the top, I horde all my stuff up there and somehow it feels safer. But the top bunks on overnight trains to Thailand are half the size of the bottom bunk. The lower bunks are 2 or 3 dollars more expensive but the guard makes it up for you and you can stretch out fully, you have curtains to divide you, a place to store luggage underneath, proper pillows and blankets. Its almost as good as some of the hotel rooms i've been in and I sleep like a baby without any need for the barbie pink sleeping tablets. They also have a food menu and for 160 b (about four pounds fifty) you can get two main courses (a curry and some meat and veg usually) rice, soup and fruit. It beats the food on offer on most British trains!
I'm sharing with a Thai girl called Pan. She seems sweet enough. I offer her my
soup which she politely declines, then asks if she can have a bit of my pineapple which she delicately nibbles on. When they come to put out the beds, she eases herself into the lower bunk. Er I don't think so love. I point to her and the upper bunk. She says no. I get out my ticket and point to LOWER BUNK on it. This farang wasn't born yesterday. She gets out and waits for the guard to make the upper bunk.
I'm woken up the next day by Pan sliding into my bed and sticking her toes under the cover. Its 8am and I guess she's been up for a while and its really not comfy on the upper bunk once you are awake! We get the guard to convert the lower bunk back into its seating arrangement and then I order a hot coffee to wake me up.
I arrive into Bangkok about midday. Somehow, even though I've discarded loads of clothes, The Bastard (my backpack) is even heavier than uusal. I go buy a ticket to leave the same day again for Chiang Mai (departs 6pm in the evening) and dump my stuff at
Left Luggage. The spotty youths (as my mother would uncharitably call them) are pretending to snort lines of coke off the table top. One of them looks at my expression and giggles “NO NO is OK!!! “ pointing to a large plastic bag of what I can only assume is talcum powder. Ah well they have to get their kicks somehow.
I missed out on getting to catch a film when I was in Bangkok before which I was a bit gutted about as almost a year in to my travels and I still haven't been to the cinema. With 6 hours to kill I head straight to the nearest shopping mall – via the easy to use subway system and overland Sky Train. The gorgeous fragrant shinyness of the shopping mall reminds me how much I like my soulless consumerism sometimes and that a budget backpacker life for me can really only ever be a temporary option as I intend to be in the position to travel the world “first class” as Noel Coward put it. Right at the top of the mall is the cinema. I have been out of the loop too long and no idea
what any of the films are. I see a trailer showing for something called Django Unchained. Its a Tarantino flick (always a good start in my book) and its got Leonardo Di Caprio in it. That's enough for me – i'm in, so I enconsce myself happily into a near empty multiplex with an enormous bucket of sweet popcorn and watch a bloody brilliant and of course, it being Tarantino, brilliantly bloody film which heralds my return to the 21
st Century.
Why Chaing Mai, Why Chiang Mai, hell it rhymes. Lots of people I've met on my travels have recommended it to me as somewhere I would like, and its arty too. Like me 😉
I arrive in about 8am from the second overnight train in as many nights, sounds like hell but actually i've loved it .And after two months of being stationary on Koh Phangan i've missed that exciting flutter of butterflies in the tum I get whenever i set off again for pastures new. Oh a traveller's life for me...
I have no plan (well there is a suprise) and no accommodation booked. I go to a tourist counter in the train station which
is really just a marketing stall for local hotels and they offer free transport into town.
The sun is just going golden in the early morning, and blossom trees line the moat; a dark green river interspersed with fountains that rings the parameters of the Old Town. Its pretty here and i feel happy. Very happy.
I get a message from Anke, the blonde, german girl who lives down the road from me in London and studied the yoga at Agama. Anke worked in the evil banking sector and was signed off with chronic pain, migraines and stress (not suprising really) She's now retraining as a massage therapist and felling a lot more relaxed about life!
As a bit of a flashpacker she has booked herself into a beautiful 1400b a night room at Sakorn Residence and invites me over to stay.
East Chiang Mai is a world away from the hot dusty hustle and bustle of the Old Town. The streets are spacious and leafy, it feels a bit like we are in the Thai version of Greenwich Village or Shoreditch. We wander down to the River Ping and have dinner at The Good View,
a riverside restaurant strung with lanterns and as its name suggests a very good view and then over to Windy's for a night cap. Its a trendy little bar with an acoustic duo on guitar and loads of hipster Thais drinking whisky. It wouldn't seem out of place in Hoxton except the cocktails are 2 quid fifty. Now that i can get used to!
I'm looking for a place to stay more permanently (well for the next couple of months) and am joined by a lovely girl called Nam who (after i ask if she knows anywhere) joins me to view a few guesthouses and does the talking for me. Asian people really do beat their western counterparts hands down when it comes to kindness to strangers. But places are cheap and hot and getting booked up because of the forthcoming Water Festival - Thai New Year which hits Chiang Mai in mid April. Ah well there is still time...
A few days later we downgrade a tad to the Top North Hotel right by Thapae Gate, the main entrance to the Old City. The Top North hotel, and indeed Chiang Mai is full of gnarled seen better
day western men and their young and not so young Thai brides. I'm sure they are happy and give each other something, well I hope so anyway but there is a kind of wrecked look to some of these men, who look like they've wasted their youths on drugs and alcohol. It gets even more challenging when one 80 year old man (if he is a day) comes doddering into the swimming pool, blueish veins showing through frail pallid skin and then we see his adorable half Thai 4 year old daughter come running after him in wetsuit and water wings. He's old enough to be her grandfather but no, this is Sexpat Daddy as Anke names him. After our first night in Sexpat City (as we rename the hotel) Anke gets attacked by what she thinks are mosquitoes...except i don't have a bite...which is unusual.
I'm like Nitty Nora the Flea Explorer – I cast my (sadly expert) eye over her sheets and her bites and diagnose bedbugs. So we manage a free upgrade to a room for the same price as the Sakorn Residence but that is no where near as desirable but on the upside, a
hell of a lot nicer than where we were!
In the evening we meet a couple of friends of hers called Mags and Jo. Mags is another ex marketing manager from Lloyds. She is moving out of her apartment on Saturday, the day that we checkout of Sexpat City. Great timing! I go look at it and its cheaper and a better quality than anything else i've seen. The room is air conditioned, with a fridge, writing desk and TV and there is a largeish ensuite bathroom with walk in shower. They have a roof terrace where I can go watch sunsets, a cheap cafe downstairs that does main meals and great coffee for 30b (about eighty pee.) I snap it up on the spot!
Anke and I spend our final night going around the Night Bazaar and then eating at a great little restaurant there called Lemon Grass and making silly drunk purchases. On Saturday we say our goodbyes (Anke is heading back to stay at the lovely Eco Resort in East Chiangmai) and then back down to Koh Phangan for more beach and I move into my new apartment...
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
Enjoy living in Chiang Mai
We lived there from Feb 1974 to July 1975 while I constructed the road and radar station on Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand. This was our favorite home...no place we have lived in the subsequent years even compares. I took my kids there in 2007 so that they could see some of our past life. They also loved it.