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Published: November 29th 2008
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Good eatin!
From the corrupted/deleted photo file; you'll have to trust me, this was a bamboo worm. After the insanity of the Bangkok and Chiang Mai, I decided to head north for a little peace and quiet. Maybe even read a book or two. Reflect on the universe, that sort of thing. So I got on the bus for Chiang Rai.
On the bus I met a guy named Bob (from Boston) who was traveling up to meet some local guy he had randomly met when he was doing a meditation retreat. Bob from Boston had the characteristic shaved head and eyebrows of a Buddhist monk. He had done a retreat for 21 days at the Doi Suthep temple right outside of Chiang Mai. He was a pretty interesting guy and he wanted to know if I wanted to do a homestay sort of thing with him and this local guy that he had met. Bob seemed like a straight shooter so I said sure; and we hopped off the bus a few kilometers outside of Chiang Rai. Weerapat, the local guy, turned out to be a great tour guide. He picked us up at the spot where the bus dropped us off in a really nice new Ford truck. Weerapat was a retired English teacher at the
worlds largest bug
That is a normal sized toothpick next to it! local school. He had done 25 years in the school system, gotten his pension and called it quits a few months ago. The locals all knew him and totally respected this guy. A teacher in Thailand is right up there with the most respected of proffesions (as it should be). The teacher was still in him and I think he was bit bored with his retirement. He didn't have a family of his own but took care of his mom who had "the cancer". Anyway, he took us around in his truck to all this great stuff in the area that I had pictures of but they were accidentally deleted. But he showed us what local life was like, and how much you pay when you are a local - next to nothing. Tourist prices are double in most cases. The first night we went to see a local bazaar and have a few beers. We would give Weerapat some money when we were buying stuff so that it would be half as much. That night, Bob and I crashed at his house, which was pretty nice. They sleep on basically benches though. There is definitely no pillowtop mattresses in
Centipede
This was as close as I was going to get to this thing! this country! No hot water for a shower either. Talk about a quick shower! The next day we just drove around the small town of Pan and stopped at a blacksmith shop and saw them making machetes the old school way, pounding out hot metal with a hammer and anvil. It was very medieval. We then went to a market and ate some insects. I was able to dig up the deleted file, however, it had been corrupted and the recovered photos came out pretty bad. I did include the one of me eating a bamboo worm just as proof. You'll have to trust me that was an honest to god worm. We threshed some rice with some local farmers as they totally laughed at us for getting the rice all over the place. Then we went to a local home and just peeked inside to see how they lived. Weerapat knew everyone in the village and would just walk in like he was the boss. He even yelled at a few students he knew who were skipping school that day. They all still called him teacher and looked embarrased when they were busted. I felt like we could get
Chiang Khong
This was the view of the Mekong that greeted me in the morning away with anything with this guy because of the deference that the locals showed him.
It was very interesting to see the old school ways performed in the country here. I would venture to say that not one American I know (myself included) could handle one days worth of hard labor in the scorching sun. But the people here approach their work without complaint and often a smile and a joke. They definitely got some laughs from watching us do some of their work, badly I might add.
I left that day after the country tour with Weerapat as I was on a tight schedule and had to make it up to the border and get into Laos. I did spend a night in Chiang Rai which was nothing spectacular. It was actually a bit dodgy (my new favorite word), although my guest house (PS Guesthouse) was one of the nicest that I've stayed in. I did meet up with a girl from Holland and while we were having a few beers, this huge beetle flew down on my head. I jumped up and screamed like a 12 year old girl. See the pic. Fortunately, no one got a pic of me jumping and screaming. I saw a real live centipede too. This thing was about a foot long and supposedly poisonous, though I didn't test this theory. I barely got close enough to take the picture.
The next night I made it to Chiang Khong via the bus. Chiang Khong is right on the Mekong River, but a small town without much going on. This was perfect for my quest for solitude and I read most of my book down by the river, went running and basically soaked up the peace and quiet of this little river town. I spent the night at a pretty nice place of whose name I will never remember (there is a pic of the view outside my room).
The Thai language (and this goes for most Asian languages, I would imagine) is so completely different from ours that is tough to figure out. I have learned a few phrases here and there, mostly "hello" and "thank you", but for the most part it is just too tough. For me, that is no big deal. I'm only here for a couple of months and most Thais would probably rather speak English anyway. English for them is the key to economic success. It is definitely the language of commerce, but also our movies and culture have infiltrated almost every part of their lives. Most Thai people walk around with T-shirts that say something in English and I bet most of them have no idea what their shirt even says. But any Thai with any sort of financial aspirations HAS to learn English. That is why anyone who is a native English speaker can get a job as an English teacher here. They are dying to learn it. The thing is, it is just really completely different language. For starters, they are coming from a language that has a character based alphabet, then everything they say is backwards from the way that we say it. Whereas we would say, "where is the bathroom", they say "bathroom, where is it?" in a very Yoda-like fashion. And don't even get me started on the tones. They have 5 of them that can give one word 5 different meanings. Weerapat said "kai" 5 different ways using the tones to make a sentence - something about selling eggs. To me, it sounded all the same. Kai kai kai kai kai. But to them that had some meaning. My old brains' neuronal patterns are much to set in their ways to figure that out. Hence, difficulty with the Thai words. I am not alone in my confusion. If you ask any white guy what the name of their guest house is or even what street it is on, you will pretty much get the same response, "not sure, but if you take a left at the 7-11, you will see a....." I'm incredibly lucky to have been born speaking English as my first language because if it was the other way around and I had to learn Thai, I would be one poor fellow.
The next day I got on the "slow boat" to Luang Prabang in Laos. This would be a 2 day journey down the Mekong River.
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