Chiang Mai: 
The Thai That Binds

Happy April Fool’s Day, but I’m not fooling. This is a Jones Journey Update. An Intro of Things To Come. Official Notice of a Quantum Leap. For me, my life has suddenly changed. Laughlane.com is the best place to post the Notice, if you care to notice.

Intuition. Listen to intuition. Intuit. Get intuit. Get into it.
While planning this journey, I read books. I surfed the web. I listened to friends. I perused the options. I pondered the signs. I felt the call. Thailand had elephants, fluorescent butterflies, timeless temples, mountains, beaches and jungles. Thai food tasted exotic and challenged my tongue. Sawatdee and Rau Mit were two favorite restaurants in Minnesota. I loved the “King and I.” Thailand became the vision on the horizon. And its city of Chiang Mai, in the northern mountains, shined in my mind. Get into it.

I began in Hawaii because my San Francisco cousin said, “Meet us on Maui on January 3.” It was paradise, but expensive, tall and white.

I flew to Hong Kong because the choices for my Northwest Frequent Flyer alternatives connecting with San Francisco and Hawaii were Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Koala  Lumpur. The temperature in Beijing can be zero degrees in January. Wrong. I didn’t want to be shanghaied. Too many America-hating Muslims in Kuala Lumpur, besides I still have no idea how to spell Coo Allah Lump Purr. Hong Kong it was.

Ten splendid days later I went to Vietnam because I heard it was enchanting and because I’d tried to so hard NOT to go there thirty years ago. And a friend said, “Come and spend the Lunar New Year in Saigon. It’s our most special holiday.” Then I went to Ha Noi because I’d seen the south for a month and wanted equal time for the north before my visa expired. I knew I’d come back for the middle. And a friend said, “It’s more relaxed in Ha Noi. And the mountains are close to the city.”

27.03.03, exactly eight months after IMPACT, I arrived in Thailand. My intuition coaxed me, coached me. My two favorite dishes, Pad Thai and Holy Basil Supreme, beckoned. And a friend said, “Come and visit my beautiful country. I guarantee you’ll love it.”

The Bangkok airport was immediately attractive to my mind and my spirit: two friends on the way to pick me up, uniformed folks too friendly for words, an artistic language on the signs and walls with Thank God, Buddha or the Government, English subtitles. One afternoon, one night and one morning in Bangkok was enough. Check in to the guesthouse, follow my friends around the city, pass the phrasebook back and forth during Language Barrier 101, sleep, check out, deliver my dead digital camera to the Konica hospital, go back to the airport. After two months in Vietnam, a captivating country trying to pick up the scattered pieces of a sordid history of occupation, civil war, the party line and poverty, Bangkok was severe culture shock. It’s like New York with a whole bunch of other things that don’t exist in New York. I wasn’t quite prepared for tall buildings, real roads and highways, sprawling city streets, transvestites. Or way too many tall white people in the backpack/tourist area where I stayed. Or the infamous claustrophobic downtown night market with boisterous barkers flashing laminated cards to my female companions advertising (some censorship may be required here) “pussy shooting ping pong ball, pussy shooting banana” and, don’t even think about it, “pussy with magic razor blades.” I didn’t get into it.

The next day I arrived in Chiang Mai, met again at the airport by friends of my friend who couldn’t make it at the last minute. The friendliness to “strangers” in Asia is incomprehendable. I never knew what the word “friendly” meant. It has to be experienced here, again and again and again. I’m getting into it.

I checked in at the Riverside House, coincidently right next door to the Rau Mit Café. The innkeepers were so friendly I thought they were kin, not last life, this life. An evening alone in the city charmed me to the core. Another outdoor market but without the seamy side of life. A bouquet of exquisite orchid stems or thirty roses for 60 baht = $1.25 USA. The only markets vaguely similar in the States are at fairs or festivals, but in Asia they’re everywhere, all the time. You look around and think, “Gee, I wonder what they’re celebrating?” It’s just today. It’s just life. Day markets bustle, but when the heat subsides at night, the night markets thrive. Surrounded by the flavors and sweet-smelling smoke of twenty vendors, I savored my long-awaited Pad Thai and Holy Basil Supreme for 80 baht = $1.95 USD. Mmm. Thai food in Thailand. Ideal temperature, warm breeze and a billion birds in the trees like an innocuous Hitchcock “The Birds” movie. The sweet cacophony of countless feathered crickets filled the air. I got into it.

The next day a deep, uncontrollable feeling spread from my heart to my over-active brain, the motor center. I rented a Honda cruiser, bought protective gloves and instead of the toy plastic head cap they gave me, found another sturdy Nolan helmet that had saved my life eight months earlier, bartered for a Lee denim jacket at the market, already had strong boots purchased for the Vietnam trip. Off through the mountains, the driving rain, the verdant forest to Lampang, to another Riverside  Guest House, to a quaint teak room with a porch overlooking the river, perfect for morning yoga: quiet, magic, inspiring. I could have stayed a month. 350 baht per night = $9 USD.

By morning I was smitten. I wasn’t visiting anymore. It was crystal clear that I live here. Back through more amazing mountains and elephant sanctuaries, on 30.03.03, three trinities, a day that said, “get into it,” I headed back home to Chiang Mai.

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