Thailand: Bangkok and Chiang Rai

I'm in Thailand!! And things are well! Thanks to friends and family for such a nice send-off in Seattle and San Francisco. So, my first few days in Bangkok were rough. I won't go into the details, but the Japanese Encephalitis vaccination that I received the first day took my breakfast and lunch for a solid 24 hours. I was really fortunate to meet up with John Campion, a friend from Apple Hill. going way back! John's volunteering in the Peace Corps, where he had training and was staying at a very nice hotel on the river. We hung out with the volunteers for a few days and then spent a day at Chattuchat weekend market (definitely unlike anything I've seen back home) and at the Siam Paragon Mall where we saw a movie and experienced the traditional homage to the King of Thailand at the outset (everybody stands up). The overnight bus to Chiang Rai was really nice, so I actually got some sleep.

John headed up to his site (~30 km from the city) and I joined John's friend, Ashley to visit Chiang Rai. The first day, we went to the White Temple, which I have come to realize is truly unique compared to the traditional temples featuring a buddha in some posture and not much else. The architect and mural painter is the same person and I truly admired his work. One wall of the interior featured "good" and the other was probably "bad" -- the latter seamlessly integrating all kinds of things including, including the images of Bush, Bin Laden, airplanes involved in the 9/11 attacks, snakes strangling the burning twin towers, fed by the greed of the masses and their thirst for oil. I could have watched this for hours because I just kept seeing new things!

The next day, I took the bus up to some border towns (Chiang Saen and Mae Sae) along the Burmese/Laos borders, passing through the steamship prow temple at the "Golden Triangle."

After meeting two new friends, Galaad (French) and Chris (British), at the local hangout, we decided to rent motorbikes and head for the hills. The plan was to make a loop (about 190 km total). I had one map which showed the necessary roads and one that didn't, so we were rolling the dyce. By about 2PM, we were about half-way through the loop and in some really fascinating country. Our route went from wide 2-lane road to a small, windy road, which quickly turned to dirt as we started to enter hill tribe towns surrounded by terraced countryside. The people we saw were friendly and we passed one boy with a bat...he was sitting next to a leashed pig...your guess is as good as mine on this one. Well, we were just digging this road, until it suddenly was blocked with no way around for our bikes. We back-tracked and found an english-speaking man in the previous village. He told us that we could get to Chiang Rai along this river valley, but we'd have to take a boat to get to the road. He introduced us to some locals who we could hire to take our bikes across for us. After contemplating the risks of this crossing (to our bikes which were the keys to regaining our passports!), the point of no return, and the complete inadequacy of any map we had, we decided the rewards were too great to pass up and as Chris put it: "never have the Americans, French, and English made good decisions when together." After significant manoevering, we managed to get our bikes onto the opposite bank and continued onwards. The road became single-track and very slow going. Small stream crossings became frequent (good thing this was the dry season!) because we had to extract Galaad's bike from some drink that was trying to eat his wheels! Several times we walked our bikes (with motors on for power) up steep hills and coaxed our way down steep descents. At times, cows slowed progress as well. Daylight was beginning to wane and we had no idea how far we had to go. The low point was when Chris' bike slipped off the track and dropped about 5 feet down into some dense vegetation. After some serious effort, we got his bike back on track. We passed a few locals who consistently pointed the same direction when we mentioned Chiang Rai, so we had that going for us. We finally got to a village and local kids ran up and started playing with our bike horns. We played them a simple three-note song with our horns (the intervals were surprisingly close to 2nd's!). Well, I think I've painted enough of a picture of this adventure. I hope to post photos soon! We did get our bikes returned after dark, although when they saw our bikes caked in dirt, we were concerned they wouldn't pass the inspection, so it was a great relief when they put passports in our hands!

I've consistently enjoyed Thai ingenuity, which ranges from using tree branches to replace traffic cones, patches of jeans as coasters, etc...The Thai people have been incredibly friendly, I wish I had a bit more Thai, so I could effectively converse. I'm lucky when I have John around because he speaks well! I'm heading to Laos, tomorrow.