Chiang Mai to Bangkok: Flight of the Visaless Valkyrie
Posted from: Los Angeles
There’s a very good reason that I ended up back here in Los Angeles several months too early, and without so much as a by-your-leave. It was a peaceful Monday morning like any other. I had sweat out 50% of my body fluids in my sleep and mutant, tropical bugs were waiting in my bathroom to send me yelping and mincing out of the shower – revenge for swallowing their compatriots in the night. (more…)
Chiang Mai: Reluctant Rock Climbing
Posted from: Chiang Mai, Thailand
So it’s rock climbing tomorrow.
Lydia and I signed up for a one day rock-climbing and rappelling course, both of us with very different motives. She, because she’d like to possess some basic knowledge of climbing in order to potentially pursue it for leisure when she’s back home. Me, because it’s so James fucking Bond. (more…)
Obiter Dictums, Thailand
Posted from: Chiang Mai, Thailand
I’ve been away from this blog for far too long, mainly due to lack of inspiration. Just because I’m writing again should not lead you to the conclusion that I am now inspired, however. Guilt, and a dedication to filling up my journal made of actual paper (to which I will print and paste this, sad as that is), sits me at the keyboard today. (more…)
The Bug Eating Saga
Posted from: Chiang Mai, Thailand
The bug-eating saga continues, as this evening found me in a Yunnanese restaurant eating a plateful of grubs. By myself. When traveling, I find that this sort of behavior is acceptable as long as you’re with a friend and going for the gross-out factor, or the two of you are vying for More-Culturally-harmonious-Than-Thou, but when you’re dining alone and you order (and finish) an entire plate of fried caterpillars, it’s time to write your soul mate, Ted Kaczynski, and ask him to support you while you battle your inner daemons. (more…)
Maesai: The Dead and the Dying
Posted from: Chiang Mai, Thailand
“Bob” and I drove forty-five minutes in the wrong direction based on the the strength of his intuition, though he’d never been to Maesai. It was around six in the morning, and he and I were day tripping to the Burmese border town on a motorbike to get our Visas renewed. Every month I make the pilgrimage up there, 4 hours up, one hour wandering the stalls and fending off the roaming cigarette peddlers, and 4 hours back. Until now, I’ve always taken the bus, and when Bob suggested going up on a motorbike, I welcomed the break in the monotony. (more…)
Songkran Festival
Posted from: Chiang Mai, Thailand
Chiang Mai is Me Stew. In the midst of the steamy, humid air, I bob and simmer like so many diced vegetables. The weather is heating up day by day as I get a preview of global warming run amok. We seem to be barrelling towards some kind of Pomeiian apocolypse and I am exhausted easily with less expended effort. (more…)
Mr. Monk and the Nuk Nuks
Chiang Mai, Thailand
For the second time I gave my butt over to the less than tender mercies of Nuk’s motorbike and took the 10 minute trip to the suburb of Maerim for Mr. Monk’s Micky-Moused Acme Herbal Sauna and Health Retreat, Northern Thailand’s middle finger response to the pomp and swank of L.A. spas. (more…)
Stopover in Ayuthaya
Posted from: Ayuthaya, Thailand
The ruins at Ayuthaya were like nothing I’d ever seen. Wat Si Sanphet, the largest of the templates, boasting three towering stone chedis, was used by 14th-century kings. I’ve read that it “once contained a 16m-high standing Buddha covered with 250 kgs of gold which was melted down by Burmese conqueror.” (more…)
From HuaHin to Chiang Mai
Posted from: Ayuthaya, Thailand
It only took 6 hours of travel time to reach Ayuthaya and settle in at my guesthouse, Baan Khun Phra, and the way up was more like a reality dating show than a solitary road trip. I dyed my hair several shades of blue the night before I left as a symbolic farewell ritual to Hua Hin, and while in the States that tends to send all sorts of alienating messages conducive to solitary travel, here it just seems to imply that you’re easy. (more…)
New Years in Hua Hin
Posted from: Hua Hin, Thailand
Happy New Years. Dec. 31, 2003 found me on Hua Hin beach sharing a tatami with a group of Thais who I’d just met, and who didn’t speak more than a word or two of English. Perfect. Ideological Anonymity seems to be my prescription these days. Anyway, fire-crackers, distant yelling and those odd paraffin and plastic hot air balloons rang in the New Year, and I filed home alone. (more…)