Smiles
December 1st, 2014, 13:18
The military having kicked out Thailand's government back last spring and the hundreds of sorry-assed foreign tourists being mowed down at point blank range by army AK-47's on a regular basis in the streets of Bangkok . . . well you know, it kinda puts a damper on things, tourist-wise.
No one understands this more than my feverishly entrepreneurial old man who has seen his wallet lying there on the dresser, limp, half empty (myself, trying to put on a Happy Face, saying that " ... think of it more positively my darling, your wallet is actually half full ... " was not well-received ~ Buddha be damned ~ and got precisely nowhere, besides a scowl and a 'hrumph').
So ... let's get out of here and take a holiday!
Thus, The Scowl crawled, unimpressed, into the driver's seat and off we go down the road again, heading vaguely in the direction of Chiang Mai.
Having studied the maps for a few days I thought I'd like to take the scenic route, one I'd not experienced before ... which put us on the route north but quite a bit to the west, on small yellow roads not well-travelled, up to the the border with Burma at Mae Sot, over the hills and dales and never-ending switchbacks to Mae Hong Son, then the circuitous mountain road (the only one available) to Pai, then down, finally turning south and east to Chiang Mai.
Touching base with our dear friend Bob there (one of the ex-denizens of this board, now having slunk away to Gaybutton board), then a very long drive to Khon Khaen (to visit yet one more Tawan Daeng night club ... this is fast becoming a Quest rather than a night out), matched only by yet another few hundred mile slog to Surin, The Scowl's home province and his tiny village of Khlong Chareon, (Tambon) Nang Mut, (Amphur) Khap Choen. Mama was home with the buffalo (see below) and a temple ceremony was, coincidently, in full bloom.
We ended up in Jomtien (a veritable baby of sin & degradation compared to dirty greasy old Pattaya just-down-the-road) to visit a couple of old friends ~ 'old' in the temporal sense that is, he said, being careful ~ for a few days of hugs and chatter, then home to HuaHin.
This excursion took us two weeks: we smelled ~ not a continent, but the countryside, as they say. Not exactly the voyage of The Beagle I know, but it sure beat's Livingstone's sad demise on the banks of Lake Tanganyika.
And the scowl had disappeared.
One other reason for getting out of Hua Hin this year is it's abysmal heat and humidity this year. It just won't let up, and here it is the end of November ... a time of year when the temperature normally plummets in ~ at least ~ the evenings, and the humidity heads downwards at a gallop.
But the North?: (for intrepid travellers), there is nothing like the mild and cool temperatures which greeted us almost immediately in pasing through provinces such as Uthai Thani and Kamphaeng Phet. In general, the further north one drives the more mountainous the landscape becomes, so it stands to reason that the temperature would cool ... but this year it was a revelation and I rarely needed to hop into the nearest 7-11 for a batch of those fabulous little cold towels they seel in plastic wrappers.
For this alone, I would always recommend a travel north (the more leisurely the better) during the month of November. The rainy season is just ending, the greeny green of just about everything is striking and often quite beautiful, but the fields have not yet become dry and dusty as they usually are by middle February.
DAYS 1 or 2 or 3
(FYI: if you are in the mood, clicking on any of the photos here will enlarge them)
100 Year old markets, advertised as such on garish Welcome-To Sam-Chuk overheads as one enters the town often give one pause in Thailand.
Is it really 100 years old? Is it really a market used by locals (as opposed to tourist traps selling polka dot ceramic elephants used as candle holders ~ I have one ~ or 9 inch teak penises with a bottle opener at one end ~ I passed when offered one in Chiang Mai. Do I look like the kind of person who would gladly purchase a 9-inch anatomically correct dick ... having one of my own)?
Well, Sam Chuk is the real McCoy. An entire village of extremely old wooden buildings in various stages of life, all of which are obviously 100 years plus old. The market is a joy if one wants to purchase noodles in the form of large rubber balls, but I did buy a wooden pistol which shoots rubber bands a very long way with some force for Bob when he's unsuccessful in waking up his boyfriend to get out of bed and go get a job!
We walked under the cover of part canvas awnings, part plastic somethingorother, and part wooden roof overhangs jutting out in all directions. Walking through the maze of obscure little alleys and larger streets meant to be pedestrian only but in fact the motorcycle crowd also use them: speeding under the covers at quite high rates of speed, the pedestrians might as well be bowling pins. Besides that, what a charmer Sam Chuk is!
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(Google map: https://www.google.co.th/maps/@14.75729 ... 977969,15z (https://www.google.co.th/maps/@14.7572978,100.0977969,15z) )
Breaking through the darkened alleys into the sun, a bridge over the River Chin gives a nice view up stream of the town of Sam Chuk itself ~ it's not large at all ~ with a floating restaurant tied to the riverside.
This kind of hoi-pa-loi wooden and tin roofed architecture is really starting to be pushed back in Thailand these days, but from afar I think they have a timbery life of their own and in this town at least, most of them seemed to be used for what they are meant to be used ~ that is to say, lived in.
Almost never does one see what we in the west might call 'comfort-making' ~ for instance ~ mosquito screens on these buildings: the shutters are opened wide during the day with not a care in the world that a million insects could easily invade the space at any time, and then closed up tight at night. Thai people seem to possess an uncanny sixth sense for when windows should be open and left that way without any fussy mozzy-angst, and then again, know exactly when the nasty little brutes are out and about, looking for hatches un-battened.
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We spent some time cooling down in this charming little coffee shop-cum-just-about-anything, and although the coffee was no screaming hell, the gentle old fashioned ambiance of the place was good for the soul and a rest. Scowles-No-longer had a good time talking to the lady owner (she from Isaan as well) and I just let them blab away for half an hour before hitting the road.
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Coffee shops finished ... the gold merchant beckons. Well, he beckons to Mr Pot, but not to me . . . so once the browsing starts I decide I'd like to go across the street and look for a stall which sells those Thai style half-mast indoor dust brooms: you know, the ones which cockroaches get all caught up in over night and die trying to get out.
Bottom line, I generally stay far away from a table all decked out like this one below. And so should you! B-)
Actually Pot is very good about gold: he knows I will not participate, so he gave up years ago and now does not bother to include me in the window shopping.
He ended up foregoing gold, and buying silver instead, a new neck chain for his Buddha amulet which weighs about 3 kilos. I think it was actually stainless steel.
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On the road: I search vaguely but continually for that 'quintessential' moment, a photo opportunity so appealing and beguiling that I cannot but scream "stop the car", stop the car", rather like that crazed woman in the IKEA advertisement.
At the very zenith of this quest one would find ~ theoretically ~ a photograph that encapsulates the essence of an entire country in one shot.
Difficult that, and which undoubtedly would be bound to come under vigorous argument, if only because of the very personal nature of the eventual presentation.
But for me, here it is, in Suphan Buri. Hopefully it might qualify ~ in the mind's eye ~ as a Thai's Thailand, not this farang's.
One flat unblemished field, a small dirt road in the foreground for the farmer's tractor, a row of palm trees serving as a fence, and in fact and possibly unknowingly, a special piece of art in the distance, then another field beyond that, and then another, ad infinitum. The skies getter darker by the minute, the rain about to pop (which it did, two minutes after I took this), the rice green enough to keep growing for another week but not much more before the green quickly turns yellow and the rice-cutters enter the picture.
Rice plays such a deep ~ almost eternal ~ part in Thai life that they have a myriad of ceremony around that singular grain.
In the west, lucky us, we have McDonalds.
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Mr Phot was interested in a certain temple when we crossed over into the province of Uthai Thani, so we changed to a different road with the intention getting there and still leaving lots of time to arrive in Mae Sot where we intended on shacking up for the night. That route change naturally got us completely bamboozled, some would say lost.
But 'lost' is relative, and this was sleepy Uthai Thani, an out of the way province where farang fear to tread. But we found our way eventually after asking someone for directions (something Thais are loathe to do until night falls ~ pitch black here ~ and the ghosts come out to haunt the rice paddies and the roads beside them) to the Silver Temple, or it's real name, Wat Tha Sung.
We were definitely coming at it from a far away direction as we ended up having to use a ferry to get across to the other side ... i.e. the temple's home.
Frankly, the ferry turned out to be much more interesting than the temple.
This is Mr Phot pretending that he did not get us lost!
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And this, dear friends, is the engine that the ferry relied on to get to the other side. On the other side was it's twin.
Think on this: a rather small ferry, the captain and crew of which were unashamedly heavy into the whiskey, carrying about eight vehicles and a cow, powered by what appears to have been lifted from a rotting German army tank from World War One. The huffing, puffing, oil spitting and backfiring emanating from these puppies was frightening to behold but hugely interesting in the historical engineering sense. What kept this thing going?
Needless to say, we arrived on the other side intact bodily and with only one burst eardrum between us,
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In comparison to that engine Wat Tha Sung was, shall I say, underwhelming.
Apparently there's a sacred tree wrapped in coloured swaddling cloth somewhere on the temple grounds, but we couldn't find it. The silver/glass central chedi sparkled in the sun in a tacky kind of way, and Thais, once again, forfeit any claim they might have to understanding the concept of 'less is more' much less ever stepping over to try anything to do with the design philosophy known as 'minimalism'. Forget that!
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Talking about Buddhism. And talking about the next picture below.
You might well wonder why I would add such a photo to this essay. And I would agree with you, usually. But please, indulge me to the end.
The three items on the dashboard of our Toyota are of course Buddhist amulets of various size, meaning, and cost. They are placed there specifically for 'Good Luck and Safety' during driving, and frankly, given Thailand's horrendous statistics regarding motor vehicle accidents they probably should be trying to fit three or four hundred of them stuck there in front of the window shield.
(Catholics do the same kind of thing with St Christopher, but I haven't seen one in years so perhaps it's dying out. Even then, I believe one is enough. Protestants and Jihadists don't put up anything, both being puritanical, think they're immune to accidental death, and it doesn't matter anyway as long as you've found Jesus, and look down on all graven images.)
Anyway: I'll get back to that in a round-a-bout way.
So we're high-tailing it towards Mae Sot and a hotel room, along a rather traffic-free road and Scowls-Again HAS TO GO!! NOW!!
Now I've been together with this man for 14 years, and trust me, when he uses such words, with such vigorous tone of voice, he fucking-well means it..
OK OK ... here's some bushes, lots of them ... knock yourself out. I'll wait here. :-s
A rather lengthy time later, the man reappears from behind the cobra-heavy bushes with a sheepish grin and most of the full roll of toilet paper which we always carry in the car gone with the wind. What can one say except " ... you OK?". A victorious nod from him and off we go to Mae Sot, 100 kilometers or so up the road.
About 30 kilometers out of Mae Sot Phot asks me to hand him the sun glasses. They were in fact my sun glasses as he had forgotten to pack his own.
I told him I didn't have them, and where did you last have them. Silence. Thinking. Thinking back: " ... I think I put them on the ground behind the bushes ... " He did not add this salient fact . . . er, about 70 kilometers back.
He courageously suggested we drive back to find them. I suggested that that would be like finding a turd in a rice field.
So, looking at these three Buddhist amulets on the car dashboard his only attempt at turning a negative into a positive was to suggest that some farmer, he very lucky, he might find a pair of sunglasses and it will make his day.
So one day in Suphan Buri (hopefully fairly soon :-o ), a rice farmer will be walking at the edge of his rice field and look down to the ground and find a large pile of shit. Then he'll turn his head slightly to the left and find a really nice pair of fake Ray Bans. He'll make merit that evening.
Amulets work!
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Oddities along the way: a coffee shop (delicious cappuccino!) with an entire old Thai-style country bus inside. Most of the sitting area chairs were in there and I must admit to feeling a tad stupid sitting inside sipping coffee. Some very old browned-out photographs adorned the walls, one being of a Japanese General decked out with sword and pistol, almost for sure from World War Two when Thailand, er, let's say, 'got pragmatic'.
A very nicely preserved Honda Dream from the early sixties sits there proud, and a cat jumped up on my lap and purred itself to sleep.
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Mae Sot was in the crosshairs (though after arriving there I cannot imagine why ... Mae Sot is a bit of a no hoper as Beautiful-Old-Thailand-Towns go, and quite dirty overall. We had a great meal there in a small night market, slept in a supremely mediocre hotel and left the next morning).
But long before arriving we took a turn into the perfectly lovely Khlong Lan National Park in Kampaeng Pet Province (Google maps: https://www.google.co.th/maps/@16.42424 ... 264843,10z (https://www.google.co.th/maps/@16.4242415,99.2264843,10z) ), and it's equally beautiful Khlong Lan waterfall.
This is a must-see in my mind, and to be honest I did not have great expectations going in. My experience with Thailand's waterfalls are rather hit and miss: Erawan is terrific and a most invigorating hike ... Pala-U is a pretty jungley walk generally upwards but it's a bit of a fake really as water lines are in place along the sides (and not hidden at all) just in case there is scant water to make it truly a 'falls' ... Khao Yai National Park has a beauty I must say and it has a spectacular provenance as a few years ago elephant fell over the falls in front of tourists ~ "pulling-a-Niagara" as they say. A number of others I've been to had no water at all, much less falling. But then I should have known that as one really takes chances if expecting anything to do with water to be on the bubble from February through May in Thailand.
But the short walk to the falls made up for the fears of disappointment: a fairy walk, sprites everywhere amongst the trees, ghosts lazing in the mosses, leprechauns hopping around.
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The falls in the distance.
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I've not shrunk this shot. It really gives a viewer a sense of perspective on this beauty. Yep, that's me, tiny in the foreground, dressed just like one of those pesky leprechauns.
The misty spray down there makes a sweaty trek all the more worth it, and the roar of the falls up so close impresses the senses once again regarding how puny human beings can be when closing in face to face with Mama Nature.
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DAYS 4 or 5 or 6 or 7
Ah, the road from Mae Sot to Mae Hong Son! (Google Maps: https://www.google.co.th/maps/dir/Mae+S ... 995264!3e0 (https://www.google.co.th/maps/dir/Mae+Sot,+Mae+Sot+District,+Tak/Mae+Hong+Son/@17.7556357,97.1545467,8z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x30ddbda33d818e 6d:0x30346c5fa8a7750!2m2!1d98.5746649!2d16.7124054 !1m5!1m1!1s0x30dad983e05e9b6f:0x10346c5fa8a4b20!2m 2!1d97.9223484!2d18.7995264!3e0) ) Spectacular indeed ... Switchback City. 330 kilometers containing about six half-kilo straight stretches and the other 97% being up and down road curving in on itself in every conceivable permutation, and around each blind corner (i.e. all of them) coming at you is a line of Thai drivers trying to pass each other with no information as to what and/or who is just meters away from going over the side either alone or taking 4 other cars with you. And then there's the gigantic 2-abreast petrol carriers!
An exhilarating ride in and of itself to say the least, not counting Mr Scowls-No-More never-ending abilities to, shall I say, "make a game of it". Perfect!
At kilometer #160 (out of a total of 360) the pavement abruptly ended and ensued about 50 kilometers of dirt and gravel and potholes. Granted, the boys-in-hoods plus gigantic backhoes and dump trucks and lunchtime noodle stands were renovating this stretch, and one of these days the road will be beautiful.
But Mae Hong Son itself put all of this behind and we entered, dust-covered, the town by 4pm searching desperately for a cold beer. A sweet oasis Mae Hong Son turned out to be, but at that moment of entry (a favourite phase of mine) Liquidity was King, and would not be denied even by a driver who just wanted to sleep.
Found a hotel ... nice clean white sheets ... a balcony ... a mini bar ... what town is this?
So a pleasant evening meal in the night market then we slept until 6:00am and then climbed up the mountain to the temple-on-top, Wat Prathat Doi Kongmu. It was quite cold up there, but shivering over a delicious bowl of thick rice soup has it's defenders and just for the pleasure of it we were surrounded in this tiny summit restaurant by 20 or so monks clad in full-bore orange robes and shaved heads. I thought this strange as most monks are on walk-a-bout at this time in the morning receiving small offerings of food from the city dwellers. And normally they don't do take-out.
Phot pointed out the half-dozen grey mini buses which were parked in the lot behind the main chedi: " ... monks on holiday ..." he said. I thought that a bit strange as well, but left it that.
This shot was taken nearly at the top of the stairs which we had just clambered up. The green strip of grass is Mae Hong Son airport, and the town is in the foreground.
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I spied, just up ahead on the stair wall, what I thought to be a new species of monkey ... possibly never seen before so I took a shot: one that might well make me very famous in the biological world ... Davidae Suphoticus Australapithecus Stupideum.
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Having written down my observations of this possibly-new form of life, and gotten the temple head monk to certify and sign off on it (he'd get a cut out of this, I assured him) we walked around the back of the temple, to a small coffee shop overlooking a beautiful valley way down below ... one could see as far as the eye will let you, off in the distance to Burma.
We sat there, sipping hot cappuccino, at 7AM, the fog slowly lifting. The brilliant blue of the morning sky was quite over-powering and to be honest I could have sat there gently mesmerised for hours. A second coffee was ordered and we settled in for the next hour or so.
The clouds lifted after this shot below (please enlarge it if you are inclined ... the two colours ~ blue and black ~ come bounding out at you) and we could see a long deep valley filled with various farms growing a wide variety of different crops, and a river running through it.
One more coffee please, and " ... hong nam yu tee ni krup ... ? "
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.... and we went up there one more time, this at dusk. The colours were different then, but just as vivid in their own way.
The coffee shop was still open and the young lady recognised us from the morning: what ting-tong farang would order 3 coffees in one sitting?
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Back down into Mae Hong Son metropolis, we searched around and discovered a sweet and quiet little town in which I could easily spend more time. In fact, I'm thinking seriously of going up there by myself for a month of meditation and soul-searching perhaps once a year.
I am close to deciding to do this, at least once as a trial.
Scowls-No-More seems to think it's a good idea actually and trying this during his High Season is perfect as we often hardly see each other for weeks at a time from mid-November to mid-March.
And I cannot think of any other Thai town in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by beauty on every side, and is as charmingly laid back as Mae Hong Son.
In the photo below: to the right hand side one can find a small but animated night market, a food court comprised of a number of stand alone restaurants and numerous street food carts and vendors. It's also Mae Hong Son's tourist Entertainment Zone once the nigh market closes down. But Pattaya it ain't! Don't get excited.
In the middle of town these is a well-kept lake presided over by an equally well kept temple named Wat Chom Khan.
It's very old and actually predates most of Mae Hong Son's modern history.
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Inside Wat Chom Khan there is a small but quite excellent museum ... probably one of the most interesting Thai museums I've visited outside of Bangkok. It's comprised of one long gallery and a small ante room in front, but in that long space is a well laid out history-of-'things' having to do with both the temple and the surrounding country side.
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. . . and the only Buddha statue I've ever seen made entirely of bamboo.
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The Road to Pai (just before the Road to Chiang Mai ... I'm starting to sound like a Crosby/Hope comedy) is a twin to the description of the Road to Mae Hong Son so I shall not elaborate.
Pai is a dusty run down little town of no particular importance beside the crepe breakfast I indulged in there (mediocre, nothing to write home about). Bob had forewarned me about run down decrepit old hippies who populate the place as well as their latter-day impersonators, the notorious Thailand version of The Backpackers. And he was right.
Lots of young people there of (apparently) little pocket money and even less obvious hygiene.
Although one sees a million Thai people wearing well-used sandals at any time of day or night, you will very rarely see Thais going bare-foot, and when you do see it the dude will be obviously mentally retarded.
But backpackers (in Pai) walk bare-foot everywhere, thinking it cool I suppose, and neglecting totally the kind of infections one could easily fall victim to while traversing unprotected Thailand's rather uniquely dangerous and dirty sidewalks and roadsides.
My other favourite 'type' (as backers go) is the long-haired spaced-out young ladies sporting billowy tie-dyed see-through caftans while daintily cruising along the towns sidewalks high-forehead wai-ing every single Thai person she sees or comes into minor contact with. I witnessed this oblivious behaviour twice over crepes.
Pai is not recommended for those who are easily subject to becoming nauseous out of the blue, and I have no photos.
But the road itself was sublime.
This wooden look-out here was not to my liking (other than an artsy photo) and I did not venture out onto it. The view was great, but also straight down and this masterpiece of engineering induced some chickenshit butterflies. We were parked alone at this small viewpoint so I never got the chance to test it's strength on Somebody Else first. I drew the line at asking my beloved to take a few steps ... and he never offered, so we carried on down the road without testing fate: never knowing is a good thing, sometimes.
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The gnarled branches and grungy bark of this old tree sticking out over the cliff with an eerie background fog reminds me of some scene from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Oh to photograph this just after dusk (we were there in the morning) and perhaps put a bloody dripping severed head on one of the branches then sneak away behind a tree to wait for some Thai person to stumble over it. Utter hell would break loose and 5555555.
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Besides The Backpackers ... another cliche raised it's head a little further on: the Mountain People Tango.
Now don't get me wrong. This kind of out-of-the-blue dancing session of downtrodden people in original costume can be quite fun and thoroughly entertaining, and goes especially when one has never seen this up close and personal before.
This particular troupe was of all ages and all levels of talent and one hell of a lot of smiles, all seemingly quite genuine. It was obviously set up on this lonely mountainside view point to get the best bang for the baht on a road which has a million switchbacks but very few which can accommodate loads of folk looking to park their cars for a look.
They do the dance ... they do the collection plate. It's what they do and well-deserved in my opinion for the small individual amounts they get after the bottom line has been divvied up between a very large dance group.
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Scowls-No-Longer feeling good surrounded by Mountain Kids. The man's a bred in the bone supremely happy dude when accosted by children for a photo op, and a ham too boot.
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And then entered Chiang Mai . . .
No photos from here I'm afraid. I was tired of taking pictures, and we've been to Chiang Mai many times over the years and frankly it's not particularly photogenic and otherwise we were really there only to meet up with our dear friend Bob who is sadly wanting for civilised company up there in the boonies and at any rate I had to present him with the rubberband-shooting pistol with which he has promised to let us witness him shooting his boyfriend with it. That's the main reason we came ... but never witnessed. Bob desided not to shoot him after all.
We had a couple of lovely meals together, hung out with each other, attended a pig-out buffet which turned out to be quite delicious, finally getting Bob to physically hug both of us (Bob being a kind of non-physical dude, being an ex-lawyer and all). He couldn't bring himself to pat my ass, but looking back that really was a bit too much ask on the first hug.
However. All that aside under the circumstances of myself and my old man dragging Bob to the Chiang Mai version of Tawan Daeng Music & Dance Hall. We all let it all hang out that night ... Bob never quite got to dancin', though I did witness some slight arm movements ... severe headaches the next day ... argument with Scowls-Are-Back ... I went to the mall ... discovered TOPS luscious pain-au-chocolat.
I believe TOPS is coming to Hua Hin soon.
This is the gigantic Tawan Daeng in Chiang Mai, in the daytime, bodies from the night before having been removed already,
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These three photos I must thank Bob for. I took no camera, but he clutched a smart phone ~ and damn fine photos they are too, given the extremely low light inside and the unbelievably tiny camera parts located inside of a decent smart phone these days. Quite amazing really.
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Bye bye Bob and Chiang Mai (nice to see ya!) and hello Khon Khaen where we stayed in a tiny hotel having not entered the city until darkness. Price: 450 baht. OK!
And guess what? After a massive hangover conceived at the fabulous Chiang Mai Tawan Daeng, where did we end up at 10PM in Khon Khaen? Yep ... at the Khon Khaen Tawan Daeng! We stayed for two hours, no hangover the next morning and off to Surin as fast as we could say " ... let's get the fuck outta here ... "
As an aside: I did NOT meet up with my fellow countryman and all around know-it-all CDNMatt, by choice, neither by chance.
I believe he has left this country to live with his new(est) boyfriend ... a 2/3 Inca 1/3 Serbian from Peru where they are now living together half the way up the mountain on the road to Machu Picchu.
Let's face it, as I've always said: if you don't 'get' Thais and their ways, try an Inca.
DAYS 8 or 9 or 10 or 11
We arrived at Prasat, Surin Province ... about 30 kilometers north of Phots home village. We checked in at our favourite little hotel 'Leelawadee Hotel & Bar' (500 baht a night. Includes a swimming pool).
But before that stopped at one of our favourite restaurants in Surin ... laid down in front of a lotus pool and that in front of a huge dam-with-lake. At this place you get your own small hut, your own hong nam, and lie-around furniture for a good snooze after a terrific meal. We should eat like this in the west!
If you've never tried this kind of dining you really must. I don't know of any other such-like places but I don't doubt they exist, especially in Isaan. Your boyfriend from Buriram, Surin, Si Saket, Ubon, Roi Et? Ask him about this. Life is never finer and more civilized than these little beauties on a lake.
Looking out the front onto the lotus pond. The lake is just over the mound in the background.
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Looking out the back of the eating hut towards the car park. The toilet is the area on the right.
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The money tree. Loaded.
Coincidently, the local Wat in Phot's village (Khlong Charoen) was holding a merit-making ceremony (AKA: money-making ceremony) the day after we landed. Apparently the crematory chimney at the Wat is old and decrepit and Big Bucks are need for a new one.
Bodies don't last long wrapped in layers of cloth in the Thailand heat, so the burning room needs to be working properly at all times. A ceremony is needed ... now!
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The Group. Loaded.
Most important ~ and also trivial ~ things which cause problems in up-country farming villages are taken care of by The Group. This system is complicated and very traditional, and I would surmise it's a carry-over from times gone by when small villages tended for themselves with little help from provincial or federal governments.
The Wat's in money trouble? Call 'The Group'.
Your son knocked up my daughter? Call 'The Group'.
Your kids are stealing watermelons from your field. Call 'The Group'.
The irrigation pump from the canal has packed it in? Call 'The Group'.
A fight was started between two families? Call 'The Group'.
And this is part of 'The Group'. Mr Suphot, when available, is a member of 'The Group'. He gets to hold the megaphone.
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And this is Phot's mother's buffalo-and-son.
Although buffalos are not the heavy lifting go-to anymore on most farms, they still have some monetary and sentimental worth as a kind of remembrance of things past. It is not that long ago that the buffalo was predominant . . . certainly Phot can easily remember tilling fields for his father using a buffalo, and back then it was the norm.
That's all gone now ... those ubiquitous long tractors are now the undeniable replacement.
Difficult to love a tractor, but easy to remember the old days, when the buffalo is grazing behind the home.
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DAYS 12 or 13 or 14
Then: off to Jomtien to visit some old friends. Finished with cameras.
DAYS 15
Then: back to Hua Hin. My beach beckons.
No one understands this more than my feverishly entrepreneurial old man who has seen his wallet lying there on the dresser, limp, half empty (myself, trying to put on a Happy Face, saying that " ... think of it more positively my darling, your wallet is actually half full ... " was not well-received ~ Buddha be damned ~ and got precisely nowhere, besides a scowl and a 'hrumph').
So ... let's get out of here and take a holiday!
Thus, The Scowl crawled, unimpressed, into the driver's seat and off we go down the road again, heading vaguely in the direction of Chiang Mai.
Having studied the maps for a few days I thought I'd like to take the scenic route, one I'd not experienced before ... which put us on the route north but quite a bit to the west, on small yellow roads not well-travelled, up to the the border with Burma at Mae Sot, over the hills and dales and never-ending switchbacks to Mae Hong Son, then the circuitous mountain road (the only one available) to Pai, then down, finally turning south and east to Chiang Mai.
Touching base with our dear friend Bob there (one of the ex-denizens of this board, now having slunk away to Gaybutton board), then a very long drive to Khon Khaen (to visit yet one more Tawan Daeng night club ... this is fast becoming a Quest rather than a night out), matched only by yet another few hundred mile slog to Surin, The Scowl's home province and his tiny village of Khlong Chareon, (Tambon) Nang Mut, (Amphur) Khap Choen. Mama was home with the buffalo (see below) and a temple ceremony was, coincidently, in full bloom.
We ended up in Jomtien (a veritable baby of sin & degradation compared to dirty greasy old Pattaya just-down-the-road) to visit a couple of old friends ~ 'old' in the temporal sense that is, he said, being careful ~ for a few days of hugs and chatter, then home to HuaHin.
This excursion took us two weeks: we smelled ~ not a continent, but the countryside, as they say. Not exactly the voyage of The Beagle I know, but it sure beat's Livingstone's sad demise on the banks of Lake Tanganyika.
And the scowl had disappeared.
One other reason for getting out of Hua Hin this year is it's abysmal heat and humidity this year. It just won't let up, and here it is the end of November ... a time of year when the temperature normally plummets in ~ at least ~ the evenings, and the humidity heads downwards at a gallop.
But the North?: (for intrepid travellers), there is nothing like the mild and cool temperatures which greeted us almost immediately in pasing through provinces such as Uthai Thani and Kamphaeng Phet. In general, the further north one drives the more mountainous the landscape becomes, so it stands to reason that the temperature would cool ... but this year it was a revelation and I rarely needed to hop into the nearest 7-11 for a batch of those fabulous little cold towels they seel in plastic wrappers.
For this alone, I would always recommend a travel north (the more leisurely the better) during the month of November. The rainy season is just ending, the greeny green of just about everything is striking and often quite beautiful, but the fields have not yet become dry and dusty as they usually are by middle February.
DAYS 1 or 2 or 3
(FYI: if you are in the mood, clicking on any of the photos here will enlarge them)
100 Year old markets, advertised as such on garish Welcome-To Sam-Chuk overheads as one enters the town often give one pause in Thailand.
Is it really 100 years old? Is it really a market used by locals (as opposed to tourist traps selling polka dot ceramic elephants used as candle holders ~ I have one ~ or 9 inch teak penises with a bottle opener at one end ~ I passed when offered one in Chiang Mai. Do I look like the kind of person who would gladly purchase a 9-inch anatomically correct dick ... having one of my own)?
Well, Sam Chuk is the real McCoy. An entire village of extremely old wooden buildings in various stages of life, all of which are obviously 100 years plus old. The market is a joy if one wants to purchase noodles in the form of large rubber balls, but I did buy a wooden pistol which shoots rubber bands a very long way with some force for Bob when he's unsuccessful in waking up his boyfriend to get out of bed and go get a job!
We walked under the cover of part canvas awnings, part plastic somethingorother, and part wooden roof overhangs jutting out in all directions. Walking through the maze of obscure little alleys and larger streets meant to be pedestrian only but in fact the motorcycle crowd also use them: speeding under the covers at quite high rates of speed, the pedestrians might as well be bowling pins. Besides that, what a charmer Sam Chuk is!
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(Google map: https://www.google.co.th/maps/@14.75729 ... 977969,15z (https://www.google.co.th/maps/@14.7572978,100.0977969,15z) )
Breaking through the darkened alleys into the sun, a bridge over the River Chin gives a nice view up stream of the town of Sam Chuk itself ~ it's not large at all ~ with a floating restaurant tied to the riverside.
This kind of hoi-pa-loi wooden and tin roofed architecture is really starting to be pushed back in Thailand these days, but from afar I think they have a timbery life of their own and in this town at least, most of them seemed to be used for what they are meant to be used ~ that is to say, lived in.
Almost never does one see what we in the west might call 'comfort-making' ~ for instance ~ mosquito screens on these buildings: the shutters are opened wide during the day with not a care in the world that a million insects could easily invade the space at any time, and then closed up tight at night. Thai people seem to possess an uncanny sixth sense for when windows should be open and left that way without any fussy mozzy-angst, and then again, know exactly when the nasty little brutes are out and about, looking for hatches un-battened.
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We spent some time cooling down in this charming little coffee shop-cum-just-about-anything, and although the coffee was no screaming hell, the gentle old fashioned ambiance of the place was good for the soul and a rest. Scowles-No-longer had a good time talking to the lady owner (she from Isaan as well) and I just let them blab away for half an hour before hitting the road.
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Coffee shops finished ... the gold merchant beckons. Well, he beckons to Mr Pot, but not to me . . . so once the browsing starts I decide I'd like to go across the street and look for a stall which sells those Thai style half-mast indoor dust brooms: you know, the ones which cockroaches get all caught up in over night and die trying to get out.
Bottom line, I generally stay far away from a table all decked out like this one below. And so should you! B-)
Actually Pot is very good about gold: he knows I will not participate, so he gave up years ago and now does not bother to include me in the window shopping.
He ended up foregoing gold, and buying silver instead, a new neck chain for his Buddha amulet which weighs about 3 kilos. I think it was actually stainless steel.
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On the road: I search vaguely but continually for that 'quintessential' moment, a photo opportunity so appealing and beguiling that I cannot but scream "stop the car", stop the car", rather like that crazed woman in the IKEA advertisement.
At the very zenith of this quest one would find ~ theoretically ~ a photograph that encapsulates the essence of an entire country in one shot.
Difficult that, and which undoubtedly would be bound to come under vigorous argument, if only because of the very personal nature of the eventual presentation.
But for me, here it is, in Suphan Buri. Hopefully it might qualify ~ in the mind's eye ~ as a Thai's Thailand, not this farang's.
One flat unblemished field, a small dirt road in the foreground for the farmer's tractor, a row of palm trees serving as a fence, and in fact and possibly unknowingly, a special piece of art in the distance, then another field beyond that, and then another, ad infinitum. The skies getter darker by the minute, the rain about to pop (which it did, two minutes after I took this), the rice green enough to keep growing for another week but not much more before the green quickly turns yellow and the rice-cutters enter the picture.
Rice plays such a deep ~ almost eternal ~ part in Thai life that they have a myriad of ceremony around that singular grain.
In the west, lucky us, we have McDonalds.
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Mr Phot was interested in a certain temple when we crossed over into the province of Uthai Thani, so we changed to a different road with the intention getting there and still leaving lots of time to arrive in Mae Sot where we intended on shacking up for the night. That route change naturally got us completely bamboozled, some would say lost.
But 'lost' is relative, and this was sleepy Uthai Thani, an out of the way province where farang fear to tread. But we found our way eventually after asking someone for directions (something Thais are loathe to do until night falls ~ pitch black here ~ and the ghosts come out to haunt the rice paddies and the roads beside them) to the Silver Temple, or it's real name, Wat Tha Sung.
We were definitely coming at it from a far away direction as we ended up having to use a ferry to get across to the other side ... i.e. the temple's home.
Frankly, the ferry turned out to be much more interesting than the temple.
This is Mr Phot pretending that he did not get us lost!
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And this, dear friends, is the engine that the ferry relied on to get to the other side. On the other side was it's twin.
Think on this: a rather small ferry, the captain and crew of which were unashamedly heavy into the whiskey, carrying about eight vehicles and a cow, powered by what appears to have been lifted from a rotting German army tank from World War One. The huffing, puffing, oil spitting and backfiring emanating from these puppies was frightening to behold but hugely interesting in the historical engineering sense. What kept this thing going?
Needless to say, we arrived on the other side intact bodily and with only one burst eardrum between us,
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In comparison to that engine Wat Tha Sung was, shall I say, underwhelming.
Apparently there's a sacred tree wrapped in coloured swaddling cloth somewhere on the temple grounds, but we couldn't find it. The silver/glass central chedi sparkled in the sun in a tacky kind of way, and Thais, once again, forfeit any claim they might have to understanding the concept of 'less is more' much less ever stepping over to try anything to do with the design philosophy known as 'minimalism'. Forget that!
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Talking about Buddhism. And talking about the next picture below.
You might well wonder why I would add such a photo to this essay. And I would agree with you, usually. But please, indulge me to the end.
The three items on the dashboard of our Toyota are of course Buddhist amulets of various size, meaning, and cost. They are placed there specifically for 'Good Luck and Safety' during driving, and frankly, given Thailand's horrendous statistics regarding motor vehicle accidents they probably should be trying to fit three or four hundred of them stuck there in front of the window shield.
(Catholics do the same kind of thing with St Christopher, but I haven't seen one in years so perhaps it's dying out. Even then, I believe one is enough. Protestants and Jihadists don't put up anything, both being puritanical, think they're immune to accidental death, and it doesn't matter anyway as long as you've found Jesus, and look down on all graven images.)
Anyway: I'll get back to that in a round-a-bout way.
So we're high-tailing it towards Mae Sot and a hotel room, along a rather traffic-free road and Scowls-Again HAS TO GO!! NOW!!
Now I've been together with this man for 14 years, and trust me, when he uses such words, with such vigorous tone of voice, he fucking-well means it..
OK OK ... here's some bushes, lots of them ... knock yourself out. I'll wait here. :-s
A rather lengthy time later, the man reappears from behind the cobra-heavy bushes with a sheepish grin and most of the full roll of toilet paper which we always carry in the car gone with the wind. What can one say except " ... you OK?". A victorious nod from him and off we go to Mae Sot, 100 kilometers or so up the road.
About 30 kilometers out of Mae Sot Phot asks me to hand him the sun glasses. They were in fact my sun glasses as he had forgotten to pack his own.
I told him I didn't have them, and where did you last have them. Silence. Thinking. Thinking back: " ... I think I put them on the ground behind the bushes ... " He did not add this salient fact . . . er, about 70 kilometers back.
He courageously suggested we drive back to find them. I suggested that that would be like finding a turd in a rice field.
So, looking at these three Buddhist amulets on the car dashboard his only attempt at turning a negative into a positive was to suggest that some farmer, he very lucky, he might find a pair of sunglasses and it will make his day.
So one day in Suphan Buri (hopefully fairly soon :-o ), a rice farmer will be walking at the edge of his rice field and look down to the ground and find a large pile of shit. Then he'll turn his head slightly to the left and find a really nice pair of fake Ray Bans. He'll make merit that evening.
Amulets work!
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Oddities along the way: a coffee shop (delicious cappuccino!) with an entire old Thai-style country bus inside. Most of the sitting area chairs were in there and I must admit to feeling a tad stupid sitting inside sipping coffee. Some very old browned-out photographs adorned the walls, one being of a Japanese General decked out with sword and pistol, almost for sure from World War Two when Thailand, er, let's say, 'got pragmatic'.
A very nicely preserved Honda Dream from the early sixties sits there proud, and a cat jumped up on my lap and purred itself to sleep.
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Mae Sot was in the crosshairs (though after arriving there I cannot imagine why ... Mae Sot is a bit of a no hoper as Beautiful-Old-Thailand-Towns go, and quite dirty overall. We had a great meal there in a small night market, slept in a supremely mediocre hotel and left the next morning).
But long before arriving we took a turn into the perfectly lovely Khlong Lan National Park in Kampaeng Pet Province (Google maps: https://www.google.co.th/maps/@16.42424 ... 264843,10z (https://www.google.co.th/maps/@16.4242415,99.2264843,10z) ), and it's equally beautiful Khlong Lan waterfall.
This is a must-see in my mind, and to be honest I did not have great expectations going in. My experience with Thailand's waterfalls are rather hit and miss: Erawan is terrific and a most invigorating hike ... Pala-U is a pretty jungley walk generally upwards but it's a bit of a fake really as water lines are in place along the sides (and not hidden at all) just in case there is scant water to make it truly a 'falls' ... Khao Yai National Park has a beauty I must say and it has a spectacular provenance as a few years ago elephant fell over the falls in front of tourists ~ "pulling-a-Niagara" as they say. A number of others I've been to had no water at all, much less falling. But then I should have known that as one really takes chances if expecting anything to do with water to be on the bubble from February through May in Thailand.
But the short walk to the falls made up for the fears of disappointment: a fairy walk, sprites everywhere amongst the trees, ghosts lazing in the mosses, leprechauns hopping around.
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The falls in the distance.
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I've not shrunk this shot. It really gives a viewer a sense of perspective on this beauty. Yep, that's me, tiny in the foreground, dressed just like one of those pesky leprechauns.
The misty spray down there makes a sweaty trek all the more worth it, and the roar of the falls up so close impresses the senses once again regarding how puny human beings can be when closing in face to face with Mama Nature.
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DAYS 4 or 5 or 6 or 7
Ah, the road from Mae Sot to Mae Hong Son! (Google Maps: https://www.google.co.th/maps/dir/Mae+S ... 995264!3e0 (https://www.google.co.th/maps/dir/Mae+Sot,+Mae+Sot+District,+Tak/Mae+Hong+Son/@17.7556357,97.1545467,8z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x30ddbda33d818e 6d:0x30346c5fa8a7750!2m2!1d98.5746649!2d16.7124054 !1m5!1m1!1s0x30dad983e05e9b6f:0x10346c5fa8a4b20!2m 2!1d97.9223484!2d18.7995264!3e0) ) Spectacular indeed ... Switchback City. 330 kilometers containing about six half-kilo straight stretches and the other 97% being up and down road curving in on itself in every conceivable permutation, and around each blind corner (i.e. all of them) coming at you is a line of Thai drivers trying to pass each other with no information as to what and/or who is just meters away from going over the side either alone or taking 4 other cars with you. And then there's the gigantic 2-abreast petrol carriers!
An exhilarating ride in and of itself to say the least, not counting Mr Scowls-No-More never-ending abilities to, shall I say, "make a game of it". Perfect!
At kilometer #160 (out of a total of 360) the pavement abruptly ended and ensued about 50 kilometers of dirt and gravel and potholes. Granted, the boys-in-hoods plus gigantic backhoes and dump trucks and lunchtime noodle stands were renovating this stretch, and one of these days the road will be beautiful.
But Mae Hong Son itself put all of this behind and we entered, dust-covered, the town by 4pm searching desperately for a cold beer. A sweet oasis Mae Hong Son turned out to be, but at that moment of entry (a favourite phase of mine) Liquidity was King, and would not be denied even by a driver who just wanted to sleep.
Found a hotel ... nice clean white sheets ... a balcony ... a mini bar ... what town is this?
So a pleasant evening meal in the night market then we slept until 6:00am and then climbed up the mountain to the temple-on-top, Wat Prathat Doi Kongmu. It was quite cold up there, but shivering over a delicious bowl of thick rice soup has it's defenders and just for the pleasure of it we were surrounded in this tiny summit restaurant by 20 or so monks clad in full-bore orange robes and shaved heads. I thought this strange as most monks are on walk-a-bout at this time in the morning receiving small offerings of food from the city dwellers. And normally they don't do take-out.
Phot pointed out the half-dozen grey mini buses which were parked in the lot behind the main chedi: " ... monks on holiday ..." he said. I thought that a bit strange as well, but left it that.
This shot was taken nearly at the top of the stairs which we had just clambered up. The green strip of grass is Mae Hong Son airport, and the town is in the foreground.
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I spied, just up ahead on the stair wall, what I thought to be a new species of monkey ... possibly never seen before so I took a shot: one that might well make me very famous in the biological world ... Davidae Suphoticus Australapithecus Stupideum.
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Having written down my observations of this possibly-new form of life, and gotten the temple head monk to certify and sign off on it (he'd get a cut out of this, I assured him) we walked around the back of the temple, to a small coffee shop overlooking a beautiful valley way down below ... one could see as far as the eye will let you, off in the distance to Burma.
We sat there, sipping hot cappuccino, at 7AM, the fog slowly lifting. The brilliant blue of the morning sky was quite over-powering and to be honest I could have sat there gently mesmerised for hours. A second coffee was ordered and we settled in for the next hour or so.
The clouds lifted after this shot below (please enlarge it if you are inclined ... the two colours ~ blue and black ~ come bounding out at you) and we could see a long deep valley filled with various farms growing a wide variety of different crops, and a river running through it.
One more coffee please, and " ... hong nam yu tee ni krup ... ? "
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.... and we went up there one more time, this at dusk. The colours were different then, but just as vivid in their own way.
The coffee shop was still open and the young lady recognised us from the morning: what ting-tong farang would order 3 coffees in one sitting?
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Back down into Mae Hong Son metropolis, we searched around and discovered a sweet and quiet little town in which I could easily spend more time. In fact, I'm thinking seriously of going up there by myself for a month of meditation and soul-searching perhaps once a year.
I am close to deciding to do this, at least once as a trial.
Scowls-No-More seems to think it's a good idea actually and trying this during his High Season is perfect as we often hardly see each other for weeks at a time from mid-November to mid-March.
And I cannot think of any other Thai town in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by beauty on every side, and is as charmingly laid back as Mae Hong Son.
In the photo below: to the right hand side one can find a small but animated night market, a food court comprised of a number of stand alone restaurants and numerous street food carts and vendors. It's also Mae Hong Son's tourist Entertainment Zone once the nigh market closes down. But Pattaya it ain't! Don't get excited.
In the middle of town these is a well-kept lake presided over by an equally well kept temple named Wat Chom Khan.
It's very old and actually predates most of Mae Hong Son's modern history.
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Inside Wat Chom Khan there is a small but quite excellent museum ... probably one of the most interesting Thai museums I've visited outside of Bangkok. It's comprised of one long gallery and a small ante room in front, but in that long space is a well laid out history-of-'things' having to do with both the temple and the surrounding country side.
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. . . and the only Buddha statue I've ever seen made entirely of bamboo.
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The Road to Pai (just before the Road to Chiang Mai ... I'm starting to sound like a Crosby/Hope comedy) is a twin to the description of the Road to Mae Hong Son so I shall not elaborate.
Pai is a dusty run down little town of no particular importance beside the crepe breakfast I indulged in there (mediocre, nothing to write home about). Bob had forewarned me about run down decrepit old hippies who populate the place as well as their latter-day impersonators, the notorious Thailand version of The Backpackers. And he was right.
Lots of young people there of (apparently) little pocket money and even less obvious hygiene.
Although one sees a million Thai people wearing well-used sandals at any time of day or night, you will very rarely see Thais going bare-foot, and when you do see it the dude will be obviously mentally retarded.
But backpackers (in Pai) walk bare-foot everywhere, thinking it cool I suppose, and neglecting totally the kind of infections one could easily fall victim to while traversing unprotected Thailand's rather uniquely dangerous and dirty sidewalks and roadsides.
My other favourite 'type' (as backers go) is the long-haired spaced-out young ladies sporting billowy tie-dyed see-through caftans while daintily cruising along the towns sidewalks high-forehead wai-ing every single Thai person she sees or comes into minor contact with. I witnessed this oblivious behaviour twice over crepes.
Pai is not recommended for those who are easily subject to becoming nauseous out of the blue, and I have no photos.
But the road itself was sublime.
This wooden look-out here was not to my liking (other than an artsy photo) and I did not venture out onto it. The view was great, but also straight down and this masterpiece of engineering induced some chickenshit butterflies. We were parked alone at this small viewpoint so I never got the chance to test it's strength on Somebody Else first. I drew the line at asking my beloved to take a few steps ... and he never offered, so we carried on down the road without testing fate: never knowing is a good thing, sometimes.
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The gnarled branches and grungy bark of this old tree sticking out over the cliff with an eerie background fog reminds me of some scene from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Oh to photograph this just after dusk (we were there in the morning) and perhaps put a bloody dripping severed head on one of the branches then sneak away behind a tree to wait for some Thai person to stumble over it. Utter hell would break loose and 5555555.
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Besides The Backpackers ... another cliche raised it's head a little further on: the Mountain People Tango.
Now don't get me wrong. This kind of out-of-the-blue dancing session of downtrodden people in original costume can be quite fun and thoroughly entertaining, and goes especially when one has never seen this up close and personal before.
This particular troupe was of all ages and all levels of talent and one hell of a lot of smiles, all seemingly quite genuine. It was obviously set up on this lonely mountainside view point to get the best bang for the baht on a road which has a million switchbacks but very few which can accommodate loads of folk looking to park their cars for a look.
They do the dance ... they do the collection plate. It's what they do and well-deserved in my opinion for the small individual amounts they get after the bottom line has been divvied up between a very large dance group.
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Scowls-No-Longer feeling good surrounded by Mountain Kids. The man's a bred in the bone supremely happy dude when accosted by children for a photo op, and a ham too boot.
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And then entered Chiang Mai . . .
No photos from here I'm afraid. I was tired of taking pictures, and we've been to Chiang Mai many times over the years and frankly it's not particularly photogenic and otherwise we were really there only to meet up with our dear friend Bob who is sadly wanting for civilised company up there in the boonies and at any rate I had to present him with the rubberband-shooting pistol with which he has promised to let us witness him shooting his boyfriend with it. That's the main reason we came ... but never witnessed. Bob desided not to shoot him after all.
We had a couple of lovely meals together, hung out with each other, attended a pig-out buffet which turned out to be quite delicious, finally getting Bob to physically hug both of us (Bob being a kind of non-physical dude, being an ex-lawyer and all). He couldn't bring himself to pat my ass, but looking back that really was a bit too much ask on the first hug.
However. All that aside under the circumstances of myself and my old man dragging Bob to the Chiang Mai version of Tawan Daeng Music & Dance Hall. We all let it all hang out that night ... Bob never quite got to dancin', though I did witness some slight arm movements ... severe headaches the next day ... argument with Scowls-Are-Back ... I went to the mall ... discovered TOPS luscious pain-au-chocolat.
I believe TOPS is coming to Hua Hin soon.
This is the gigantic Tawan Daeng in Chiang Mai, in the daytime, bodies from the night before having been removed already,
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These three photos I must thank Bob for. I took no camera, but he clutched a smart phone ~ and damn fine photos they are too, given the extremely low light inside and the unbelievably tiny camera parts located inside of a decent smart phone these days. Quite amazing really.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v18/sawatdeephotos/North%20Thailand%20trip_Nov_2014/tawandaeng2_zps24ff0e81.jpg
Bye bye Bob and Chiang Mai (nice to see ya!) and hello Khon Khaen where we stayed in a tiny hotel having not entered the city until darkness. Price: 450 baht. OK!
And guess what? After a massive hangover conceived at the fabulous Chiang Mai Tawan Daeng, where did we end up at 10PM in Khon Khaen? Yep ... at the Khon Khaen Tawan Daeng! We stayed for two hours, no hangover the next morning and off to Surin as fast as we could say " ... let's get the fuck outta here ... "
As an aside: I did NOT meet up with my fellow countryman and all around know-it-all CDNMatt, by choice, neither by chance.
I believe he has left this country to live with his new(est) boyfriend ... a 2/3 Inca 1/3 Serbian from Peru where they are now living together half the way up the mountain on the road to Machu Picchu.
Let's face it, as I've always said: if you don't 'get' Thais and their ways, try an Inca.
DAYS 8 or 9 or 10 or 11
We arrived at Prasat, Surin Province ... about 30 kilometers north of Phots home village. We checked in at our favourite little hotel 'Leelawadee Hotel & Bar' (500 baht a night. Includes a swimming pool).
But before that stopped at one of our favourite restaurants in Surin ... laid down in front of a lotus pool and that in front of a huge dam-with-lake. At this place you get your own small hut, your own hong nam, and lie-around furniture for a good snooze after a terrific meal. We should eat like this in the west!
If you've never tried this kind of dining you really must. I don't know of any other such-like places but I don't doubt they exist, especially in Isaan. Your boyfriend from Buriram, Surin, Si Saket, Ubon, Roi Et? Ask him about this. Life is never finer and more civilized than these little beauties on a lake.
Looking out the front onto the lotus pond. The lake is just over the mound in the background.
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Looking out the back of the eating hut towards the car park. The toilet is the area on the right.
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The money tree. Loaded.
Coincidently, the local Wat in Phot's village (Khlong Charoen) was holding a merit-making ceremony (AKA: money-making ceremony) the day after we landed. Apparently the crematory chimney at the Wat is old and decrepit and Big Bucks are need for a new one.
Bodies don't last long wrapped in layers of cloth in the Thailand heat, so the burning room needs to be working properly at all times. A ceremony is needed ... now!
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The Group. Loaded.
Most important ~ and also trivial ~ things which cause problems in up-country farming villages are taken care of by The Group. This system is complicated and very traditional, and I would surmise it's a carry-over from times gone by when small villages tended for themselves with little help from provincial or federal governments.
The Wat's in money trouble? Call 'The Group'.
Your son knocked up my daughter? Call 'The Group'.
Your kids are stealing watermelons from your field. Call 'The Group'.
The irrigation pump from the canal has packed it in? Call 'The Group'.
A fight was started between two families? Call 'The Group'.
And this is part of 'The Group'. Mr Suphot, when available, is a member of 'The Group'. He gets to hold the megaphone.
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And this is Phot's mother's buffalo-and-son.
Although buffalos are not the heavy lifting go-to anymore on most farms, they still have some monetary and sentimental worth as a kind of remembrance of things past. It is not that long ago that the buffalo was predominant . . . certainly Phot can easily remember tilling fields for his father using a buffalo, and back then it was the norm.
That's all gone now ... those ubiquitous long tractors are now the undeniable replacement.
Difficult to love a tractor, but easy to remember the old days, when the buffalo is grazing behind the home.
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DAYS 12 or 13 or 14
Then: off to Jomtien to visit some old friends. Finished with cameras.
DAYS 15
Then: back to Hua Hin. My beach beckons.