Bus Station Baguettes and Steamed Fish Eyes

Delight delight delight.
That's right, I've come back to Laos. Third time, sure is fine.
What have I done so far? Well. After a very very long journey from Chiang Mai, resplendent with frequent sudden stops for a poor British boy to be sick on the verge, I eat a delicious plate of raw spring roll. Then I nap like it's my job.
Later, I meet Mr. Bair out front of Mixay Temple and we ride around on his motorbike for a bit. I did wear a helmet, thank you. We zoom past crowded street stalls, steaming pots and clattering plates. We zoom past fashion outlets, some of which are actually not hideous, and I am confused why all the girls still wear their traditional embroidered knee-length skirts rather than these trendy trendy things.
Then the moon comes out from behind the buildings. Huge and orange, reflected over the stinking canal, beautiful.
We go to his sister in law's house and hang out there for a bit. She is very cool and she has a happy face. She is a young librarian with two boys, one is four and very naughty, and the other is almost one. The four-year-old and I play his version of hide and seek which means I count to ten while he hides around the corner, I find him immediataly and he then runs around the house cackling. Three families live in the one house, and the living room we sit in is covered in anime posters and drawings of fashionable blonde princesses. You can tell that kids rule this room!
Bair and I zoom off again and park outside a restaurant. We sit next to a noisy fountain and order the fish. It is epic. Caught fresh from the river, steamed with ginger, spring onion and mushroom, it is perhaps the best fish I've ever paid for. Bair's friend Air comes by and orders beer. He reaches over with a spoon, scoops out the fish eye, and politely offers it to me. Okay, this is a year of saying "yes".  It is very soft except for a ring of cartiledge that breaks up easily. It tastes like fish oil. It could have been worse. I am convinced I have been imbibed with its power and I can probably see underwater now.

And this morning, rising quietly from my rooftop dorm with three snoozing shapes in the beds around me, I leave the Mixay Guesthouse (200 baht for a dorm, o yea).
Then I get the best fruit shake in town from a little place (just this little place I know) that is on the right as you come out of the road that leads away from the big square with the fountain if you're walking away from the river. Seriously, the best.
Then I bargain like a badass with a nice tuk tuk man who drives me to a place, where I do what I need to do. 'Nuff said.

Now, what to do with my limited funds? Visit a temple I say, read my book for the day, drink tea. Whilst being badass, obv.

Early Mornings

I mean 5 or 6 AM mornings. The ones where it's not raining and there thickness of night sticks in the air. This is my Chiang Mai, when the women light the coals for the day's lunch and the market vendors are hauling their melons out of pickup trucks. This is the time of homeless people moving between sheets of canvas and  corrugated iron, looking out into the dark street, waiting. The roads are quiet, the dawn is cool over the water, and breakfast of Chinese donuts with hot soy milk was never more appropriate.

 

Megaboom

Loi Loi Krathon, Loi Loi Krathon... The Lantern Festival! Light a kom loi, make a wish! Float a krathon, feed the river gods! Decorate your front door sweetly, be nice to all your friends! Stock up on explosives and whiskey though, you don't want to run out.

The parades are long but they are pretty. See the giant blue glittery cloud decorated with swans and umbrellas that nestles a little girl dressed in red and gold who can hardly keep her head up because her face is so thickly laid with eyelash glue, lipstick, and meters of fake hair. A cable on the back of the float connects to a truck following closely behind, bearing a large generator that cloaks the street in an ethereal diesel mist. The traditional bands carrying gongs, very long drums, and boys who dance/fight with cymbals, are usually drowned out by the 10-speaker sound systems. And so on for two hours. Great costumes, smiling people (how do they smile for so long? Vaseline), epic dancing.

The day after, school has the afternoon off to make krathons, which are offerings to the river made of folded banana leaves and decorated with flowers, incense and candles in the shape of a lotus. The idea is to put your wishes on the krathon, light the candle and push it into the river, where it floats downstream, all the way out to sea probably. My 7-year-old friend Bandok (on the left in the picture) and I struggle through, doing our best to make something beautiful.

Interesting story I heard about the origins of these floating offerings; the original city was settled a few miles downstream of the established Chiang Mai. There was a horrible virus that started killing everyone off, a kind of bubonic plague situation with the sick packed into areas separate from the village. Of course quarantines are tricky when your walls are made of bamboo leaves, so the uninfected people were left with few choices. Those that could, left. They left their families behind and took boats upstream to start a new village. This village was extra clean and healthy, and everyone was happy with their new lives. But they didn't forget their sick relatives, and knowing that they were struggling, every full moon they sent down boats built from banana trees filled with provisions. And so, krathons for our ancestors.

Two days after the first parade, there is another one. They told me, “It's like the last one, but bigger!” Indeed. Now they are driving more elaborate floats with 3-storey castles stuffed with beauty kings and queens, smiling for all of Siam. Even the Night Safari crew rocks up (marketing tagline: you can eat anything you see! They had to keep a low profile shortly after they opened when a pack of wolves escaped and was spotted prowling the streets of Chiang Mai) with horns tied to their heads and feathers tickling the noses of onlookers. I get a very good look at them when the parade stood still for 20 minutes. Then I get a little restless and walk up a little towards Nakorn Ping Bridge. I watch a big-bellied man drenched in glitter rub a gong for another 10 minutes or so. There is a big explosion behind me and everything goes quiet.

But then everyone remembers, ha ha ha, it's Loi Krathon! Explosions are good luck! Then all the power along the river goes out, but they were just kidding because it comes back on after a couple minutes. By this time I am jammed into a crowd of drunken Thai boys, cheek by jowl. Bring on the groping. I'm talking full on free for all grope time. I decide that it's worth heading home at this point, as the only white girl in the heaving whisky-scented mass. This takes a LONG TIME because all of Chiang Mai, and any lucky evacuee from Bangkok, has congregated at this intersection and is trying to get somewhere. Finally I am spat out onto the bridge. Keep eyes out though, they tell me that falang often find firecrackers under their feet.

The next morning, I go for a run. The charred corpses of kom lois are caught in trees, crumpled on street corners. The river is speckled with bottles and firework canisters. I think that if I liked loud noises and dreadful amounts of booze, this would have been a brilliant festival. But, but. I do like things that light up with lots of colours, I like things that float in the sky and in the water.

Bring on New Year's.

Do Not Feed Them, Do Not Finger Them

The South African took me on a long bus ride to the famous Chatuchak Weekend Market. Why is it famous? Probably because it is absolutely massive, like putting a shop on every square meter of Hyde Park massive, and also because everything is cheap from China. You can buy! You buy hats, rats, cats, cocks (complete with cock fight), dogs, frogs, beds, Bhudda heads, waterfalls, lifelike dolls, little bells, bottled smells, real growing moss in a bag, a racoon panting in the heat, many kinds of meat, and a nice cheap t-shirt. all crammed in with room for one and a half people to walk next to each other. I didn't buy anything, not even a big white snake.

Did I mention that it is really really hot here? Did I remember to say that? Because that is what it is. After 11am, you don't have a chance until 6pm. I ate some extra tasty Tom Yum Goon, a very spicy coconut soup with shrimp floating around it, flavoured with chunks of ginger, lemongrass and coriander. It was so hot I went a little blind. But there is a certain feeling you get from chili that makes the wind cooler on sticky Caucasian skin. The waitresses stared at me as I ate, probably because I was shrimp pink. I began to write in my diary and they leaned over the table to see, so I attempted an English lesson. Thai people say yes by wriggling their eyebrows.

Another pleasant and sophistocated way to cool off is to take a boat with an orange flag down the big river. There is no traffic on the big brown waves, and you can see the well to do stripping off by the hotel pools, derelict warehouse docks, crazy huge beautiful temples complete with grinning monks hopping on the boat. only 30 baht for a return journey. But you can never leave the city. It is forbidden by the rule of sprawl.

Hygeiny Lifestyle

My only temple visit has been the Golden Mound, a big old hill covered in gold leaf and many steps. you can ring big bells and bang gongs as you ascend. Once at the top, you can pay your respects to Bhudda, and check out the big view, smoggy but grand. Most of the tall buildings are unfinished apartment blocks, some quite ornate but stained black with mould. The city actually doesn't end, it's just one tangled nest of market streets. Orientation is A Challenge. (Lonely Planet is a really great paperweight, but its purpose as a guide is null. The maps are vague and small, the cheapest listed hostel is around 250 baht, and as with all sights listed in guide books, they have been pillaged by tourists. But it gives a good history of the country. 2/5.)

A talkative Spaniard and I took the metro to Silom to find a metal chastity belt for "his friend." Alas, the tales of this mythical red light district don't hold up in daylight. Only one shop in the area was remotely selling fetish wear, and they were closed. Instead we dragged our feet around in the heat, a few groups of women sitting in bars who listlessly shouted "haaaaay" over their cocktails as we walked past. Splendid billboards for strip clubs; my favourite was Pussy Glamour, which had lots of little wood carvings of people going at it to form the shape of a giant buxom lady.

Enough of this syphilitic den. We walked in the midday heat to the most beautiful house I have ever seen ever. Home to writer, lecturer, and former president M R Kurit, This complex of five teak buildings is preserved as a museum set up in a similar style to the way he lived. the roofs are tall and sloping, the rooms are dark and cool, and there are beautiful collections of masks, statues, puppets, and furniture stuffed in every gleaming room. Birds shriek amidst the thick mass of tropical ferns and flowers, and hardly anyone was visiting while we were there. Of course there was a swimming pool, which we furtivley took advantage of. Delight.

Back at the hostel Overstay, a great big punk rock show underneath the dorm until 5 in the morning, and then roadworks right outside at 9am. I met a lot of good people here, including a girl who just graduated from Norwich Art School, and a South African man who gave me plenty of sound advice for cheap living in Chiang Mai. Everyone is super friendly. People were drawing and painting all over the walls, playing pool, dancing to whatever techno was playing in the bar.

Other things too, but they are censored.

Khao San Cats All Have Kinks in Their Tails

I am still alive. Ever sweaty, insatiably peckish, bug-eyed tourist am I.

Thailand so far has been a rush of new things; noises, smells, cats and dogs and people all living together on the street, everything going all night.

On the sky train ride from the airport I saw people trying to grow rice under freeway bridges and building sites, living in burnt out cars or corrugated iron villages. Being the only white kid on the bus makes me feel smug and cultured, even when stuck in 4 lanes of traffic for 20 minutes without moving. Scooters are always at the head of the traffic jam, weaving around taxis and tuk tuks, and a huge crew of them take off in a spume of exhaust when the light goes green.

On the first night, I went to bed at 8pm and woke up at 1am. Jetlag dug its talons into my inner alarm clock, and pushed me out onto Khao San Road. I found two French boys crouching in an alleyway, and we talked about festivals. We went to a bar - a metal cart on the street full of ice and beer with a stereo and plastic stools surrounding it - and shouted to everyone to sit with us. We amassed:

• a Greek woman who worked in MRI in Athens and had left her travel buddy sleeping in the hostel.

• a burly Polish man who shook everybody's hand twice and laughed with gusto.

• a beautiful Japanese boy who refuelled airplanes for a living and was just stopping for the night before moving on to Nepal, where he was going to live in a monastery. He had no hair at all, and I thought about asking him if he got a lot of grit in his eyes.

• A talkative Thai named Mozz who gave me the address of Overstay, where you pay 80 baht a night (42THB = £1) and there are parties and art and hippies. I'm like, hell yeah, see you tomorrow my friend.

As soon as I leave the screaming neon Khao San Rd, the food is better, the other Europeans have vanished, and no one is trying to sell you a tattoo or a suit or a driving license or a bashed up hat that says I <3 Thailand. People's front rooms double as a store front, and everybody's kitchen is outside on a wheeled metal cart. Vendors sleep in their stalls, with a skinny guard dog outside. I saw a man climb into a cupboard plastered with posters, statues and garlands for Buddha, with a tiny mattress where he curled up and shut the doors.