First Evening in Chiang Mai

I’ve been avoiding posting more to this blog until I figured out how to include images. Now I’ve decided you will just have to wait for that while I catch up with catching up. Since there’s so much to catch up on I think I’ll opt for function over form, so here’re some bullet points that comprise my first impressions and experiences in Chiang Mai:

Elizabeth met me at the airport and I immediately got my first taste of Chiang Mai in our mode of transport from the airport: a TukTuk. Think three-wheeled, open air golf cart but with a front and back seat and a motorcycle engine. The driver sits in the front (actually straddles the gear shift) and the passengers sit in the back. Considering the heat (about 95 F), I was quite happy to travel open air. Although it was a bit like a Bikram yoga session – lots of hot wind J

In addition to the immediate environ of the TukTuk, I was quickly exposed to the phenomenon of negotiating Chiang Mai traffic. Honestly, it’s nothing short of miraculous: cars, TukTuks, and motorcycles all vying for various parts of the road. I mention “various parts of the road” because it appears that only cars really seem to abide by the lane markings. All other vehicles seem to merge at will – often for motorcycles several abreast. (Oh and if you happened to be a pedestrian: Toto we ain't in Seattle anymore. Get ready for a game of Frogger to get across the road!) I white knuckled it a bit until I realized that the traffic rarely moves at over 35 or 40 miles per hour. Suffice it to say, we made it to Elizabeth’s house in one piece.

Elizabeth lives in a centrally located and spacious town house complete with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, solid teak floors, a maid who lives next door, small gecko like house lizards who take care of the mosquitoes, and a vociferous but friendly black, female house cat named Norman.

After dark and a bit of cooling off, Elizabeth decided to take me on a brief tour of the town on the back of her motorcycle. I have to say that riding on the back of a motorcycle in Chiang Mai traffic is even more “interesting” thank in a TukTuk. After an initial bout of anxiety (and poor balance) I opted to “just let go” – both figuratively and literally. I found that balancing on the back of a motorcycle is infinitely easier if you’re not gripping the handles for dear life. Besides, once you see a family of four cruising on a motorcycle with hardly a care in the world, it’s hard not to let your ego goad you into a more graceful approach to motorcycle passengering ;-) By day two I was comfortable enough to carry Elizabeth’s golf clubs on the way to the course.

Besides dinner – Thai noodle soup, much like Vietnamese Pho, from a street vendor – the highlight of the evening was stopping at a local park to watch a pickup game of Takraw. Takraw is a local sport that is like three-person volleyball except it’s played exclusively with your feet on a court the size of a doubles badminton court with a smaller plastic or rattan ball. These guys had incredible moves. They managed to “spike” (I mean really spike) balls that were set above their heads. Not really impressive until you envision them doing this with their feet – and managing to land back on their feet. Here’s a link to some images so you can check out what I mean.

Ok, that’s it for now. In my next installment, I’ll cover teaching English to a class of Buddhist monks.