Having completed our tour from the north to the south of Vietnam, we departed Saigon to tour Thailand in the same order, beginning in Chiang Mai.
Not only are Thai women strikingly beautiful, but their uniforms, such as those worn by immigration officials, are also remarkable sharp. It looks like high fashion imitating military dress, with perfectly tailored army green tops and stylish pencil skirts.
My first mission here was to converse with a monk at a “monk chat” available for tourists to learn about Buddhism and for monks to practice their English. By the time we made it to the temple, we were too late, and the monks were busy with a ceremony. But a man named Lucky, who used to be a monk, offered to speak with us. He pulled out his religious texts and stumbled over the English translation of Buddhist tenets in his determination to practice the language. Buddhism’s rules for laypeople share similarities with the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments, but there are just five: abstain from harming living beings, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and intoxication.
Many young boys join as novice monks in order to get a good education in the temple. Only wealthy families can afford to send their kids away to the good private schools. So many men are novices or monks for just a short time, and they are free to leave whenever they would like. Lucky wanted to marry and be a “bad boy,” so the life of a monk wasn’t for him long-term.
I could spend hours perusing Chiang Mai’s Sunday Night Market, my favorite market of the ones I’ve seen thus far. Fresh pure fruit juices, fried cricket and beetle snacks, mountains of pad thai, intricately embroidered art pieces, antique knives, and, of course, the whole gamut of hippie traveler wear. All these billowing, elephant-printed pants, shepherd ponchos, and calico patchwork bags crack me up, because I’m pretty sure locals never wore this stuff. Yet, backpackers across Southeast Asia buy up all of this boho fashion, as if we don’t stick out enough already! Oh, and then there are the bracelets. It is like a rite of passage for any female backpacker to cover her wrists in beaded and braided bracelets. I’ll admit that I’d like a few myself, but I can’t find any that every other girl eating pad thai on this street isn’t wearing already!
We stole away from the night market before I was ready to follow a newfound Aussie friend to a jazz bar. Coolest scene! Open-air bar with fans huddled around Thai bands bluesing out just as well as any I’ve heard in Chicago. Surprisingly, tourists and locals were actually represented equally in the audience, and the two groups were mixing. This is hard to find in SE Asia, where these groups don’t often hang out at the same bars — and when they do, they are often segregated. I’m afraid when we go out we often learn more about Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Canada, etc., than we do about the locals. That’s why we’ve been fans of tours that give us a chance to speak at length with locals.
After just one evening here, Chiang Mai has already beat out the other places we’ve visited as my favorite. It’s big enough to be brimming with excitement and complex culture. It’s small enough — the Old City — for all of its contents to be within walking distance. This food vies with Italian as my favorite cuisine (which is obviously saying a lot!). The intense flavors of coconut, curry, basil, peanuts, fish sauce, salty, sweet, hot chili pepper, and garlic are exquisite. Thai iced tea is criminally delicious and refreshing. Each time I discover a temple — practically every block here — I feel like I’ve stumbled across a fairytale with fire-breathing dragons, gold-plated Buddhas, magical architecture, and smiling wise old men in tangerine robes. Thai people have a wicked sense of humor, always laughing, always joking. I join legions of backpackers with my cliché love of Chiang Mai!