Up To Doi Suthep and No Hold The Pandas

There is a mountain nearby Chiang Mai called Doi Suthep. You take a pickup truck up the mountain (the bed converted to two benches and low top). It is a windy, bumpy 20 minute ride to the top, where there are a number of roadside stands, shops, and food stands.

Once there you can take a very long set of stairs up to the very top, or opt for a tram ride.

Once at the top there is (of course) a temple and monastery. There also was a Thai instrument band (young boys) and Thai girls performing traditional dance to the music. The best part were three little Hmong girls, dressed up in traditional dress. They sat in front of a gong and if you dropped a few coins into their bucket, you got to take a picture or two of them. Someone had bought them ice cream when I was trying to take a photo, so they were pretty distracted as you can see below.

On the way back, we stopped at the zoo. Erin had somehow gotten it into her mind that you could go there and they would allow you to hold baby pandas. Apparently that is on her bucket list. She mimed holding a panda like a baby and said "panda" to one lady on the ride down. The lady nodded her head and smiled. But when we got to the zoo, she asked at the gate and they were astonished that some farong would ask such a silly question. The panda big, she said. No can hold. I'm thinking they were all shaking their heads at the foolishness of farongs as Erin walked dejectedly away.

A Trip To Burma (Myanmar)

Burma has undergone civil war since 1948. There are a number of ethnic groups fighting the military government (primarily Burman). My daughter has been working with refugees from the Karen (pronounced like it was Karin, emphasis on last syllable). So I was a little hesitant to take a day trip over the Thai border to Myawaddy. I should not have been.


We had an excellent guide recommended to us and he smoothed the way in and out thru immigration. The Burmese border police looked grim but the immigration officer was ebullient and we got along well enough. We paid a small fee to get in that likely was half fee, half bribe.


We were ferried most places by a bicyclist with a bench on front. A sort of reverse trike. It was blazing hot and the humidity was oppressive. But we really saw the sites from an insiders point of view. Dirt streets, raw sewage in ditches, nasty pools of green water where people were actually swimming.


We toured a market - a maze of windy dark passages with shops and shop keepers everywhere. All heads and eyes were on us as they almost never see westerners where we were. We kept hearing the word Englit, which was how they referred to us (they like the British from when they were garrisoned there during WWII so all whites are Englit to them.


We met several monks including the Abbot of one monastery who knew several English slang phrases.


Our guide was a really nice man from Bangladesh, and spoke several languages. He boasted that his daughter off at school spoke six! He was clearly a devout Buddhist and spoke at length of his theology. I developed a genuine affection for him.


With all the poverty and oppression, we rarely saw a face that did not have a smile on it. Happiness I keep learning is not based on what you have.


Some pictures below.

A 90ft tall Buddha

Our guide

Erin is in the cart ahead of me, guide riding on tail

This woman was deep in meditation and did not seem to notice us at all

Artisans crafting scenes from Buddhas life

All carved from a single piece of wood

Meditation room inside mouth

The Night Bus to Mae Sot

Great, I thought when Erin tells me we have the VIP night bus from Bangkok to Mae Sot. Reclining chairs, AC, snacks, water. Let me tell you what it was really like. I'll just give you a few facts so that you can put things in a more accurate perspective.- picture a greyhound bus on steroids. Double decker. We are in the top. - the seats do recline, some, but the whole seat assembly moves as well when a big bump comes- ac, yes. It is important to remember the different environmental conditions that characterize growing up in east tn and Thailand. We westerners like ac lots. Thais, not nearly as much. Most of them were turning off their vents. Great, I thought, more for me. More on this momentarily.- our bus driver had no qualms about passing big slow trucks going uphill on windy curvy roads. Even tho we were a big slow bus.- there was a baby across the isle and up one. At random intervals of every 22.3546 minutes, it would screech and wail. I'm thinking the parents must be pinching the poor child after worrying about its silence every 22.3545 minutes. You know, just to make sure it is still alive?- behind me, about 2am, I started hearing a banging. It got louder and louder and seemed to be when the bus made a left turn and then straightened out again. As we rolled into one of many brightly lit Thai military checkpoints, I looked back. My Thai buddy behind me had opened the side emergency door, ostensibly for "air". It was standing wide open and a large vehicle was headed our way and was i sure the door would get clipped. I reached back to close and he grabbed the door, slammed it shut, and gave he a disgusted look. I think he was cold from my AC and this was his way of warming up.- an emergency door flapping open behind me might not have normally been all that odious for me except for two things: one is that it let in a lot of smoke from burning sugar cane fields. There are a lot of burning sugar cane fields on this road. The second reason harkons back to the days of Mr Wizard (before that horribly disfiguring accident). Remember what happens when warm moist air meets cool air? I sure do. Condensation. And not just a little.- I started noticing stabbing bolts of coldness waking me up from my road stupor. It was raining. Inside. Cold water drops were hitting me from head to foot. I reached up and noticed water dripping out of the ac vents. Out of the light switches. Out of the light recepticles (maybe this was why they did now work). No way to stop it really. After a few hours, with the emergency door closed, the massive amount of water eventually dripped out over me and stopped.At least one moral of this story is the differing perceptions regarding "traveling in style" that exist between my 20-something daughter and this 50-something man who really has traveled in style before. I'm getting ready to double check the flight arrangements she made for us to fly into Cambodia just to make sure of a few things. Like, jet or biplane? Are farm animals allowed on the flight? Do I have to stand, or do we have seats? You know, the basics.

Classical Faux Pas

Found a wonderful Thai four piece ensemble at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. On the Chao Phraya river, where several famous authors stayed, like Hemingway. We had drinks on the veranda and were in heaven listening to the music in the lobby when a very apologetic staff member told me I had to leave. No shorts after 6:30pm.

Few More Train Pics

Hard to blog on my iPhone. iPad interface for blogger stuck in Thai at the moment.

Train Trip In Sauna

Our up and back train trip to Kanchanaburi and Kwai Bridge totalled about 14 hours total once we got back to Bangkok. No AC anywhere. No western toilets. Like being trapped in a runaway sauna. Next to us were five young girls from Poland, who spoke incessantly but were friendly and funny. Across from us were a young Thai couple , both working as police in their day jobs. They disappeared at the first stop so we gad the seats to ourselves.
We had several stops along the way to buy drink and food and wander. More pics below. I'm still exhausted after 9 hours of sleep. Saw lots of Thai scenery tho. Lots of rice, banana, and corn fields. Sugar cane fields were being burned and cinders covered us. My washcloth last night was black...One pic is a shot of the "kitchen" that fixed us pad Thai for lunch. It was delicious.

Almost Missed It

At our first major stop (pics below) on our train trip, Erin and I almost missed the train. We stopped and they told us the train would leave in 45 minutes. We left maybe ten minutes before the train was to depart. But we got turned around. We alternated leading and walking briskly down various streets but nothing was looking familiar. Erin finally asked a policeman who was also walking briskly beside us. He spoke little English as we pumped him urgently for directions. He was pointing opposite from the direction we were heading. We had 8 minutes. Turn around, run (95 F, 85% humidity). Grab cab and jump in. We explain to can driver "train! Train!" six minutes! He understood what we were saying and groaned at the impossibility of it. But he took off. Made a few turns, raced across intersections and got hung up in walking traffic. We tossed him a large bill and jumped out of the cab, running to the station. Station Master blowing whistle, sees us and motions hurry. We make it, near death, but on the train with just about one minute to spare.