Anomalies and Coincidences on Ratchaphakinai Road

Anomalies

For the last two weeks in Chiang Mai, I stayed at the Giant Guesthouse on Ratchaphakinai Road. There isn't much to be said about the place, except that it is attached to the Freedom Bar, which on busy nights plays bass-heavy music until late into the night. Due to its relative location to my regular haunts, I inevitably passed the Guard Goose of Ratchaphakinai Road. I usually find geese intimidating (I had a bad experience once), but this one is exceptionally pissed, I think for three good reasons: 1) someone cut off his wings, 2) he is left all alone to roast in the sun, and 3) directly across the street there are three geese in the shade; these three geese constantly honk to gloat and remind him that his is alone in the sun. Poor guy.

There is another anomaly on Ratchaphakinai Road, that being a Thai man I've nicknamed Bag Head. Bag Head wears (if you haven't guessed it yet) a plastic grocery bag on his head, while pacing nervously up and down the street. He might be homeless, and probably a little crazy, but he is friendly. He wears his bag with style and gusto though. I never asked him why he has a bag on his head, but I'm thinking he is smart enough realize it gets pretty hot in Chiang Mai during the day, and the plastic bag keeps all those great ideas from evaporating out the top of his head. Perhaps if I had a plastic bag on my head I would have thought of that solution first.

Coincidences

For the past several months, I haven't run into many people which made me think that the world is really small. However, in Chiang Mai, I felt I couldn't meet someone for which I didn't have a person or place in common. Here are a few examples:

1) An American couple on their honeymoon, both rangers for Yosemite National Park. The guy, Ryan, is responsible for the bear management of the park. Needless to say, he is a bear enthusiast. (I found out that Ryan loves talking about bears, loves talking about them even more when he is drunk, and what is more, I love listening to these stories about bears when I am drunk). I get the picture that his job primarily consists of yelling at stupid visitors about food at campsites, or dealing with the bears that have learned that humans are idiots. Anyway, his wife, Jen, grew up in Lansdale (next door to Merck where I worked for five years), and her father or grandfather (I can't recall), started the local grocery store Clemens until it was bought by Giant a few years ago.

2) I met a friendly women from Switzerland. Somehow in the first thirty seconds of talking to her she mentioned that she worked in Easton, Pennsylvania for 7 years as a housekeeper back in the 1970s. Easton is the home of Lafayette College, which is where I went to school and still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth when I think about their discriminatory policies toward Greek life. 

3) I sat next to a guy named Ryan, different Ryan than before, at the Freedom Bar. In the first few formalities of introducing each other, it turned out that he was from Pottsville, PA (just next door to Lansdale), a rock climber, and he has a friend working at Merck in Lansdale. (I didn't know his friend though, sounds like his friend was hired when I was on my way out).

4) I also ran into two Germans travelers that I previously spent a week or more with in Laos, and another traveler I first met in China (which was almost two months ago).  I guess that isn't such a coincidence on the well trodden path of a backpacker, but it is nice to run into people that aren't complete strangers.

So there you have it, the anomalies and coincidences of Ratchaphakinai Road. 

Wuthering Crap

I've used the benefit of free time in traveling to read some classic books that I wouldn't normally read. Regretfully, and most recently, one of those classic books was Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Have you read it? Sorry. Basically every second I read further, I struggled with giving up or trudging through to the end. Being a "classic" somehow I expected the plot would become more compelling, so I read on. Spoiler alert: It doesn't. 

Although it is painful to recall, I'll try to summarize the story: Two siblings, Catherine and Heathcliff (adopted), grow up at the abode of Wuthering Heights located in the secluded moors of England. These two sibling fall passionately in love with one another in their adolescence. However, this love is never consummated in marriage, mainly because Catherine is shallow. But the narrator would have you believe that Catherine was charmed by a more gentlemanly neighbor's son living at the nearby abode of Thrushcross Grange. This unresolved love between Heathcliff and Catherine leads to the undoing of the two interwined families living at these dwellings, primarily because Heathcliff is a huge asshole and can't let bygones be bygones. Twenty some year later, Heathcliff gets his ultimate revenge by taking ownership of both dwellings. Oh snap! I think a more notable revenge plot is that in the process of doing this, Heathcliff woos Catherine's daughter, Isabella, into marriage, despite the fact that he loathes her, then knocks her up, and neglects and abuses her until she runs away.

The jumbled, mind-numbing story is told on about three-billion narrative levels. The first narrator is a city man escaping society to become the tenant of Thrushcross Grange. The servant of Thrushcross Grange, Ellen, is the second and main narrator, since she has been employed by the main characters at both dwellings for many years. Too frequently, Ellen reads letters written by other individuals, or tells stories from another person's perspective, adding further layers of confusion to what the hell is going on.

Worst of all is the dialogue. Often I was physically enraged by it. After one or two epic dialogues, I had a tizzy in my bedroom, shaking all about. Every part of it reads like the fantasies of a girl who never got farther from home than the garden. Since when do people in the heat of the moment use long-winded, tedious dialogue spoken dissertation to express themselves. It doesn't happen today. I'm no more inclined to believe it happened in the more formal ages of 1850, nor in the magical f-ing moors of England.  (I'm getting angry just thinking about this again).

This book is often cited as being original for its time, having been published in 1850. If it is original, it is original in how well it goes about torturing the reader. I'm no literary scholar, but there are plenty of authors at the time, and prior, that do justice to human emotion, psychology, and story telling. Let me think of a few notables: Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Edgar Allen Poe, and Mary Shelley.

So word to the wise, avoid this book, Wuthering Heights, if you are not masochistic, deranged, or in a high school literary class (whoever said corporeal punishment in school wasn't practiced today?). 

Back in Chiang Mai

I've been in Thailand for almost three weeks now, and I have yet to be farther south than Chiang Mai. It is nice not to move around as much, and I'm content climbing everyday while my body holds up. The place I've been climbing is called Crazy Horse Buttress (see the picture below to understand why, although its not from the best angle). There are a lot of features on the limestone, which means there are climbs for people of different abilities. There is a neat cave that has a few climbs too.

Since I'm not traveling with my own rope and draws, I had to find people that do. For the last few days I've been climbing with a Scotsman, a Slovakian and a few Germans. They are all very knowledgeable and safe climbers, and I feel comfortable with them when I'm climbing -- which is important for someone with a moderate fear of heights. I've been gradually "dealing" with my fear of heights over the past few years, and I'm proud to say that I've finally taken up lead climbing instead of just top roping. (Sorry if any of this jargon is going over your head). I led five climbs yesterday, the hardest of which was a 6a in the French grading system (5.10a in YDS). Today is my rest day, and I'm looking forward to getting on the rock tomorrow.

Oh, and the views are pretty good too. To my chagrin, this particular route is too hard for me to ever climb and take such a picture, not to mention actually climbing to where that guy is hanging. Maybe if I stay here another month I'll be that strong? We'll see.

Mae Yen Waterfall

My last full day in Pai I spent hiking through the jungle to the Mae Yen waterfall. I had visited two other waterfalls in the area a few days earlier and I was thinking that I didn't need to see another. But I wasn't going to pass it up without getting a first hand account. I asked the advice of a blond, long-haired Californian with black rimmed glasses named Bob. Bob looked a like a surfer version of Waldo (yes, this is the company I keep). He said it was beautiful and I had to do it.

Reportedly, it is a 7 kilometer hike. Perhaps that is the distance as the crow flies and doesn't account for the twists and bends? Perhaps it felt longer because about 5 minutes into the hike I passed a French couple that pointed out something disturbing, which I'll call a nest of spiders (see picture below). The spiders seemed of the daddy-long leg variety, but it was enough to remind me that I don't especially like spiders, and oh yeah, the jungle is full of them. At one point, I walked through a web on the path and a little itty-bitty spider collided with my sunglasses I was wearing. I freaked out. I threw my glasses down and danced around like a crazy maniac. A display of raw masculinity, it was not.

If that wasn't enough, there's more. The trail at the beginning was well defined and the jungle cover was quite thin. About an hour in, the jungle had became much more lush and encroaching (junglely?) and the path in places became non-existent. I was hopping from rock to rock in the middle of the stream for an absence of a path, and I had not seen anyone for a few hours. The spiders had put me in the wrong mindset. I started thinking maybe I had gone too far.  What if I slipped on of the rocks and knocked myself out, or twisted my ankle? What if there are poisonous water spiders? Or snakes? Or jaguars? What if I get shot by machine gun carrying drug smugglers?

That last one isn't a joke. Bob's story of this hike goes like this: He walked to the waterfall the same way everyone does, but he wanted to walk a different way back. He got lost in the jungle and was trying to find the stream again when he came across some presumably upstanding gentlemen in camouflage and machine guns. They were carrying a large bushel of a cash crop on their backs. Fortunately, their goods didn't make them very prone to belligerence. They all partook in lightening the load a little too. Afterward, the gentlemen pointed him in the direction of the stream. Eventually, I passed four other hikers so I knew I hadn't gone off trail. I was perfectly content without meeting the people in Bob's story. It was a sunny day, the sound of the stream was very peaceful, and lots of butterflies were flitting about. My spirits improved.

The waterfall wasn't that impressive if you've seen other waterfalls before. But like most things in life, the journey is better than the destination. I made quick work of walking back while I practiced reciting part of a poem from memory. The poem is by Oscar Wilde called the Ballad of Reading Gaol. (Why the Brits spell the word "jail" as "gaol", I have no idea. I'm not kidding, both those words are said exactly the same way). I have about half of it memorized now, and I hope that I have it finished by the time this trip comes to an end, wherever and whenever that maybe.

   

Scootering to Mae Hong Son

I spent the entire day on a scooter traveling between Pai and the town of Mae Hong Son, which is about 115km one way.  The scenery on the way is absolutely beautiful, but I think the exposure factor while on a bike makes it even better. The ride was one of the most fun things I've done in a while. I definitely earned some serious scooter XP today, and once I got the hang of leaning with my whole body over the axis of the bike, it was a ton of fun to navigate the hairpin turns. Circular momentum and centripetal force are cool. The picture below give a decent example of how the roads zig-zagged through the hills -- and it was like that for nearly all 115 km.

Here is a video I took while going around the some moderate turns to Mae Hong Son.  I found out fairly quickly that video taping the most extreme turns was too dangerous because I only had one hand to break and stear and accelerate (often going downhill). Self-preservation won out.

The journey is a long day if one is planning on going there and back. For that reason, I was hoping I could find a really cheap guesthouse in Mae Hong Son, since I had already pre-paid on a room in Pai. When I got there I soon found out there wasn't much to do in Mae Hong Son, and things weren't as cheap as I hoped.

The first guesthouse that I stopped at no one was at the reception. I looked around for a few minutes and found no one. Eventually, a pot-bellied, shirtless tenant walked out of his room finishing off the last of two small bags of potato chips and offered his help. I told him what I wanted and he replied in a short tone, "You won't find anything that cheap here. They're trying to keep all the hippies out, that's why they built Pai. You know there's a war going on around here, in the mountains... fighting against Burma. Look up freeburmarangers.org if you want to learn all about it." Based on the guy who gave me the information, I wouldn't have guessed that the organization is totally on the up-and-up, but a cursory search seems to indicate it is legit and doing some valuable humanitarian services.

Anyway, without a place to stay, I made the 115 km back to Pai. Effectively doing no work for the day in terms of physics (Work = Force x Distance). But hell, that is everyday for me right now.

Also, a few days ago, I took a Thai cooking course. Although it was a long day of cooking, and stuffing myself with 6 courses, I learned some things that I wouldn't have extracted from a recipee book. For example, red curry paste is the base for two or three other curry pastes, so making a large batch of red curry paste means one can easily vary the flavor of curry dishes multiple times in a month. Those practical things being said, my favorite thing about the cooking course was meeting a British guy named Ray. And it was not so much Ray, as much as Ray's forearm tattoo that said "Ray/True Love/Karen" and his girlfriend's name was Susan. 

Father Hippy

Well, naturally, there are some strangle and hippified Cats in Pai. My favorite person so far is a 55+ year old American man with graying dreads and a scraggly beard. This guy is traveling with his 20-something year old son, hence I've named the father "Father Hippy".

Here is an untalented artist's rendition of what Father Hippy might look like without a scraggly beard if hastily drawn in MSPaint at an internet cafe in Thailand.

Here are a few examples of the interesting things Father Hippy shared with me recently:
- There is an occult organization called Bohemian Grove in the USA (I confirmed on Wikipedia, so it must be true). Many prominent artists and US Presidents have been members or visitors to the club.
- Father Hippy on his timing schedules: "There are timing schedules that eventually tie you back into the rhythms of the day -- whether it is earning money or harvesting crops -- my timing schedules are just looser than most peoples'."
- Father Hippy on why he is going to bed early: "I'm getting up early tomorrow to do some weird things, and bounce around a little."
- Father Hippy has tried to clean up his speech to make it more true to the language. He doesn't use stalling words in the middle of sentences (for example, like, um, so-ah, yeah). He doesn't use idioms because "they are a form of lying". As he said, 'No one shows you actual ropes, when they "show you the ropes" '.

You don't have to agree with him, but he is interesting company.

Pai in the Sky

Getting to Pai from Chiang Mai requires navigating the 762 S-shape curves up and down the mountains. By no means will a driver ever drive any slower than breakneck speeds or overtake at any time other than during a blind curve. First, wear your seatbelt. Second, bring a iPod so you can drown out the wretching of any passengers puking into plastic bags. NOTE: If someone ralphs in the next bus I take, I will have observed the rarely seen in the wild "Consecutive bus ride of Puking" trifecta -- maybe it will be me.

But after all the dizziness of getting here, its obvious that Pai is worth the trouble. Isolated by lush jungle forests and roller-coaster like mountains, Pai is a small town of around of around 2500. For about 7 USD you can stay in a quiet bungalow village that is set apart from the main part of town by the river (see below; photo totally ripped off of Google Images). Unfortunately, my first night I spent in a dingy room in the center of town. I'm paraphrasing a little, but the Lonely Planet says travelers can do anything here from relaxing to... relaxing.

 
Anyway, the scenery here has inspired me a little, so I wrote a few poems that I'll share.

A Dingy Room
A dingy room is contageous --
Pushing its oppressive mood
Onto one in Stages --
So I've left to get some food.

For Worst or For the Best
If you had a talent
That no one else possessed
Do you think it'd change you
For worst or for the best?

Chiang Mai Have I Been Busy

This is the peak tourist season in South East Asia, but compared to the other places I've been (except Siem Reap), this is the first place that I don't feel like I ever get away from the swarms of tourists. I hear it gets worse when I head south to the islands and I'm starting to think that I might not experience Thailand in exactly the same way that I imagined it.

For the last half dozen days or so I've been keeping myself busy in Chiang Mai. There are plenty of adventure tours and treks, the local food is delicious (and cheap), and there are a variety of social scenes to check out as well. I won't say I'm surprised, but the trekking is a little more expensive than I think the average backpacker likes to spend, as most tours/treks seem to fall between 30 to 60 USD. Fortunately, tourist outfitters seem to be at every street corner and within every guesthouse, so no one is making travelers work hard to blow their money.

My first adventure was a zip-lining course called Jungle Flight, which consisted of abseiling and zip-lining between 34 platforms. The longest zip-line was 300 meters in length; the highest abseils was 40 meters, all for about 55 USD. It also included decent and well-maintained safety equipment, a few enthusiastic guides, one crazy guide nicknamed "Monkey", transportation to and fro, and a buffet lunch. It was a fun day, but I wasn't totally convinced that I had gotten my money's worth at the end of the day, probably because at no time was I scared out of my comfort zone (and I guess for some reason I wanted that if I was paying $55). But an American I met there said he paid about 3 times as much in the US for a course that had only 4 platforms, so I take solace that I tried it for a good value.

Figure 1.1. Zip-Lining into the Abyss

The next adventure tour I tried was a one day Elephant Training course at a wallet busting price of 60 USD. (At this rate, I'll be broke and flying home by the end of February. Make up the bed, Mom).  That morning me and 5 other travelers met our guide, Woody, and he drove us to the elephant ranch about 50 minutes outside the city. The ranch was situated at the base of a hill next to a little stream. The elephants looked happy enough and had plenty of food, but I can't deny that Woody said during the early stages of training they do use physical force to train the elephants. If you look at the pictures of the day, you'll see a little mallet with a hook on the end, and you should know we did not use these with any force -- just with a light touch while speaking out commands.

And you might say, "Well, these elephants are only trained for tourism, so why part-take in the activity?" Personally, out of all the problems in the world, I'm not that concerned about paying money to help feed enormous domesticated animals which in the wild are having their habitat depleted by other humans at a drastic rate and affecting food availability. At the end of the day, I was left with the impression that these elephants had good caretakers that were responsibly part-taking in tourism and looking out for the elephant's well-being.

In the morning, Woody taught us commands and then we went out and got familiar with a few of the elephants by feeding them bananas. It was exciting and a little nerve-wracking at first to be in front of such an enormous animal and sticking a hand into its mouth. After that, each of us practiced getting onto the elephant, going forward and backward, stopping and steering left and right, and all the commands to do it. The rest of the day included a hike up the mountain, feeding sugar cane to the elephants, giving them a bath in a stream, and then going for a swim. The most fun was the swimming.  At the end of the day, I really felt happy with spending that 60 USD.

Figure 1.2. Group Human and Elephant Picture.

Somewhere in between the zip-lining and the elephant training, I visited the local rock gym hoping to meet some folks that had gear to share and needed a climbing partner. No dice on a climbing partner yet, but the American owner told me to come back at 7pm for a showing of the documentary 11th Hour, where I could meet some people in the climbing community. The movie focuses on sustainability of nature and looks beyond some of the symptoms caused from a lack of sustainability (i.e. climate change, pollution, species diversity depletion, and species population decreasing). It attempts to single out that the culprit has been humanity's perception, and by extension corporations too, that nature is a limitless commodity, which is a view that has been adopted in the post-industrialization age.

Overall, I liked the documentary and thinking about those problems and potential solutions (if there ever will be any) was a nice change of pace from the generally care-free life I'm living right now. Some of the noteworthy snippets from the movie were: 1) Humans talk about nature being in danger, but in reality, the human species is in danger of having to live in a sullied world they don't want to live in; 2) Economists never factor in the cost of doing the things that nature does for free to sustain life, and if humans needed to provide that service to people today to survive, some have estimated that it would cost 35 trillion dollars a year; 3) Species at the top of the food chain (e.g. humans) are most susceptible to catastrophe when nature and the food pyramid is imperiled; 4) Plants and animals will continue to survive and adapt on Earth regardless of whether humanity changes their ways. The final interviewer of the movie says: The Earth has all the time in the world... and we don't.

(Pictures have been posted in the top right. Oh, and I failed miserably at keeping blog posts short).