DAY 15 MON The airport at Mae Hong Son reminded me of the airstrip at Dubbo. Very rudimentary, though it did have the luxury of newspaper pages pinned to corkboards above the urinals so that you could bone up on world news as you pointed percy at the porcelain. Once on board the little plane we were not put at ease by the sight of an oxygen mask dangling from the ceiling above the seat in front of us. This did not suggest that the crew was optimistic about our chances of reaching Chiang Mai without mishap, and the steward who stuffed it back into its compartment smiled wryly, implying perhaps that we should be thankful that the engine hadn't fallen off (yet).
Almost in the blink of an eye (mine were jammed closed for the entire trip) we were in Chiang Mai and not long later we were at our hotel, the Royal Princess. I could only find a 5 baht coin (25 cents) to tip the porter, who looked a bit nonplussed after having gone to the trouble of wheeling our two bags twelve feet from the lift to our room.
After examining all the freebies, opening all the drawers and pressing every button in sight, we left the hotel and ventured out into what we expected would be the familiar streets of our favourite Thai town. We walked for ages down streets we didn't recognize before chancing upon the Mae Ping, our hotel back in 1990. From that point the streets looked a little more recognizable, though the city had grown dramatically since we last visited. We ate a late lunch in a little restaurant, but vowed not to return when we noticed that the dishes were not terribly clean and the food not terribly memorable.
At 6pm or thereabouts we made our way to the Whole Earth Restaurant where we enjoyed an extremely good meal, though a greedy Margaret ordered three dishes instead of two. Needless to say, I had to finish what she couldn't manage and suffered for the rest of the evening with a serious case of bloat. The rich yoghurt lasis (to which we had been introduced by Jono and Maryann in Hong Kong) did not help.
The pavements were jammed with stalls laden with all sorts of interesting things (unlike Bangkok and Mae Hong Son). Before returning to our room to watch the Beverley Hillbillies on cable we conducted a swift reconnaissance of the night bazaar to check out what was available for our next foray.
DAY 16 TUE One of our main objectives in returning to Chiang Mai was to look for more becheron pottery. With this goal in mind we hired a driver to take us on a tour of the craft shops not far out of town. Issi, our driver, was a very jolly fellow and was happy to take us from shop to shop and back again. We bought a large and beautiful celudon vase at one place and then went back to a shop we had previously visited to buy a becheron ornament as well as a celudon elephant.
After visiting a leather factory, where Margaret bought an ostrich skin bag, we returned to the Royal Princess and spent the rest of the afternoon watching "Independence Day". In the evening we dined once again at the Whole Earth Restaurant before throwing ourselves into the hurly-burly of the night markets.
DAY 17 WED Last night we had booked a tour with Green Earth Tours to Di Suthep for 8am. When the car hadn't shown up at 8.30 I rang up to make sure they hadn't forgotten us. The Green Earth man apologised for the delay and told me that the car was picking up another couple from a different hotel and would collect us within five minutes. Shortly thereafter a young man entered the lobby calling out a name which sounded a lot like ours (making allowances for Thai pronunciation). We climbed into the little bus and set off through the city.
Our companions, Doug and Joy, were an elderly couple from Coffs Harbour who spent a large part of their twilight years touring Asia. Doug had recently undergone bypass surgery but appeared pretty spry nonetheless. Joy, who wore a rather obvious wig, was glad to find that Margaret was a fellow smoker.
After we had visited a wat, the name of which escapes me, our driver Chai announced that our next stop would be at the Elephant Training Centre. This came as a pleasant surprise to us because the tour we had booked was only supposed to go to a Meo Village and Doi Suthep. We didn't say anything as we thought that this stop must be a replacement for the King's Palace, which was closed.
As we pulled in at the elephant place we noticed a rather agitated man gesticulating at our driver. It seemed that, rather than being on the Green Earth tour to Doi Suthep, we were on the Royal Orchid tour to Lampau. In the background we could see the couple whose places we had usurped. They were not happy! I didn't greet them with "mai pen rai" (it doesn't matter) but instead gave them the engaging lopsided smile, sometimes described as inane, which I normally reserve for the natives. After a great deal of debate it was decided that we would continue on the tour, paying a discounted rate.
We watched a group of elephants push logs around for fifteen long minutes then Margaret and Joy climbed aboard an elephant and trundled off. Doug and I walked beside them for a while taking pictures and agreeing with Joy that they looked like leftovers from the Raj.
Eventually the "girls" returned from their safari and we sped off to Lamphun, a sizable town north or south of Chiang Mai famous for its old wat, the name of which was extremely long. Doug and Joy were sick of temples and elected to take a donkey and cart ride around town while we removed our shoes and entered the temple. Another emerald Buddha stared serenely over our heads from behind the bars of a large steel cage. Outside we saw banyan trees apparently propped up by hundreds of bamboo poles. Each year during the monks' initiation ceremonies another pole was added, so the ceremonies must have been taking places for an awfully long time. As is my wont, I visited the temple toilets to obtain a little light relief. Unfortunately I chose a ladies rather than a gents and drew strange looks from the temple staff.
Next on the itinerary was a visit to a celudon market, which turned out to be a cluster of the usual stalls selling the same old stuff. At Doug and Joy's insistence our next temple stop was rather brief. Chai assisted Margaret in shaking some sticks in front of a statue in order to get her fortune told. Amazingly enough the prediction of the sticks was exactly the same as that of Starwoman in January's New Idea: Margaret would become very wealthy and meet a tall dark stranger!
At last we began the two hour journey back to Chiang Mai. The traffic was bumper to bumper as we had caught the beginning of the peak hour rush. Doug and Joy provided a pleasant diversion, giving little exclamations of fright each time we hit a small pothole. Several times we drove through rail crossings. "Look Doug, a rail crossing!" Joy would announce. "Yes, dear" would come the inevitable reply.
Back in town we supped at the restaurant of the hotel round the corner before setting off for our nightly tour of the night markets. At the first stall we came to we ran into Doug and Joy bargaining for a shirt. Margaret and Joy fell into animated discussion, leaving the saleslady to become more and more irate. "You joking me!" she spat. The ladies were oblivious to her rising anger and eventually she snatched back the shirt and put it back in the pile. Margaret and Joy strolled off still chatting, leaving Doug and me to shuffle along after them.
DAY 18 THU Today we were to go on the tour we were supposed to go on yesterday. Our guide, whose name sounded like Gui, was a friendly young man, rather stocky with a hint of chubbiness, who spoke Spanish, English and Thai. We were surprised to learn that he had spent a couple of months touring Italy.
We drove high into the hills above Chiang Mai, overtaking on blind corners at an achingly slow speed. If we met a car coming the other way it would drive off the road onto the gravel to avoid a collision. The Meo village at which we stopped was the same one we had visited seven years ago. The only change we noticed was the price of the souvenirs, which had risen dramatically. We walked up a hill to a landscaped area to view a marijuana plant and a little garden of opium poppies. The view over the village and into the valley was quite beautiful. The Meo hut we explored was a primitive form of exhibition home, unlike the real ones we invaded last time. A small boy banged a drum in the village museum and I joined him in beating out a cacophony. Without a smile he held out his hand and asked for ten baht. I just laughed. Further along I took a picture of three young girls in Meo costume and paid them the obligatory fee. The same little boy, this time with a friend, appeared behind us and held out his hand for ten baht. "No, no!" cried the girls.
We didn't buy anything at the tourist stalls. It seemed that most of the goods came from Tibet anyway and who wants souvenirs of that country when he's in Thailand? We paid three baht apiece to use an extremely primitive toilet at the back of one of the shops then rejoined Gui for the drive to Doi Suthep.
The steep steps leading to the temple were bordered by a pair of naga (snakes) and posed no problem to legs which had climbed the steps to the giant Buddha on Lantau. Jonothan and Maryann would have had to resort to the cable car provided for the elderly and disabled.
We couldn't find the plate containing the pithy message by which I had photographed Margaret all those years ago and the sacred grey chook seemed to have flown the coop, however I did make a point of ringing all the bells for luck. A particularly obnoxious group of tourists (German, if their lederhosen was any indication) banged all the bells in a most disrespectful way in an attempt to reproduce a passage from Tubular Bells. They focussed their most enthusiastic attention on a large gong which bore the legend "please bang gong softly".
On the way home our driver dropped me at the Central Department Store before taking Margaret back to the Royal Princess where she had a late lunch in the hotel coffee shop. I also ate alone, selecting a restaurant around the corner from our hotel. I was famished, having spent ages trapped in the department store, unable to find the exit.
In the evening we ate at the Whole Earth Restaurant for the last time in our lives. I was a bit disappointed because we had to dine indoors and I couldn't smoke my pipe (a portrait of Swami Mahatmacote, a non-smoker, glared at me from a nearby altar for the entire meal). We purchased nothing during our last stroll through the night markets which was a good thing as our bags were bursting with stuff already.
