Inle Lake and the End of Myanmar

We landed in Heho, the Inle Lake airport, and found ourselves both cold and wet. It may be the dry season, but the lake region was getting soaked by full-on rain on our arrival. For our first day or two there, because of the rain, we were stuck in the hotel and read/napped. Fortunately, our hotel was small and the hotel staff was extremely attentive while we lazed around, offering us juices and teas regularly – they even gave us a full plate of fruit, including a whole papaya!

When the rain finally let up, we quickly discovered that there was not much to do in the town and took a cab to the winery on the outskirts. The winery was an open house looking over a vineyard by a lake; it felt almost like we were in Napa Valley or the south of France! And yes, Myanmar has wineries – though the grapes are young and the wine is not fully developed – and we were given a tasting menu each as we lunched at their open restaurant.

While we enjoyed our wine, we came to talking to another pair of lovely ladies. They happened to also be from NYC; being homesick, I relished the conversation around US politics and NYC haunts for a few hours.

I was wrong about my initial analysis of Burmese food. Marion and I found a restaurant that served Shan-style food (an eastern state and tribe in Myanmar), and I was blown away by how tasty the food was! We went back every day in Inle Lake to have fried yellow tofu (from the same vendor), and at least once a day I savored Shan-style sticky noodle soup (spicy and peanuty goodness!) that every restaurant offered.

In Inle Lake because we repeatedly saw people using the extremely polluted waterways for domestic purposes. The water was a hazy, opaque green, yet people would squat on piers and clean. This cleaning included laundry, teeth, and general bathing. Marion was disgusted and confused as to why people used the water when it was so clearly unacceptably gross; I tried to explain how sometimes they do not have another choice, either because they cannot access clean water at home yet, or cannot afford it. It is clear, though, that Myanmar has miles to go in terms of giving people access to clean water supplies for daily domestic purposes (one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals).

One day, we climbed into a longboat and sat on two precariously-stationed chairs in the middle while a boatman drove us around the Inle Lake. We started in the murky canal waters and made our way to the vast main lake area, where fishermen fished everywhere. The water seemed surprisingly shallow and full of high water weeds (so sometimes I was concerned the boat would bottom out). The mountains surrounding the lake rolled breathtakingly for 360 degrees.

The boat driver was a funny guy, but he had a strict schedule for us – mostly including cottage industry shops set up in the floating villages. As foreign tourists, I feel it is seen as our duty to buy as many souvenirs as possible to stimulate local economies, and we were shuttled through shops that carried handmade silver, silk weavings, wood carvings, rolled cigars….you get the picture, we saw a lot of different shops. In some places, we happily obliged buying a couple unique crafts, but in many, we politely walked through the shops and rushed back to the boat. One of the shops included some long-neck (Karen tribe) women weaving, their necks elongated by heavy metal coils and swaying with the rhythm of the looms. It felt awkward for us to watch them weave, partly impressed by their hand skills and partly in awe by their necks – I did not feel comfortable taking pictures as they scowled at us.

Cruising through the floating villages was a strange thing; it felt often like we were driving down the roads of a normal village, only the roads were made of water and our car was actually a boat. There were electricity poles and wires dangling above the streets, like any other place, except if you ran into these poles you might get electrocuted more severely. We also got off of the boats and walked through towns on more solid ground, where many of the temples were guarded by lines of souvenir stands manned by the locals. There were other temples that were accessible only by unstable, wobbly bridges over which we had to walk.

We also went to a village off of the lake some ways, called In Dain. There, we hiked a little bit to the top of a hill for a view of the lake. In the village, we also went to a pagoda. Most pagodas we visited in Myanmar had a long parade of souvenir shops you had to walk by to get to the center, as I’ve mentioned briefly, but this pagoda had nearly a kilometer of shops. The center had a forest of stupas of different styles/ages/sizes we walked through before reaching the Buddha. The place was lovely, and walking on the ground for an hour or so was a nice change from the rocking of the boat.

We ended the day watching the sunset in the middle of the lake. Some costumed fishermen (or were they just businessmen, we are unsure) posed for the tourist boats in the traditional way the lake’s fishermen balance – with one foot pushing an oar into the water and the opposite hand managing the fishing cage. It may have been contrived, but the effect on the water with the sunset in the back was beautiful, as they teetered on the edge of their boats in the golden light.

Our last night at Inle Lake included a movie at the local French café. The visuals in the movie were great, but the plot was a bit confusing and too much like a soap opera. The movie was about a monk who worked in a hospital and fell in love/knocked up a patient dying of cancer. The lady died in childbirth, and her brother brought the baby to the monastery, telling the monk secretly that he was the baby daddy. No one else knew the secret, though, and when the monk was in a coma from a fever, the child ended up getting adopted by a loving family with a crippled son, leaving the monk alone and heartbroken. What a show! And what a way to remember the Shan state.

We flew out to Yangon as our last stop before Cambodia. Yangon is the antithesis of what we experienced in the other areas of Myanmar – it is flashy, congested with cars and people in more Western clothing, and cramped with stores of all calibers and restaurants of all types. We found out there was even a Yves Roche store somewhere in town! And people were selling everything you could think of on the streets, including remote controls in piles. We visited the Shwedagon Temple (a headliner pagoda for Buddhism), which was massive and golden, but we had seen so many temples by then on our adventures that we were not as excited as we could have been. Otherwise, we spent a lot of our time picking up last-minute souvenirs and eating Shan noodles before we left for other countries.

A Birthday in Bagan

French Marion suggested that we stop in Bagan for my 30^th birthday and I was more than thrilled. Bagan is an area famous for its stunning temple-blanketed plains. It has been a dream of mine to visit the area for about a decade after I came across a picture of the temples while fantasizing about exotic future adventures.

We took a boat ride southwest to Bagan from Mandalay early in the morning. I thought it was going to be a four-hour ride, and was startled when ten hours later we finally pulled up to the port. We got off of the boat with a simple two-logged plank to a shore full of eager taxi drivers.

After much haggling, we got ourselves into a cab and drove to our hotel in New Bagan (as an FYI, New Bagan is the new settlement for the people who formerly lived in Old Bagan, where the main temples are, and were booted out by the government for preservation purposes). On our way to the hotel, we were already impressed with the spiky horizon riddled with stupas….and we weren’t even going through the Old Bagan area.

Bagan definitely lived up to what I had hoped for; for a few days, Marion and I were awe-inspired as we wandered, gazing at hundreds (thousands?) of beautifully old temples. The golden sandy ground complemented the majestic sights only more.

I was surprised that we seemed to be permitted to climb up and sit on top of most temples we visited. Throughout our visit, we would enter barefoot through the dusty archways of each temple and be greeted by a temple keeper who invited us up a small hidden staircase up to the top of the structure. I am not exactly sure how (or why) we are allowed to use the temples as our own personal jungle gyms when they have claimed efforts towards preservation. In any case, it gave us some impressive views.

People and guidebooks warned about hoards of tourists showing up in Bagan, but usually, it felt like we were the only people in the area, save a handful of other francophones roaming a ruin here or there. Only one night did we end up with all of the other tourists, and that was during a full moon sunset on top of a temple with the most photogenic skyline imaginable. We had arrived at the temple and saw the top edge of the temple completely lined with tripods. It was the only time there I genuinely felt claustrophobic and anxious about being on a roof with too many people.

In New Bagan, there was not much more to report other than we slept and had a few meals there. It was a dusty town geared towards tourists in some places and recent resettlement in others. We ate passable French food. It was hard to get around the area at night because street lights have not really been introduced yet, so our dinner adventures included stumbling in the dusty darkness with a flashlight towards better-lit restaurants.

My birthday included walking through (and climbing) an uncountable amount of temples as we explored the Old Bagan area. In the evening, we socialized with a young Burmese man who was extremely dedicated to selling us paintings. We had a deal – he had to show us his favorite sunset spot in the area in exchange for a few art sales to us. The area has more art peddlers than tourists by a lot (everyone you meet wants to sell you something in this country), but we agreed and were pleasantly surprised to find the guy’s sunset spot was a genuinely great experience. He also answered some of my questions about the country five years ago, before the borders were opened; he asked us some very amusing questions about the romantic lives of westerners.

We ended my birthday with a traditional marionette puppet show at our hotel, and I drank far too many Shirley Temples and felt a sugar high for hours. The puppet show was fun – the puppeteers manipulated a slew of strings and made the puppets seem alive and dancing, even if we don’t actually know what the storyline was about. After the show, they allowed us to try out the puppets for ourselves, where we discovered that we would never get far in the world of puppetry.

The next day we rented a moped so we could speed around the temples faster and get to a nearby temple for sunrise early without hassle (there are not a lot of cabs there). In the dark, we fumbled through the old staircases of a quiet temple off the road and found ourselves sharing the sunrise with a handful of other people on the top of the tower. The sunrise was nice, as the morning mist laced through the temples below. What really made the experience memorable, though, was when 21 hot air balloons slowly rose into the air in the distance and made their way through the temple plains towards us. They bobbed up and down until they glided over our heads and our temple’s top, making their way to a plain further south. I cannot full express how lovely the experience was.

The rest of the day included endless more temples; a lot of the temples we saw were interesting outside, but inside had magnificent and intricate thousand-year-old paintings scattered on the walls and ceilings. I think I will not need to see a temple for a long time after this trip because we saw so many awesome ancient temples. We also discovered that mopeds in the sandy terrain are horrible; we continuously (and infuriatingly) got stuck or lost control in a pit of sand, and would have to slowly make our way to a more stable road.

I took our last day in Bagan to rest, feeling a bit templed-out and needing to work some on my research. Then, we hopped into a little plane and made our way to the big tourist area called Inle Lake.

Mandalay

French Marion joined up with me in Bangkok and we made our way to a great adventure through the magical and not-so-well-traveled country of Myanmar. We are still in the middle of our journey, but we have had so many adventures I should start telling them now.

We started our trip in the old town of Mandalay. The city is not terribly noteworthy, as it was razed by the Japanese in World War Two and simply rebuilt on top of the ashes of the ancient town that once was. Even so, it was a good place for us to get adjusted to the country a bit before setting on towards other locations.

We both noticed a few things about Myanmar so far that I think are worth sharing:

• People wear yellow makeup: It’s an age-old tradition in Burmese culture to smear a yellow paste on the face for improving the complexion and keeping it healthy (and, I suspect, hidden from the sun); most people we have seen have large yellow patches on their cheeks, noses, and foreheads. Neither of us knew this until we got here, and it was a surprise to see so many yellowed cheeks. We had to look it up to see why the women – and some men – were colored in that way, and even got to try it on ourselves and see if it works on our faces as well.
• Not many tourists yet: Myanmar opened its borders to tourists in 2011 after a couple decades of closed rule. While there are definitely tourists here, it was surprising just how few in numbers we are here. It has been really nice in a lot of ways to go through beautiful areas in the country without feeling suffocated by tourist groups and piles of stupid tourists (oh come on, you know there are always that pile of disrespectful tourists anywhere). As a result, we are considered novel to locals. We are stared at everywhere and people excitedly shout out “HellohowareyouIamfine!” to us when they drive past. Those with smartphones whip them out and take pictures with us to place on their mantels at home. I stopped counting how many people touch and squeeze our arms when they walk by us. We are very much celebrities in Myanmar.The other nice thing about not having a lot of tourists is that the culture has not yet been altered with westernization. The yellow makeup is one example; the fact that everyone (including men) wears long sarongs is another. One person nicely explained to us that the Burmese embrace the opened borders because they are getting more money and business, and we saw many newly-built English schools in Mandalay where people were diligently talking in English, improving their language skills. It has been fascinating to explore.
• But monks everywhere: Not surprisingly, as we are in a Buddhist country, there are Buddhist monks (and nuns) everywhere. So there is that. 
• The food may not be for us: The traditional food in Myanmar we have had so far has left us not so interested in eating traditionally while here. The food is mostly acidic or incredibly sour, like there is a lot of vinegar in the meals. While they are interesting tastes, we have yet found something we have wanted to order more than once. I ordered a chicken curry, for example, that seemed nothing like curry except for the fact that I got rice with it, and I got some chicken meat. Instead, it was eight plates of other things that were not chicken or what I know to be curry, and all had me wondering what it was exactly I was putting in my mouth.
• What’s your nation?: When we are walking around those who interact with us (eg, just by saying hi or trying to sell us stuff) asks us for our nations. Whenever I respond with, “the US”, they smile and excitedly say, “Oh! Obama! Good good!” Some will remind me that Obama visited Myanmar, as well, and make sure I like Obama as they do. Thanks Obama, for making people like me more in this country. When Marion says, “France”, in response, they always quickly retort with a, “BonJOUR!” 
• No one walks much: This one has been a bit of a bother for us – people do not walk around outside much. Marion and I like to walk to explore new areas and better understand our surroundings, but it seems to have made people very concerned about our wellbeing. Scores of people drive by us on their cars and motorbikes asking us if we’re alright and why we are not in a car. Many have offered to drive us somewhere else. We insist that, really, we are alright and just like walking. As a response to our insistence, they often decide that we are actually just exercising, and they not approvingly and drive off…only to soon after have another concerned driver asking if we are okay. Sure enough, we have not viewed many Burmese walking streets anywhere in our travels, and are often alone on the dirt paths that resemble vaguely a sidewalk.

Mandalay is not such a hopping city for visiting and we were not overwhelmed before we continued into the country. That said, we did a number of interesting things, including visiting a lot of pagodas and temple areas that cover the country and town everywhere. That will be the running theme of the trip in Myanmar, we’ve realized.

Our first evening in Mandalay took us confusedly in one temple with oddly-shaped stupas and Buddha displays for several city blocks. It also had (when we were walking through) a movie screening of one of the many older versions of the Monkey King that looked beyond surreal.

One morning we walked to the jade market in Mandalay. Once walking through dirty paths, we found ourselves in a deep set of stalls that held hundreds of huge jade slabs. Jades of all colors – green, white, purple, red – and other valuable stones were being sold there, and a loud workshop where the jade is polished and cut sat inside the open stalls and buzzed as we walked through. I was shocked to realize we were the only tourists in the area shopping for jade. After a haggle with one woman (and us being assisted by two older Burmese men in talking her down in price), we walked out triumphant.

That day we also walked around the large palace grounds in the middle of the city. The palace is surrounded by a square moat and heavy walls. Much to our surprise, the large 4 square kms of grounds within the moat area was mostly guarded territory and forbidden to tourists. The tourist-friendly area where the palace sits - in the middle - was small and intimate. The palace was nice and simple, but it had worn with time and restoration is not so prevalent in the country yet. We walked some more to visit some of the pagodas and payas in the area, including a beautiful shrine with the largest book in the world written on huge marble blocks housed in rows and rows of stupa-like structures.

We finished the day with a car ride to the top of Mandalay Hill to watch the sunset.

There are eccentricities in Myanmar that are hard to explain, but one of them included the 3-story free-standing escalator you have to take to get to the top of the hill’s temple for the sunset viewing. At the bottom of the escalators, you take off your shoes (shoes are not allowed in most places here), and you stand on the tall, winding escalators up the thin towers, and pray. Sure, you could pray because there is a Buddha statue nearby, but we prayed that the frightening escalators would take us up (and later, down) safely.

After a few days of quietly walking through Mandalay, we woke up one morning bright and early to climb onto our leisurely-moving barge that would take us 10 hours down the river to the ancient area of Bagan.

Last Week in Bangkok

In my last week in Bangkok I had a pretty horrible day. I won’t get into the details of everything that went wrong, but I’ll tell you one of the long, drawn-out stories from the day. It wasn’t anything particularly telling about the city of Bangkok's character; instead, it was more about having a lot to do in a place where I was still not completely comfortable yet and not fluent in the language.

It started after a Thai language class, when I needed to go to the Cambodian Embassy to get an extended visa for my upcoming trip. My teacher had told the cab driver a specific address to smooth the communication and get me more easily to the embassy. About an hour or so of being stuck in the ever-stagnant traffic of Bangkok, we finally got to the address my teacher had supplied, which ended up being on the opposite side of town (one of the numbers was confused in the location, I think). Instead, my cab driver was trying to drop me off at a local hospital on a dirt road somewhere I didn’t know. Frustrated, I got the correct coordinates for the driver and, both aggravated, drove through traffic for another 45 minutes to get to the embassy. 

Of course the embassy was closed by the time I got there. (Don't worry, I got there the next day and everything was settled.)

If you know me in person, you probably know that I am not someone who hides my emotions well when feeling things. Steam was coming out of my ears and I was thinking about getting a little cry out while on the streets of Bangkok in front of the Cambodian Embassy. Sweetly, the motorcycle drivers around me rushed over to try to help me feel better; some offered cigarettes, one gave me his seat, and others offered to get me some water. I finally realized I just wanted to be back at Lorena’s place and sulk for the rest of the day, and asked for one of the drivers to ride me home.

Something about Bangkok to know – motorcycle guys have zoned areas when it comes to their business. In some organized way, motorcycle taxis are permitted to work within a certain area, and understand to not go beyond those areas. My place was easily a 30-minute car ride through Bangkok to get to from where I was at the moment, and very much so out of this area's zone by a lot. One guy agreed to take me, still, and took off his orange taxi shirt and agreed. He took a pretty big risk to bring me home, and for that I am grateful he was able to bring a weepy girl home.

The ride, however, was terrifying. He sped through the streets and cut into parking lots to help save time. He also got on the highway and rode 80km/h, weaving between the cars flying off of every bump. Though I had a helmet, I clung onto him for dear life. I thought to myself, this was possibly the stupidest thing I could have done in my life. I was sure I was going to fall off of the seat and meet my demise on the roads of Bangkok. Thankfully, I got home safely, though shaking.

I failed to mention that the driver also held the motorcycle handlebars with only one hand because he had tried to hold one of my desperately-clutching hands while he drove. I felt the dread a woman can feel when in need of help from a guy and know that they’re trying to make something more out of it. I couldn’t change the situation because I was praying to get home safely, but I told him to drop me off a bit further away from the apartment just in case, so he couldn't follow me. He got off of his bike and kissed my hand a bit too enthusiastically (and tried to kiss me while I was walking away), and confessed my beauty and his love for me (after a 30-minute bike ride I’m not sure how that was possible). He asked to call and kiss me multiple times as I slowly inched away towards the complex. Precipitously, that day at class I had asked how to say “I have a partner” in Thai ("mii fan") and I repeated it until he finally rode of disappointed. I tiredly and weepily ran into Lorena’s place, and felt so completely spent and dejected that poor Lorena came home with a bunch of sweet bananas for my sad (emotional) consumption all night.

But my time in Bangkok has ended for the time being, and I feel like it requires a final note before I move on. Overall, I like Bangkok quite a lot. Aside from the overbearing humidity and heat (that I got used to), and aside from the oppressive pollution, I could stay in Bangkok for a while. I feel like that is a place that, like NYC, takes years to understand without simply scraping the surface of commonly visited areas. I’m not sure I would feel alright with staying there for the long term because of some cultural differences, but Bangkok is cosmopolitan enough that I felt comfortable there. Also, the food really is fantastic. I look forward to seeing it again.

But I'm in Myanmar now, which is a different story.

Boyfriend (was) in Bangkok

A few days ago I was in happy mode because Mr. CT Lawyer was here with me, exploring Thailand and making me laugh, like he normally does. But he’s gone now, and all I have are our memories and the future time I will get to see him again.

We stayed in fancy hotels while he visited me on my SE Asia jaunt. I arrived in Bangkok before him, so I checked-in to our first hotel alone with my backpacker’s luggage, earthy fisherman pants, and messy ponytail. I got some looks, but the concierge was sweet and sent me up to the room without asking me about my dirty traveler look.

Let us safely say I am not used to that kind of caliber in accommodations anymore (what with my hostel hopping and student budget), and I felt overwhelmed with the fanciness of our room. I sat around for hours, waiting for him while feeling unsure about how to manage the incredibly plushness of the bed. Then finally, late in the night, he walked into the room and I bounced up and down like an eager child on Christmas (which was only a few days before).

In Bangkok we met up with Belgian Elkana for a pleasant coffee chat in the morning. We then left Elkana for his flight home and ended up on what seemed to be a straightforward trip to a reputable tailor for The Boyfriend to get some suits made. Unfortunately, Apple Maps inaccurately plunked the shop pin far away in southern Bangkok at a warehouse that was not there anymore, and the tuktuk driver failed in his desperate attempts to persuade us to go elsewhere. We ended up aimlessly wandering through what looked like a low-income housing area for about an hour, confused and baking in the sun (just like a table of raw pork we saw as we meandered back to the road). Many of the people living in the area came up to us to ask us sweetly why exactly were we there, indicating we clearly were in the wrong place. After a long time waiting for a passing cab (because we were not in a tourist area), we finally drove all the way back to the tailor (hilariously) a few streets away from our hotel. Once we got to our destination, Mr. CT Lawyer bought me a lovely Christmas present of a pretty green dress made for my funky curves.

Afterwards, we got stuck in some thick traffic for an hour to get to the Reclining Buddha on the other end of town. The traffic, we found out, was because of a big festival that was happening – according to our driver – for something about independence from an ancient kingdom (though I could be wrong about that). We ended up at the Wat Pho in time to admire the Golden Hour and appreciate some of the sunset prayer preparations by the monks, with some white strings in their hands and a buzz in the air. Boyfriend was impressed by the large intricacies of the temple, like me, but his jetlag took charge and we rushed back for an early sleep.

The next day we got to the airport for our flight to Krabiin southern Thailand, the beachy region. Really, we were staying about 30 minutes out in a resort town called Ao Nang, which was crowded with more falang tourists than Thai people, much to our dismay. The beaches, however, were gorgeous with spikes of limestone rocks jutting out by the shore, and we were able to overlook the strange ratio of locals to foreigners.

In Ao Nang, we discovered that in order to see the more secluded and pretty spots, we had to literally climb into the wooden long boats on the beach. The first day we went to Railay Beach, which was beautiful and intimate enough to let us relax for a few hours without getting stepped on, yet had some food boats with full meals should we all get stranded without access to a boat for getting back to our hotel quickly. We lazed in the water and sun until I was sufficiently burned, and we patiently bargained with a boatman to bring us back in time for a nap and dinner. We ate a lot of amazing seafood while we visited the area, and went to a dumpy looking Isan restaurant that turned out to be some of the most scrumptious food I've had all month in Thailand.

On New Year’s Eve we felt bold and went to the famously attractive Koh Phi Phi for a fun day in some beautiful sightseeing. After a 2-hour boat ride to the island, we discovered that a few hours was not enough time to secure a tour of the island’s gems and that our only option was loitering on the beach or in the intensely packed tourist town at the port. By tourist town, I mean the small streets were lined with tourist shops and tour packages in a way that felt to me like being in Disney World’s tight alleyways. There were tourists walking around in revealing swimwear, which alarmed us a bit as the region is pretty conservative and modest (though in the tourist areas they tend to turn the other way). Feeling overwhelmed and confused, we ended up on the beach and sat around for an hour or two until our boat back to Ao Nang.

This is when the Boyfriend and I discovered our profound difference in beach appreciation. For him, he likes beaches just fine and enjoys doing nothing on the beach for a few hours, floating in the water perhaps for a little while before lounging and relaxing. Personally, I don’t actually like beaches that much. I love ports and harbors, but finding sticky sand in surprise crevices after a beach visit is absolutely dreadful. Also, I do not like flopping down on the beach for a while – I get bored easily. All of this is to say he floated around and relaxed on the beach at Koh Phi Phi while I pouted and huffed on the beach, fully clothed and wiping sand off of me constantly.

For the evening, we went to a fancy beach-side restaurant and had some outrageously delicious crustaceans for dinner – he had a spicy crab, and I had my favorite thing, lobster – while we admired the sun set on the water. We then strolled around the bustling town until it got closer to midnight, when we sat on the wide staircase to the beach and watched people in party hats celebrate the coming of 2016 by sending candlelit lanterns into the sky. The lanterns floating into the sky and away from land was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in a while, with a spiritually-charged feeling, and I was grateful that we watched it together for an hour before the fireworks at midnight.

On New Year’s Day, after a mishap that left our bags laundry-less for three hours after check-out (I don’t want to talk about it, and it wasn’t our fault), we took an evening flight to Northern Thailand – the ancient city of Chiang Mai. I loved Chiang Mai (especially after our beach trip), and we both agreed that it’s more laid-back atmosphere enchanted us. We stayed at a spa just out of the city where we slept in silence and woke up to the sound of roosters in the distance.

In Chiang Mai there’s an old city area where tourists tend to stay, that is surrounded by a river/moat of some sort in a box shape – we called this area the box, and we explored it on our first day. There are walls and gates around the old city that look like waves of bricks and crumbling or rustic wats (“temples”) lightly spot the box area. There were a lot of wats. The tourists, like us, love wats, and we were again surrounded by a slew of tourists; unlike in the beachy areas, though, the congestion of people didn’t bother me so much there. The wats there do such a great job maintaining their spiritual practices, and we felt peaceful while we visited. I felt spiritually uplifted and recharged while looking at the complex art on the walls. In particular, the crumbled Wat Chedi Luang really moved me – bells hanging on the temples twinkled in the calm wind while we enjoyed the beauty of the old architecture.

While I made sure we ate a lot (a LOT) of traditional local food (curries, papaya salads, spicy foods, etc.), I was craving western food badly while we were in Chiang Mai. After all, I had been faithfully eating local food for months. At the time, a (gluten free) sandwich sounded like the best thing in the world. Praise the gods, we found a western diner that had gluten free bread, and Mr. CT Lawyer was gracious and supportive in my cravings as I buried my face in a grilled cheese sandwich. It was amazing. Afterwards, we snacked on street food to compensate for my Americanness.

We also went to the Saturday Night Market, south to the box, for a little bit. I say a little bit because it was so insanely busy (bodies pressed up against each other slowly creeping down the long streets) and I got overwhelmed early on. We sped through a lot of the stalls to escape the craze of the market (but not before supporting some local artisans with really creative gear). We ended up escaping into the wat where the temple made of silver was lit in the evening with bright colors. Like some of the other religious buildings in the town, however, women were not permitted in the temple, so Mr. CT Lawyer recommended us leave without him exploring a place I couldn’t enjoy with him.

The next day was a big day because we ended up going to Elephant Nature Park, where we fed and bathed elephants for a day. It was an incredible experience to be with such massive and wise animals. It was also terrifying, because elephants are frighteningly strong – especially if you’re holding food for them. Their trunks feel like superpowers that curl and twist surprisingly quickly, and I almost lost my hand a few times while feeding them bananas. It also became very clear while walking around with the elephants how little they need our help and assistance – unlike puppies (and I love puppies) – and that they only really need us to help protect them from other humans with mal-intent. The Boyfriend and I had a lot of fun and laughed a lot while standing in awe around these creatures.

We later roamed around the box some more and shopped around before we got back to Bangkok.

In Bangkok Mr. CT Lawyer pointed out the funny observation that a lot of businesses that have closed up in the US thrive (perhaps even boom) in other countries like Thailand and Australia. Sizzler is a big example – Mister Donut is another. I never realized this until he mentioned it, and come to think of it, 7-11 is a shockingly successful business over here (there are a couple shops on every street it seems).

Throughout our travels we also had to deal with how my small Thai vocabulary impresses and delights so many people here. With my white village blessing bracelets dangling from my wrists still, and my attempts to put together simple questions and requests for locals to help us, we were stopped and delayed in many of our adventures. I would apparently verbalize some semblance of a sentence and I would have several people standing around us trying to speak to me in more fluent Thai than I was able to stomach. Mr. CT Lawyer says he was very impressed with my skills in the language – and the locals all thought I had lived in the area for a few years – but we still would end up getting incorrect details or wrong directions with my sparse understanding.

The last place we stayed in Bangkok was a palace. Not an actual palace, of course, but it was such a luxurious 2-room hotel room that it felt like we were in some kind of royal residence. Everything smelled nice. We were treated like VIP by the staff (which was wonderful). And the food was phenomenal. We enjoyed our room so much that we stayed in to be with each other for our final days together. Our parting at the airport was very sad and lined with tears, but I am so glad we got to spend some more time together before I brave my way towards my final semester.

Lessons on Culture

I will be writing about my time with The Boyfriend soon, but as it is two weeks of a story I have to figure out how to tell, It is taking some time. For now, I need to tell people about my lessons in culture through the Thai language.

I have asked my Isan translator, Rose (we’ll name her Ajaan Rose now) to teach me some basic Thai while I’m around Bangkok for the next week. Happily, she has agreed and our classes started yesterday.

I am already frustrated with the Thai language, mainly because there are up to six different ways to say the same sound (they have short and long vowels, they have tonal differences, etc.), which means that there are five potential words that you can accidentally say in a sentence if you don’t say the right variation. Rose is patient with me as I protest and growl when I try to repeat her over and over again during our classes, but I know I will probably not get very far in this language for now with only a week and my inability to understand the tones.

It has been interesting to read her language book because often I am confused by the way the structure of the dialogue is presented to the student (a.k.a. me), or why people say certain things at certain times in the structure of the book. Rose is super smart and has taken time to answer each of my questions, and I feel my mind blow a little bit every time she gives me surprising information about the Thai culture.

Why do people respond to a question with “Hi” and not an answer? The answer: because it’s just a polite question to acknowledge someone in a brief greeting, and not needed answering.

Also, the wai is a particular piece of culture that most falang get wrong. The wai is when you press your hands together and bow to someone in greeting or gratitude. Falang do it for almost everyone that passes by us, which is very much unnecessary. It should happen, though, when a person is junior to their current company – either in status or age. The senior person should wait until the junior respects them with the wai, then give it back in return to be polite. You can also do it as a polite way to show respect to some acquaintances, but apparently my giving wai to the motorcycle guys that drive me around is unnecessary. I am still wrapping my head around how these social rules play out. If you did not pick it up, the culture relies on hierarchies and social status to a larger degree than I’m used to, and I find it fascinating. I also mess up regularly.

And, why does everyone have a nickname? The naming system here is interesting; everyone has a nickname that everyone uses to call them. I asked Rose (her nickname is Rose) why there was such a high prevalence of nicknames, and she explained to me the history of names in Thailand.

Until the early 1900s, Thai people were not required to have last names; historically they were not common. The nicknames were the original names, which were based on the parents’ favorite tree, flower, object, characteristic, etc. that was identified at birth. People had only these identifiers for most of Thai history.

Only when colonization became popular of neighboring regions did Thailand pass a law requiring surnames, in a strategy to deter colonization from western countries who presumably saw surname-holding societies as “civilized”. The surnames were created by talking to monks and consulting astrology rules to determine the best combination of syllables and sounds. Around this time (I think), Thai people decided, why not create official first names as well (you know, the names that are complicated to read/pronounce for westerners)! These first names have been normally based on the astrological details of the person, to kind of sound nice and official. But the original, and first, name of people here are what we call their nicknames.

I look forward to learning more things about this very complex place while botching every word I learn.