Lazy Days

Since I've been in Asia, I've talked to a number of people about their travel plans. Regardless of age or income, it seems that people come here and take on a break-neck pace. People cover dozens of sites and locations in a minimal amount of time, sleep on the trains and go rush around somewhere else. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm sure when I return, people who've traveled this region will be shocked by all the major tourist attrctions I've missed. Oh well, maybe next time.

The benefit of my flight arrangements are that the dates are flexible without charge. When I got back to Chiang Mai on Friday night, I was scheduled to leave on Monday. That wasn't going to cut it. I extended 5 days and rescheduled my flight to Laos for the following Saturday. I spent the next week doing almost nothing.

Chiang Mai is the cooking class capital of the world. There are over 30 schools in a relatively small town. So, I took a class. We started at the market, gathered our ingredients and made authentic Thai food. It was great fun and the food turned out really well.

Kick boxing is popular here, so I went to a match. Actually, going to see kick boxing includes seeing ten matches, taking about 4 hours. Of course, the fighters are classified by weight. There were children as small as 80 pounds and adults as large as 200.

The fights we saw weren't particularly violent. The technique is really different than European/American boxing. The fighters throw punches, but mostly use their hands for positioning. In ten fights, I never saw one good punch land. Most of the kicking is aimed at the thighs and butt. We only saw three knockouts and no blood.

With the exception of these two orgainized activities, most of my time was spent hanging out in cafes, getting massages, going for long walks and then hanging out in cafes some more.

The hotel and guesthouse where I stayed are located near a strip of shops and cafes in the old city near Tha Pae gate. There are a good mix of locals and tourists as this area is loaded with cheap places to stay, but not near the heavily touristed night market. On this strip, a pleasant Dutch fellow owns a Pink Floyd themed cafe called "The Wall." Lots of Western music, travelers and great, cheap food.

The menus in the cafes are all very similar and so is the service. Every menu has at least 150 items on it. Everyone serves hamburgers and other sandwiches. (The best burger I had was at "Mike's." Not sure if you can see the slogan on the sign, but it reads "Converting Vegetarians Since 1979." I had to patronize that place.) There also is a lot of Italian food. I had Italian a few times and it was pretty good. Of course, most of the menu is made up of Thai food.

Table service is sort of amusing, I guess. Before your butt hits the seat, a server thrusts a menu at you. They then stand (uncomfortably close to the table) and stare until you order. Since the menus are all 10-15 pages long, figuring out what to order can take a minute. If you indicate that you need a little time to decide, the server takes one step back from the table and continues to stare. Once your order is delivered you never see a server again, until you flag someone down for the check. At this point they bring the check and stand at stare at you while you read it and organize your payment. Tipping is neither expected nor inspired. Feels kinda funny.

The night market is an interesting scene. It's like taking Macy's and putting everything in a movable, outdoor stand. You can buy anything you can imagine and the prices are dirt cheap. The market is open every night and the workers are there seven days a week. This was common as I spoke with quite a few Thais who never take a day off. None of these people have ever left Thailand or have any interest. The attitude of "anything I don't have, I don't need" speaks to the wide popularity of Buddhism in this country.

The long strip of bars and restaurants leading to the night market is full of "hostess bars." These are bars where your purchase of an overpriced drink is accompanied by the attention of a young Thai girl. As you walk by, what seems like a hundred girls shout at you and almost physically force you inside. I didn't go into any of these places, but they were all empty, with the exception of a few middle aged (and older) white men sitting with disinterested looking Thai girls.

In fact, Thailand is full of this scene. I can't give a full report on the sex trade here, but it is really unnerving to have a 12 year-old girl, chubby from baby fat, leering at you as she tries to hold your hand and lead you into a massage parlor. While there may be plenty of legitimate realtionships, the number of white men with Asian women out weigh the number of white women with Asian men by 1000 to 1. The age difference is also a constant factor. Granted, Asian women tend maintain a youthful look as they age, but the difference between white men and their companions appears to be 20-30 years.

The areas where prostitution is popular are well known. In Bangkok, the Patpong district is full of bars featuring sex shows. Potpong is not seedy though. Each of these "theaters" has a line of VERY BORED looking Thai women, hanging out, inviting you inside. There are lots of other bars and high end restraurants next door to these and the crowds going in and out are as full of Asian men as white ones.

According to some of the articles I've read, the sex trade is supported primarily by Asian men. You wouldn't know it with the backlash against white "sex-pats." There is a well-known hotel in Bangkok called "The Atlanta" (door pictured here.) It's a 50's style hotel with a very good coffee shop inside. The first two pages of the menu pronounce the philosophy of their establishment. "The Atlanta" doesn't care about profit or customer service mores, they simply will not allow any person they expect is patronizing the sex trade to also patronize their business. You see this attitude on a fairly regular basis travelling around Thailand.

On the more pleasant side of things, the massages here rock! There are parlors everywhere and a really good massage costs $3-$5 per hour. They specialize in Thai massage which is really quite painful. They find nots and pressure points you didn't know you had and work the crap out of them. I actually had to ask one woman to stop for a second as the pain was really intense. The feeling afterward was incredible.

After a week of observing this culture and reading up on my next destinations, I set off for Laos. More on that later.