Attacked By Thai Piranhas and Ex-Kick Boxers

To say that 2016 started with a bang is an understatement. It was more of a bang, a slap, a punch and an assortment of jabs. But in the end, I am feeling ready for another twelve rounds. Let me explain.

Thailand is not only the Land of Smiles it is also the Land of Massages. Every third outlet on almost any street is a Thai massage parlour. You can get a foot massage, a full body massage, an oil massage, a facial massage and probably a hair massage if you look hard enough. Today, I promised the grandkids that I would “treat” them to a fish massage. 

A fish massage involves sitting with your feet submerged in a tank full of tiny fish, who for some demented reason love to eat the dead skin that encases your feet. Two days ago, we first witnessed this bizarre event in the market and people were laughing and giggling as dozens of tiny pin head size fish nibbled aggressively at their feet and legs. How difficult could that be to endure? Today we found out. The fish in our tank must have been on steroids as you could almost see the glint in their eyes when they detected new meat enter the parlour. I have caught smaller fish when I went fishing, than the whoppers in our tank. I swear they were salivating as they stared at our feet. These were monsters! Truthfully, it was a fun experience, to have your feet tickled by dozens of little fish, but with the theme song from Jaws resonating in the back of my mind, I was always on the alert. Been there, done that now, so it has been deleted from the list of massages that I need to try. 

After having our feet cleansed by the Thai piranha population, we felt that a foot massage would probably now be in order. Darlene dropped Sawyer and I off at her favourite massage parlour and left for a manicure. I will not soon forget the ambush we had been led into!

The little Thai girl, who drew me in the foot massage lottery, looked cute and harmless. After being assaulted by her for sixty minutes, she confessed that she had been an ex-Thai boxer. I think she was just jesting after she had given my thigh muscles a half dozen serious slugs, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see her fighting on ESPN in the future. 

After a few minutes of fending off her blows, I began to visualize her working in a meat packing plant as a meat tenderizer. She had a right cross that Rocky Balboa would have envied. I was even thinking that perhaps I should sign her to a personal service contract and sell her services to the US Military. I can assure you that after a couple of hours of her alone in a room with a Guantanamo captive and there would be no more need for water boarding. She would have extracted any secret information from any hard nosed Taliban within a day. She was a masseuse with an attitude!

As we headed home after our encounter with the piranhas and the Thai boxer, both Sawyer and I were pumped. I attribute our elation more to the fact that we survived two near death experiences in one day, than the accrued benefits of either massage.

Tell Me About Chiang Mai

I am sure by now that you are dying for me to tell you more about Chiang Mai, Thailand. Perhaps not dying, but incredibly interested. Well, maybe not interested, but if you keep reading you will be subjected to a little background on the second largest city inThailand in case you are ever a contestant on Jeopardy.

Chiang Mai is located about 400 miles north of Bangkok and because of its higher altitude and surrounding mountains (big hills), its temperatures tend to be slightly cooler than Bangkok. We are staying in a small B & B that reminds me of the Hawaiiana Hotel where we used to stay in Waikiki. We are walking distance to the centre of the city of about 160,000 and have easy access to tons of shops and street vendors, markets, and hotels. 

It seems that every block in Chiang Mai is designed like every other block. There is a fairly rigid pattern of shops on each street. A thai restaurant promoting pad thai noodles, sits next to a tour agent peddling treks and elephant camp visits, and next door to that is a message parlour. Restaurant, tour company, message parlour, restaurant, tour company, message parlour. Repeat, repeat, repeat! 

A second street pattern consists of a bar or a smoothy juice bar beside a guest house (small hotel) and next door to a souvenir shop. You can be assured that you will never be hungry or thirsty, need to suffer from sore feet or have trouble finding a place to sleep. You can also easily buy your elephant key ring souvenir while drinking a mango smoothy and booking your zip line tour over the treetops. You can achieve all of this within any given block.

The many holiday visitors to Chiang Mai include reams of Chinese, and numerous Germans and French from Europe. Lots of young gap year types, twenty somethings and a large number of lecherous looking seniors (my biased and unsubstantiated observation), as well as older looking non-heterosexual male couples. It is so important these days to at least appear to be using politically correct descriptors.

Chiang Mai is definitely a walking town. Especially in the evenings, the downtown streets are crammed with thousands of pedestrians and shoppers. For the less fitness conscious there are also hoards of bicycles, mopeds, motorbikes, tuk-tuks, pedi-cabs, taxi cabs and taxi trucks. Getting around is easy, with a lot of options at very reasonable prices. That is, of course, with all the street congestion, if any vehicle can actually move!

Chiang Mia is to Bangkok, as Krakow is to Warsaw, as Fethiye is to Istanbul - a smaller facsimile of its bigger and more famous relative. Our visit has been most satisfying and Chiang Mai would be on our recommended places to visit should you venture to Thailand. 

New Year’s Eve 2016 Was A Winner!

New Year’s Eve 2016 was a winner! I have always been a major opponent of the silly practise of “celebrating” the movement of the hands of the clock from 11:59 to 12:00 to 0:01 at the end of December every year. I always thought of it as nonsensical and meaningless. Celebrating New Year’s Eve had the same appeal as undergoing a triple root canal. This year it was different.

We had a family dinner at a riverside restaurant across the Mae Nam Ping River from our little Thai hotel. On our way back across the old iron bridge, that reminded me of the old railway bridges of my youth, we saw what looked like a balloon floating up in the sky. Then another and another! As we approached the far end of the bridge, we saw that they were large lanterns floating upward powered by a burning candle. 

We learned that vendors were selling these paper lanterns for people to inflate and send skyward. Each lantern when unfolded was about a metre high and half a meter wide with an open circular base. A wax candle was wired to sit within the middle of the open base. When the candle was lit, the heat inflated the treated paper lantern and when filled with enough heated air, the lantern was released and it drifted slowly skyward.

In Thailand it is believed that launching one of these balloons can send a person’s bad luck and misfortune away into the air, especially if it disappears from view before the fire goes out. Often people will say a short prayer before launching the balloon. The process was mystical and surreal.

Within the half hour we spent on the bridge, the sky was speckled with hundreds of golden glowing lanterns all dancing in the night air. Similes to describe the spectacle included: a sky full of giant fire flies, a sea of drifting jelly fish or a nebula of twinkling stars. They were all right on target!

We spent an hour lighting and enjoying the launching of the lanterns. The bridge deck became filled with amateur and professional launchers, with some lanterns fizzling and dropping into the river and others zooming upward with Cape Canaveral speed. The lanterns seemed to float and drift for an hour before the candle died, and the sky west of us resembled a huge cluster of stars over downtown Chiang Mai. It was a unique and truly enjoyable experience, again enhanced by being able to share it with family and especially Sawyer and Helen. 

Following our lantern launching adventure we entered the firecracker stage of the evening. The kids enjoyed popping cherry bombs on the sidewalk and the evening ended with a major fireworks display directly in front of our hotel. It was truly one of the only New Year’s Eves that I can say I really enjoyed!

Who Wants to Wash An Elephant?

On our holiday in Chiang Mai, someone threw out the ridiculous question, “Who wants to wash an elephant?” By a nearly unanimous vote of 7 to 1, we signed up for just such an adventure. I couldn’t think of any better option, that did not involve shopping, so I hopped on board our luxury bus at 8:30 am to head to the jungle.

Our transportation to the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary was actually a small flat bed truck with side seats, a roof canopy and open sides. The eight of us squeezed in, complete with assorted backpacks and elephant washing equipment, and off we roared. I felt like a migrant worker heading off to the fields to pick vegetables and had flashbacks of the Great Depression chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. (A little literary reference designed to impress.)

After an hour of singing such relevant work songs as Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Old Man River we arrived at the final twenty mile stretch that led us up the mountain. The “road” definitely ranked in my top three worst roads ever travelled! It more resembled a dry river bed or a bomb damaged road into Damascus. Only two of our potential hearty elephant washers threatened to return their breakfasts into the bed of the truck on the bumpy drive.

Finally, we arrived at the mountain top and stopped in a hill tribe village that would have carried a no star rating in the Ozark’s. We began by descending about 200 metres to the valley floor and then ascending up the other side. We donned our local “feeding the elephants” shirts in order to appear more ridiculous that we already appeared by huffing and puffing and sweating as though we had just reached the base camp at Everest. 

We were then given a very informal lesson in elephant etiquette and headed up another mountain to make friends with and feed the elephants. And I admit, under no duress, that it was really fun! We were supplied with bags of bananas and cucumbers to feed the elephant family. By approaching the elephant slowly and calling out “bon” or something similar, we held our morsel up in the air and the pachyderm gently took it in its trunk and ate it. Four hundred cukes and ‘nanas later and we had fed the four elephants a mid morning snack. It was a lot of fun seeing the grandchildren develop the courage to feed and pet these rather imposing animals. I scoured the treetops for signs of Tarzan, but he must have been hanging out with Jane. 

We returned to the midway hut for lunch along a path that would have challenged Indiana Jones. The path hugged the side of the mountain and we had to cross cricks on thin twin bamboo poles, vault over deadfall, tiptoe along a muddy one foot wide path and envision our life flashing before us should we slip. Then to really test our mettle, we returned on the same death defying muddy path to bath the elephants, the reason for our special trip in the first place.

Bathing the elephants was an event I passed on, but enjoyed being the paparazzi, taking photos of the family for reasons of future blackmail and memory. The grandkids again were reluctant starters, but quickly began to splash and scrub the dirty elephant hides with a brush. The water babies on the safari had a ball. The Grandpa got his big kick out of recording the extra special event. The last order of the day was to participate in rubbing mud on the elephants to cool them down and heal mosquito bites. I have lived my entire live with an aversion to dirty hands so the last fun activity I wished to partake in was a giant mud pie throwing contest. 

The final highlight of a great day was the return journey across the Indiana Jones obstacle course, the hike up and down two mountains again and a return drive down the highway of detonated land mines. We returned to civilization eight hours after we left, and I still haven’t washed an elephant, but I had a heck of a good time! If you ever go to Thailand, give it a shot!

Christmas Party in The Slums

Today, I was invited to a Christmas Party in the slums of Bangkok. Not quite the same as a chance to party with royalty, but of course I could not say no. The school where Wayne and Kelly work, supports a small nursery school in a slum area of Bangkok. School staff and friends were invited to attend the neighbourhood Christmas party, to distribute some Christmas gifts to the children. 

The slum was situated beside a canal, or more correctly an open sewer, and under an elevated railway track. Not exactly prime real estate, but then slums generally have to take what they can get. My mind conjured up scenes of abject poverty, grime, filth and questionable sanitation and safety. I was about 50% correct. One of the hosts told me that a recent fire had destroyed ten “homes” in the area, with the displacement of about 400 people. That illustrates slum living!

The nursery school was tiny, about five rooms, not very well equipped, and lacking any kind of amenities that would make you want to send your child there. The workers were truly saints as their working conditions included cramped, dirty and claustrophobic spaces. 

After a brief school tour, we headed for the community Christmas Party about a hundred yards down a “road” that was home to endless huge trucks bumping and belching fumes, avoiding kids and dogs as they passed by. We arrived at a fenced outdoor basketball court that now incorporated a stage with seating, some children’s playground equipment and three long metal tables. I had the feeling the I had seen this under-highway playground in the movie West Side Story. 

As we arrived, the highlight of the party - the food, began to be served. The lineup for supper that sprang up was endless with most guests carrying their own dinner bowl. On the serving tables, six monster cooking pots with a capacity of about 60-70 litres were filled, two with rice and the others with an assortment of stews, meat soups and an unidentifiable green broth.

The word that the food had arrived raced through the local jungle telegraph. Hundreds of people poured out of the surrounding hovels and headed for probably the best meal that they had had in months. The instant the giants pots were empty and scraped clean, the fenced area was practically void of adults, with only the children remaining.

The highlight for me were all the friendly little kids that were having a ball, as only kids can have, running around, chasing each other and having fun. Occasionally someone on a small foot scooter raced among the many legs, and some kids brought some liquid string and began spraying each other. It was harmless mayhem.

I was surprised that all of the kids were wearing “clean” clothes, fairly new and modern. The rips and tatters that I had envisioned were absent. If the party had been held in a middle class neighbourhood you would have never known you were in the slums. I saw no crying, no anger, no fighting and general only joy among all those present. 

After a couple of hours we escaped the loud music and excited children. Organizers slowly raffled (with free raffle tickets) about a hundred food and housekeeping articles like soap, tissues, milk and a single teddy bear, one by one. We never did get to hand out any Christmas gifts, but we were not the reason for the party, so I am sure no one missed us when we left. 

A rather low key evening that left me with a nostalgic feeling. I had again witnessed an occasion where those with so little in the way of material possessions can be happy and accepting and welcoming. In many ways it was an Advent moment that prepared me for Christmas a week away. It is times like this that reinforce what is really important in life and how blessed I am in so many ways. To share it with my grandkids in a dark, dim Bangkok slum will always be a poignant memory. Merry Christmas!

What Do You MIss By Living in Thailand?

What do you miss about home now that you are in Thailand? Well, that question has been forwarded to me by dozens of my readers. Actually, nobody really asked, but I had an overwhelming urge to answer the question anyway. Someone was probably contemplating asking, but as usual, I beat you to the draw.

We have done a lot of overseas living, as most of you know, and the list of things you miss about home becomes shorter and shorter. When we first went to Turkey in 2000 there were quite a few things we missed besides family and friends. Darlene lamented the absence of peanut butter, salt and vinegar chips and pork products, especially bacon. Visitors to Turkey were given strict instruction to pack the above essentials for life in their suitcases or stay home! I often had delightful dreams thinking about Wendy’s Hamburgers, toasted ham sandwiches and soft ice cream. (I didn’t request that visitors pack these.)

Over the past fifteen years, whether living in Turkey, Poland or the Bahamas, we have learned what globalization really means. Everywhere we have been in the world during this time now sells Diet Coke as well as Coke Zero, all the things from our 2000 wish lists and more. Thailand has MacDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Tony Romas, Swensens Ice Cream, Dominos Pizza, and of course a Starbucks in every mall. Thailand, and most of the rest of the world, is one big homogeneous food court. If you can’t find it, you haven’t looked hard enough. It’s here somewhere!

That doesn’t mean that there are not things that I still miss, but they are not really consumable products. In our current apartment, I am bemoaning the act that we do not have ONE comfortable chair to sit in. Our Ikea-like furniture is not designed for my non-Ikea-like body. I dream of my recliner at home and a bright reading lamp snuggled up beside the chair. 

Living in a city of millions is compounded by the lack of green space and walking paths that I am so used to along the Bow River and Edworthy Park. Traffic never stops and the heat and humidity are both high, but I am not complaining when I check Calgary temperatures. 

On the bright side there are a lot of things that are real pluses. Thai food comes in a million varieties, is very tasty and is very reasonably priced. It is not possible to walk a block without finding a food vendor, little restaurant or granny selling samosas or rice dishes. The little food store on the main floor of our building makes major shopping unnecessary. You can pop downstairs in two minutes to buy just about anything. The movie theatres are ultra modern and showing exactly what is playing in Calgary and more. We’re already getting ready for the Star Wars invasion this week. While we have no watchable TV, I am blessed by being able to watch the CBC nightly news on my computer. So, I even get my weekly fix of Rex Murphy and that is a perk that is pretty hard to beat! 

Finally, the only thing that I still miss is the opportunity to have a chat with all of you on my blog mailing list. Using my years of experience with the CGS (Catholic guilt syndrome), it would be great to get a brief personal update from each of you to let us know how you are doing. The busy Christmas season is no excuse. And if Charlie Brown had a Christmas Special this year, he would probably say, “Writing to your friends is a wonderful holiday gift!” Snoopy also agrees!

No Comment Means No Comment!

Just when we thought things were getting a little dull, we read the Thai news today and our eyes were opened. No more glib comments, no more ethnic jokes, no more stupid remarks and no discussion at all about “you know who”. The following was borrowed from an Internet news source:

“BANGKOK — Thailand’s strict laws making it a crime to insult the monarchy entered new territory on Monday when a factory worker was charged with disparaging the king’s dog. The worker, Thanakorn Siripaiboon, was charged with making a “sarcastic” Internet post related to the king’s pet. He also faces separate charges of sedition and insulting the king.

Mr. Thanakorn could face a total of 37 years in prison for his social media posts, highlighting what has become a feverish campaign to protect the monarchy and rebuff critics of the country’s military rulers. The precise insult toward the royal dog was not divulged by the military.

The boundaries of what has been considered lèse-majesté, as royal insults are known, had expanded drastically in recent years. Last year, a prominent scholar was accused of insulting a king who died 400 years ago.”

It is even a little intimidating for me to comment on the story. What if my email is being tracked by government cyber spies? If I make any sort of non-positive response to the above, am I as guilty as Mr. Thanakorn? Can I safely make any kind of analytical remark?

In the interests of my own health and safety, all I choose to say is, “I have nothing to say!”