To The Hills

One of the famous attractions - accordng to my guidebook - of Chiang Mai is the ability to go trekking in the jungle hills, really get a feel of the lay of the land, and experience unspoiled Northern Thai culture, the remote and pure Hill Tribes.

Sure I was doubtful, maybe even a little cynical. I should've been more so.

To book my trek, I switched hostels from Same Same (the place where they laughed at me for going to the Elephant Rehab camp) to Eagle House. Rather than photos of ring-necked women, Eagle House advertised with shots of pristine rainforest. Here, I decided, was where I'd do my trek.

Every trek comes with a colourful cast of characters, and this one was no different. Joris, the curly-haired stoner from Holland. Rob, a med student from Belgium, and his quiet girlfriend. Mattias, a muscled Austrian ex-army bloke who loved to show off, and his girlfriend who always had her hands or lips on some part of his body on any given moment. Chris, an oil contractor taking a well-deserved vacation from Iraq (better Chiang Mai than Ko Chang, I'm sure he's sick of sand and really doesn't need to work on that cancertan), and his English teacher/fitness instructor wife Jan who'd been living in the south of the country for nine months. Leading the trip was Monty, a deceptively small Thai man who climbs trees like a monkey, wields a knife like a practiced serial killer, and can kick your ass in Muay Thai boxing.

But enough about them, lets talk about the trek. Or, more specifically, the drive. Leaving the hostel, our pickup truck drove too close to the fence, and one of the bags ripped down the hostel sign. An auspicious start to the day. It was followed by four hours on the stiff benches lining the bed of the truck, bouncing through hilly unforgiving terrain. Some people managed to sleep, hooking their arms like gibbons over the roll bars and slumping into unconsciousness. I tried.

Our first stop was an elephant camp. I'd learned all about these at Rehab, and wasn't happy to be taking part. But take part I did, pretending to smile when the shutterhappy mahout trainer pointed my camera at me over and over. Metal benches strapped onto the elephant's back were not comfortable for man nor beast. They would robotically reach over their head for bananas or sugar cane, but usually there was none; the exception was when we stopped at elephant-height bodegas on stilts, bananas and beer for sale. Milking the tourists for even more money at the creature's expense. I could see scars on their backs from cruel training as youngers, the scars stretched with age.

Another two hours on the road, and I managed an ounce of shuteye. Unexpectedly, we came to a stop on the side of the road, apparently nowhere, and our bags were retrieved off the top of the truck. Here's where we start. It was 3 in the afternoon already, but still broiling. We marched.

At first I was optimistic. We passed a few farmer's fields (with nobody in sight) before diving into the rainforest. It was dense, moist, glorious, and lasted all of 30 minutes. We emerged abruptly into cleared land. Some of it was terraced in an almost Inca-style, but most of it was just flat dry rice paddies. Paddies that stretched on for miles. The ground was brown, the rice was brown, and the omnipresent cow shit was brown sandwiches, ripe to be trodden on.

In short, the first day was udder (err, utter) bullshit.

What we didn't see was exploited tribes pretending to be unspoiled to harvest the tourist buck. No ringnecked women here; in fact, the ringneck tribes are actually indiginous to Burma, and what few exist in Thailand are desperate refugees exploited like circus elephants.

No, what we did see was pickup trucks and motorbikes and ragged clothing from the 1980's. Most houses were built from wood and corrugated tin (truly international), with the rare absurdly nice house thrown in for surrealist's sake. But what really caught me off-guard was a child's window shutter, plastered with Dragonball Z cards. An aging Japanese anime I grew up with in America was now popular with rural Thai children.

Shortly before I could hit my rage breaking point from walking in empty rice fields and wading across creeks because the bridges went unrepaired, we stopped for the night in a village. Naturally, we were shunted to the outskirts in a 'guesthouse' (mats on the floor of a large open hut). The food was plentiful and delicious, but this was the closest we got to culture. After dinner, Monty lead a few (minus Chris and Jan) to go into town and talk with a villager. I suspect he was the town drunk, as he was sitting beside the fire throwing back bottles of Chiang beer, answering inquisitive questions with a nod, grunt, or chuckle. I opted to wander around and photograph the insect life (and a few puppies) that come buzzing out in the night.

In hindsight, I should'nt have shown my scorpion photo with pride to the hut owners. They immediately grabbed their knives and wanted me to show them where this 'murderous creature' (with a sting I'd estimate only slightly worse than a wasp) was so they could kill it. I took them to the outhouse toilet instead, and let them hunt around fruitlessly for a few minutes in the fragrent poo saunas.

Sleep came with difficulty on the hard mats, and morning came far too soon. I awoke to the sounds of harmonica being played, badly. Wandering out, I found everybody already up and eating breakfast, bundled up against the 'cold'. I put on a long-sleeve shirt, that was my only concession. A more euphonous harmonica song came from Chris, demonstrating to the young daughter (perhaps 8 years old) of the guesthouse to whom he gave his second-hand battered harmonica. She was shy and reluctant, completely quiet, but with some warm encouraging from her grandmother (or extremely ugly mother), some half-baked but earnest notes came from her new old instrument.

The second day had a much-reduced share of ricepaddies, and most of the cows had been replaced with mildly more interesting Water Buffalo. Thankfully, most of the day was spent in legit rainforest. Rob asked me what defines a rainforest, and I'll tell you. It isn't the amount of rain it gets, but the vegetation structure. A complex understory, plenty of vines and lianas, trees with buttress roots, large broad leaves, and epyphites (hanging plants whose roots never touch the ground). Buttress roots and epiphytes were in short supply, but the jungle's beauty rivaled what I'd seen in Australia easily.

What I didn't like was the route planning. Sure, at first I enjoyed the steep uphill ascents. I saw them as a challenge. After a few hours, I began to resent them. The trails were narrow, plowing right through fields and across creeks and under fallen trees, and I suspect Monty was frequently bullshitting his way as he went. At one point we bivouaced at a fragmented bridge over a river too deep to cross; we killed time for nearly an hour before blundering back up the mountain another way. Things got stupider. Our destination that night was a river camp, but we kept going up and down the mountain, the trail absurdly thin and steep and rocky right on the cliff edge. Designed by a nimble retard. Somehow we survived, crossed an intact bridge on the other side, and made it to another boring guesthouse hut.

This time, I kept my insect finds to myself, but the crop was impressive. My pursuits were occasionally hampered by a small child of about 9 years age who pestered me for entertainment. I humoured him for awhile with Chris's frisbee, but after dark I had better things to do. In response, he stole my camera and began taking pointless photos. I showed him the Galapagos and Margaret River and all the amazing things around the world stored on my memory card, he much prefered taking photos of the frisbee. Hard to understand what captivates the mind of a child.

In the morning, I got dressed, packed my bag, stretched, and walked onto the porch just in time to watch our pickup truck crash through the corner of the porch I was standing on. Not my corner, of course. One of the supports was dented, and a huge chunk was ripped off the roof. We left camp.

The day consisted largely of whitewater rafting down the river. Which is a complete misnomer on multiple levels. 'Whitewater' is a generous overstatement for the laboriously slow flowing river punctuated with the occasional rocky rapid we'd get caught on, and have to get off and push. Even calling it a river is a bit of a stretch. And our rafts were simple bamboo shafts lashed together, slowly falling apart as we drifted and needing to be re-lashed after every 'whitewater' encounter. And yet, I had fun.

After lunch, we were left with a four hour drive back. After three, we pulled over and parked. A sign pointed to a waterfall only 500 meters in. Why they made us carry our packs I'll never know, but it was a long, steep, trecherous 500 meters and the heavy weight didn't help. But we all made it intact, and were rewarded with a truly beautiful waterfall. Three levels of clear glass water, with chilled basins at the bottom of each (and potentially fatal rock chutes between them).

The boys of the group quickly jumped in, while the girls toed in slowly. I opted to watch from the sidelines. It didn't take long for Monty to climb up the side of what looked a sheer cliff face, up to a tree jutting out at an unnatural angle 10 or 15 meters above the water. "Look at me!" he yelled before jumping in with a big splash. He came up laughing. It didn't take long for showoff Mattias and macho Chris to want to try, but surprisingly it was stoner Joris first. He got up about 2 meters before losing his grip, sliding back into the water with nasty friction. He slammed his foot on a rock underwater, but he didn't tell anyone until the next day.

Next up was Chris, and he actually made decent progress, making it halfway as far up as Monty did before jumping in. Mattias fared even worse. Both resolved to make it higher next time. Chris went up, with Monty behind him point out all the handholds he used. Chris certainly had the upper-body strength, but he was much bulkier than Monty. Two-thirds of the way up, with Chris in the lead, Monty below, and Mattias off to the side, the rocks gave way. A large shelf of rock pulled off the wall, and Chris immediately jumped back, dropping straight into the water. The rock slice clunked Monty in the side of the face, and he fell back down, grinding between the rock face and rock missile, before crashing together into the water and throwing up a massive wave. A moment later, Mattias jumped in too, since Monty didn't seem to be coming up so fast.

Fishing Monty out of the water, Chris and Mattias made it to dry land with only a minor scrape on Chris's elbow. Monty had a deep bloody gash on his temple, shoulder rubbed raw to the clavical bone, and a massively swollen forearm. Rob the med student immediately got to work, checking him for breaks and concussions, cleaning out his wounds. We decided we needed to bring him to a hospital for stitches at least. As we walked down the path from the waterfall, I noticed the "Wading Prohibited" sign we all ignored.

To his credit, the pickup truck driver who took out a sign and a porch really knew how to weave through traffic. Some would say stupidly, but that's how everyone drives in a land with virtually no traffic lights. We made it to the hospital in only an hour. Chris looked ashen and guilty the whole way. Upon arrival, everyone got out of the truck, marching lockstep behind the wheelchair matron wheeling Monty in. We sat in the waiting room for an hour (while Rob lied and pretended to be a real doctor to get inside). I didn't mind waiting outside; my hero complex had been exhausted lately and I'd seen enough hospital waiting rooms as of late. But to claim my fair share, my seemingly paranoid overstuffed first aid kit got a real workout in Rob's hands. I was grateful he was there, if only to spare me.

Monty escaped without a concussion, somehow. He got some stitches and a nasty scar to remember us. He also got a broken arm and a couple bone screws in surgery. He wont be doing more treks for 2 or 3 months, but I saw him only last day in Chiang Mai working the reception desk at Eagle House. He looked bandaged and beaten up, but not beaten down. High spirits, even. He was glad to see me, happy to be back at work, and looking forward to being out in the field.

Funny enough, I felt the same way, looking forward to a great vacation and a satisfied return to work in Sydney. Minus the bone screws.

Chiang Mai Confidential

This is the kind of blog entry I question posting. It involves me and the people around me doing bad things. But I'd be remiss if I didn't document things fully.

Let me give you an idea what things are like. I was in a restaurant yesterday eating lunch. Nothing out of the ordinary (except the bizarrely sour soup), until I went to pay my bill. I walked up to the counter to a woman - though most likely a man given the mustache stubble - in a gaudy sequin dress. As I gave her the money, she winked at me. Simultaneously, a waitress leaned over and whispered something salacious in my ear, while another came up from behind and slapped me int he ass. I quickly walked on. Apparently this is typical in Thailand.

So despite my better judgment, I decided to investigate what Chiang Mai (the second biggest city in Thailand) has to offer in terms of a gay scene.

My first warning should've been the fact that it was so isolated, a one-block block in a boring suburb north of the city. A Tuk-Tuk (a motorcycle rickshaw taxi) would only take me there for 60 baht, 20b more than normal. Upon arrival to the first bar, I found a dead scene. Four surly patrons who couldn't or wouldn't speak English, one man reading a book off on his own, and a table in the far corner where three old white guys were propositioning a young-looking Thai man/boy. I decided to walk on.

The other bars were even more abandoned. Lotus Hotel, Spirit House, Metro Bar all empty, Garden Bar had one man nursing a lonely beer. The only place with any music was the muted thumping coming from the Adam Night Club, but I resisted going in just yet, instead returning to my first bar to at least enjoy a beer for the trek.

The surly patrons were actually lovely people, and shared their street market buffalo from a plastic bag with me. The bartender explained that the scene, normally quite boring in Chiang Mai, was even worse than usual since people were spent after the festival. The only place that actually had any people was the Adam Night Club, but it apparently wasn't worth it since beers were 180 baht (60b normally) and only go up from there. I was told it was because "the police don't like us", but I wasn't told anything further.

Venturing across the street and up the stairs, I quickly discovered why. The first thing I saw was ass. Big firm asian ass right in my face. Two go-go dancers were flaunting their stuff on stage, completely naked, waving their cocks at the leering customers. True, the bar was popular; there was a table of white guys in the middle, and a whole lot of young asians dotted around them. Judging from their predatory gaze at me as I walked through the door, my first guess was prostitutes or thieves. A waiter thrust a drink menu into my hand, and I got the sensation I'd have to part with 200b now if I wanted to stay. I chose to go.

As I left Adam Nightclub, a Greek man called across to me from the other bar, "Hey, I have a Thai boyfriend now!". I quickly hurried away from it all and back onto the main street.

Perhaps Tuk-Tuks are the domain of tourists, since no tuk-tuks were to be found in this dead suburb. I walked down the street for 5 minutes, seeing plenty of mopeds and trucks but no taxis. Finally, one pulled up to me. A young man in a leather coat and sunglasses (at night), saddled up in his seat with his slutpaint-makeup girlfriend offered to give me a ride back for 100b. I told them that was twice the amount I paid, and they were ridiculous. They said "80, and that's the lowest". I told them not a chance, and they took off... only to stop 30 seconds up the road. I walked up to them, keeping an eye behind me to see if anyone else was coming. No one was. Reluctantly, I sat in the back and said, "80 baht. Just get me the fuck out of here."

The arrogent tuk-tuk driver dropped me off outside of a McDonalds near old city gate, either as a matter of convenience or a pointed statement. I don't care. I crossed the street (away from the prostitute licking her lips at me) and started to walk across the plaza when a clearly drunk man stopped me. "Would you like fish?" he asked. Quizzically, I looked behind me, and realized the man had set up his own impromptu charcoal grill in the plaza, right along the city moat where he'd been fishing for mutants with string and pieces of 7-11 hot dog. I hesitated for a moment, and the friendly alcoholic asked me where I was from. New York, I told him. The man broke out into a grin and pulled off his shirt. On his shoulder was a large bald eagle tattoo. On his other shoulder, his ex-girlfriend, the one that turned him into a boozer on the street. I tried his fish (not bad, actually), and in return he wanted me to buy him some bottom-shelf piss beer.

Mind you, I didn't understand any of that from his broken shitty English. The man was being translated by a young blonde white teen, clearly out of place here with his light skin, clean clothing, and full compliment of teeth. The square was otherwise populated by a mix of boozers, prostitutes, ladyboys, foreigners looking for ladyboys, and one short fat Thai boy, with maybe 50% of his teeth, no older than 15, spending the night on the street with the creeps.

The boy ran up to me and grabbed my hand excitedly, pulling me across the quad. I took a few steps, then stopped, suspecting a scam. He made a mysterious hand gesture at me, and continued trying to pull me? "What is it?!" I yelled at him, but he didn't respond. So I pulled away and walked back. The blonde boy smiled and asked "Had fun?" Apparently, as he explained, the youth had been trying to pull me behind a building so he could give me a blowjob. Offered everyone else already, but no idea if anyone took him up on the offer. Only 500 baht, a great deal when you consider that's only $16 US. I shuddered slightly, and turned my back on the boy as he went to proposition someone else. Meanwhile, another ladyboy winked at me and beckoned a come-hither with her large bony finger.

I sat and chatted with the blonde boy for awhile (while the prostitute child lay on his side on the bench and thrust his hips at me sexually, apparently displaying his sexual prowess). The blonde's name was Joel, and he's from Canada. 18 years old, unemployed, and touring Southeast Asia with his stoner friend Matt, looking for all the greatest skateboarding places in the continent. He and his friend had just bought a second-hand scooter, and were going to go to Laos next week. He offered to take me to a bar with his friend. Having nothing better to do, I agreed, and we hopped on the innocent-seeming scooter.

That fucker can go over 80kph. Hanging on to a narrow metal rail under my seat, fingers locked in a deathgrip, feet inches above burning asphalt, careering through unpredictable traffic and around tight curves while the driver regularly took his hands off the bar and his eyes off the road to check his mobile phone, all without helmets, I started to regret my decision.

We met his friend outside THC Bar, a fluro rasta club with a sweet open rooftop bar. Apparently they don't actually sell weed, but the man sitting at a table next to the entrance claimed he did. "You want marijuana, right here!" Before I had the chance to respond, Joel's friend came out of the bar and scoffed. "Dude, you have shit skunkweed. I know where we can get real shit. Wanna come Joel?" he asked. Joel said "Of course!... wanna come?" I shrugged, and followed in tow.

Turns out, Matt didn't actually know where to buy weed, just the name of the bar and some obscure directions given by a drunk local. So we wandered the side alleys for 20 minutes, twisting around at random, until we popped out at a place we recognized - the plaza in which I first met Joel. Confused, we decided to go find the man who gave us directions, and plodded for another 15 minutes before giving up. At this point, I didn't even really want the bud; I just craved the sense of accomplishment from this scavenger hunt. Whether it was drugs, sex, or a chocolate egg, it was fun anyway to me.

But after awhile, it just got annoying. I asked Matt for the directions. He said "Ok, we need to go from the plaza to Same Same hostel, past Julia's Place, and down the street at the fork." That's right. It was down the street from my hostel. Now leading the drug party, I walked back to my place, down the side-alley where Julia's is, and asked an Irishman where Freedom Bar was. Naturally, the Irish know all the local pubs, and he was able to point us the right way (unlike everyone else we asked - tuk drivers wanted to take us to bars where they get commission, women wanted to take us to the bars they worked, and locals just wanted to fuck with us).

Freedom, the rasta-painted bar that apparently actually had drugs was closed for the night. I shrugged, scavenger hunt complete. I shouldn't even really be doing drugs anyway, especially while abroad. Instead, we made our way back to the clean THC bar, and shared beers and lurid stories under the mostly-full moon. Perhaps now, with their youthful but far-more-experienced guidance, I'll be able to survive Thailand's underbelly again.

They tried to make me go to rehab...

and I said "Fuck Yes!". But lets backtrack a minute.

I know conceptually that elephants are massive, but not Godzilla big. And I know Asian Elephants are slightly smaller than their African cousins we sometimes see at a distance in zoos. But driving up a hill in a full van, and suddenly realizing that there's a massive elephant a foot away from my face - an elephant that while perhaps not as long, is exceedingly taller, wider, and more massive than your van - really drives the point home.

Day 2 in Thailand was not much different than day 1. More explosions, even closer to my face. For Day 3, I wanted something different. Asian Elephants are a big tourist attraction here, but I know most elephant-related tourist traps are douchey at best and abusive at worst. Thankfully, Chiang Mai is not far from a world-renowned elephant rehab center.

There's an odd cultural difference in Thailand where perhaps animal welfare isn't so valued. One of the nosy women who run the hostel looked over my shoulder as I booked a visit to the sanctuary and laughed at me. She said I was 'naive and stupid to pay so much money [about $100] when you can't even ride an elephant!'

But see, this rehab center needs to be expensive, since its needs to care for more than 30 elephants in various states of need. The elephants there range in age from a few months in age to 90+ years. Some were rescued from the now-banned logging trade. Others were orphaned by elephant poaches. More than one elephant had mutilated feet from stepping on landmines at the Burmese border. More than one had broken backs from repeated forced matings with big aggressive males.

To be honest, I can't write much about the experience, as words won't do the justice pictures do. Imagine seeing a row of elephants lined up at the edge of a patio. Each one has a bucket of cucumbers and mangos and squashed squash and overripe bananas. Volunteers picked up a piece of fruit, one piece at a time, and held them out to the eager elephant. The creature stuck out its probing trunk - a truly bizarre snorkel close up - and wrapped the tip around their hand, forcefully yanking the fruit into their waiting mouth.

Now imagine having the elephants paraded into a river, where they're free to bath and squirt each other playfully. Now imagine two dozen people wading in after them with buckets, splashing the elephants and each other gleefully in one massive human-pachyderm waterfight. Afterward, both humans and elephants played in the dirt.

Imagine a baby elephant sticking its entire head into a bucket of water to take a drink. Imagine it then picking its head out of the water, looking at you quizzically, and spraying you in the face through its trunk. That happened to me too. An adolescent elephant then came up and 'kissed' me by sucking on my face with its trunk. It was moist and slightly sticky, and my face smelled nasty for an hour after.

When I wasn't playing with elephants, I was wasting time playing with the dozen or more stray dogs, snapping pictures of bizarre and beautiful orchids, and mock-flirting with our tour guide (and everyone else) - sorry, I'm still me.

Point is, in all the urban hustle and black powder, visitors to Thailand need to take a step back and understand the conservation issues at stake in their largely-imperiled environment. With attitudes like those of my hostel-keeper, soon the elephant shows where shackled and beaten individuals perform stupid tricks for handouts will be the only place to find elephants.

Oh, and a side note: Dear loud judgmental hostel-keeper, her bitchy mood-swinging fat daughter, her ADD-riddled son, and her drunk boorish husband, please change industries. Thank you.

It starts with a bang.

Ok, so this isn't a roadtrip. I'm on foot. But I'm homeless, clueless, vaguely lost and without a plan, adrift in a country I've never been to and can't speak the language, with nothing more than what I've got on my back. So, I think it counts.

I'll spare you the details of my rather unremarkable flight over. Sure the airport threw me a bit, but mild bureaucratic disorganized frustrations are nothing to write home about. The authentic Thai in-flight cuisine included a ham and cheese croissant. You get the idea.

So let's fast forward to a taxi, rampaging through the tight city streets, narrowly dodging a hail of motorbikes commandeered by teens and young mothers holding their babies Britney-style. We can't find my hostel, the address is wrong, the number isn't listed and I'm starting to think its a scam. Instead, the helpful but clearly bored driver decides to give me a boot in the middle of town and wishes me will.

I look to my left, I'm next to a building colourfully labelled "Same Same". First thought - gay sauna. However, the children running around inside made me pray I was wrong. Turns out its a hostel, and they happen to have a spot for the night. Yeah, I've probably been scammed by the taxi driver who's probably working on commission, but it's been a long day and I couldn't care less. I'm tired, practically asleep.

An explosion next to my ear cures me of that.

More explosions rock the street. Are the Red Shirts back? Have I walked into a riot? No, turns out I've accidentally arrived on the most popular day of the year, the Loi Krathong Festival, a celebration of all things firey and explosive. The grenades I hear all over the city are fireworks, ranging from roman candles to illegal mortars. Paper balloons held aloft by candles float up from the streets and fill the air; I count no less than 200 glowing orbs in one corner of the darkening sky before giving up.

After checking in, the fact that I haven't eaten dinner kicks in, so I set off to visit the famous Sunday Market. I only get about 5 steps before I run into a group of 5 young German backpackers, strike up a conversation, and walk with them in the opposite direction to the markets, with no idea of where we're going or how to get back. They take me to the bridge across the city moat (yes, they have one), where the roar is nearly deafening from everybody igniting gunpowder. Children are throwing sparkler bombs into the crowd and bottle rockets straight across to the other side. We opt for the gentler celebration; we each buy a paper lantern, light them, let them slowly inflate with hot air, and lift off to join the mass celebration above our heads.

Now thirsty, we go for a drink... at a themed pub called Rasta Bar. Parched palette sated, they then go for dinner... at a sushi bar. Tasty, but depressing. We almost get a taste of authenticity when one of them excitedly points out a bar called the PornPing Hotel and rushes inside, expecting one of the world-famous Ping Pong shows (seriously). Turns out to just be an unfortunately-named bar.

Finally, my protests come to fruition - bananas specifically. Street-vendor fried banana crepe with condensed milk is truly glorious, my friends.

On a whim, the Germans decide they want to treat themselves right. We enter a massage parlour as the clock approaches midnight. I assume any massage parlour opened this late must cater to a specific need... and my euphemistic dismissal was both completely correct and entirely off-base. A specialty-shop this was, but this was Fish Therapy. You immerse your feet into a tank full of young catfish and let them eat all the dead skin and parasites.

I lasted all of 10 seconds before screeching like a little girl and yanking my feet out like they were over hot coals. Having fish scrape at the skin between your toes, while not painful, is a primordially unpleasant sensation. I leave the Germans to their paradise, and decide its time for some jet-lagged sleep.

I probably should've asked how to get back to my hostel first. Wandering the mostly-empty streets of Chiang Mai, lost and alone on my first night... sounds about right.