Ao Nang Beach Krabi

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A lot of memories here where Doug and Luk lived 14 feet from the water on Khlong Muang Beach in Krabi until they nearly succumbed in the 2004 tsunami. Ten years ago! Seems like it happened yesterday and hard to believe so much time has passed since that tragic day when I learned about it in Bangkok and nearly had a heart attack when I saw the devastation on Krabi on TV! Many young Thai people today hardly remember it. I mentioned it to the young View Son Hotel receptionist but she just keep repeating…“no tsunami here, no tsunami here!”

After that day, in December 2004, Doug and Luk moved from the Pacific side…on the Andaman Sea…to Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand…on the other side of Thailand. Luk said there were too many ghosts at Krabi and she wouldn’t eat the fish anymore because she said the fish ate the people! Such is Thai culture.

However, we spent a wonderful day forgetting all the devastation…visiting the islands off Ao Nang in the Bob Marley “pirate” ship manned by Doug’s old rasta friends.

My Swedish friend took me to a Swedish enclave at the end of Fisherman’s Beach. OMG! Hundreds of Swedes on the beach and sitting in rows and rows of chairs all together. Most of them return every winter, my friend says.

We said goodbye on Feb 2 to the lovely staff at the guesthouse…including the funny katoey who would knock on the windows at night of the young Swede I was hunging out with! I flew to Samui for two days before catching a Bangkok Airways plane to Bangkok and Doug flew to Chiang Mai on Asia Air for another couple weeks until we both leave Thailand from Bangkok on Feb. 14.

Lamai Beach Koh Samui is

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Doug flew from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and spent a couple days with his dad in Pattaya before going back to Samui again to say goodbye to old friends and close down his rented house.

I flew into Samui a few days later on Jan 19th and stayed at a guesthouse he had found for me for 500 Baht a night right on the ring road and near a great French coffee shop and bakery.

I enjoy early morning Pork Rice Soup and chinese donuts at a street stand a few yards down the road each morning. I get there early because by 8am they are “finish.”

It is fun staying in a place you know well. We flew out to Krabi on Jan 26 for a few days…a place we both love.

Back To Chiang Mai

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Stayed in a good location…the ThaiLanna Guesthouse just outside the Anapurn Night Market. Good to be off the Soho bar street except for a couple very loud young Russian women next door.

By this time, after an orgy of seafood and Chinese food with Josh and Polly in Hong Kong and all the great Thai street food for a couple months, I welcomed the big American and British breakfasts and rack of BBQ ribs at Malloy’s Irish Bar in the market.

Met a nice woman from Tennessee who accompanied me to a rather hokey restaurant featuring Khao Soi Curry…a northern Thai specialty…with a personal apron to boot. Felt weird to be eating Khao Soi this way after years of eating it on the street. I guessed the restaurant was owned by a foreigner which the cashier confirmed as I left. I regret paying 300 baht for the apron.

I also regret paying the 700 baht for a double scoop of Haagan Daz ice cream!

An occasional Mango Lassi at one of the Indian restaurants rounded out my travel cuisine.

Apparently this is what this visit to Asia has come to…eating! I’ll spare you photos of all the food!

Doug found a wonderful massage place…two very strong NE Thai women. Seems like massage is never strong enough. “You can do strong!” I always say. Nothing worse than being disappointed when you know what a really good massage can do. I think they get frightened by foreigners who don’t understand that Thai massage is supposed to hurt to get the most benefit.

Flew off to meet Doug who had preceeded me to Ko Samui on the 19th of January.

Hong Kong 2014

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Yesterday I took a Dragon Air flight from Chiang Mai to Hong Kong. The efficient 20 minute high speed train from the airport passes through Kowloon and ends in Hong Kong…at the building, incidentally, where Josh works in the penthouse location of the American Club restaurants. Heading to the turnstiles I see his smiling face on the other side. Oh joy!

We take a taxi to Josh’s tiny apartment in a Hong Kong high-rise with every wall space and corner full of artifacts picked up from Polly’s business travel all over SE Asia and from their trips to Istanbul and India. I add to all this sh** with a great but expensive handwoven Zapotec rug I brought from Oaxaca which now adorns Josh’s “office” floor. Josh and I explain to Polly that “Sh** can be used in a good or bad way. Stuff is just sh**t. She laughs. Next thing I know, Polly has taken a photo of all my stuff and posted it on Facebook with the caption “My shit from Oaxaca!” Ha! My apartment in Oaxaca is 5 times the size of his for $325 a month. He pays nearly $3000. Such is the price for living in a cosmopolitan city with the highest population density in the world.

Polly joins us later at a well-known traditional sushi restaurant. Polly is on a roll this night…so funny and so cute with her Cantonese accent. She is one smart witty woman. Well, she didn’t get her masters being a dummy. Of course Josh gives it as good.

It is a complement for a chef to be visited another chef. But this night the sushi bar was full so we were seated at a table outside the view of the chef. Josh decides to leave for another place but just as we were entering the elevator here comes running the sushi chef! “No no, don’t leave! I have room at the bar now!” The supreme complement for Josh!

Josh and the head sushi chef explain the nuances of each sashimi. I learn you never mix the wasabi with the soy sauce. Some is eaten with a special sauce of it’s own. And some is eaten without either…but with a tiny bit of grated salt from Nepal. Only two things I won’t eat, we told the chef. Raw egg and fermented bean. (Natto) Otherwise we eat what the chef decides what we will like. The fish is rich and finally I’ve really had enough. I told Josh I would really hate to see the bill. He accommodates. 🙂

After dinner we do a bit of shopping in a hip shop:

Polly says she would translate this as “what the hell… Mother fxxxker!” Delay No More!” I decide to wear it like the young Thai girls who wear t-shirts with totally inappropriate sayings in English. If they knew what they meant I can’t believe they would wear them! So now I will wear a t-shirt that only Cantonese-speaking people will understand…and watch their sly smiles! 😉

This trip is for only five days. Waiting for a taxi home, I tell Josh I’ve got Bangkok down. Next trip I think I will get a place of my own in Hong Kong for a couple weeks and explore this city…where East and West have come together in an interesting way ever since the British occupation.

I’m used to going to bed at 8:30-9 and getting up about 5:30 or 6. I collapse at midnight on the wonderfully comfortable couch under a great comforter and on a generous down pillow. What a relief from the rock-hard beds I’ve been sleeping on in cheap guesthouses for the last month!

In the morning Josh and Polly go to the gym. I am on the tiny veranda with a view of more highrises and the harbor. And my computer. They will take me to a traditional Dim Sum restaurant soon.

I am in my glory!

Samui-Chiang Mai-Pai

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Doug had been on Koh Samui while I was in Bangkok having my teeth taken care of after we first arrived in Thailand in November 2013. While there, Doug had taken his boat, that he had just finished refurbishing, out into the open sea off Samui. It was just a little fishing boat and the boat launchers forgot to put the plug into the back of the boat. The launchers realized it but it was too late. Luk tried to call him back but he didn’t hear her.

Needless to say the boat sank and since the life vest got caught on the bottom of the boat Doug had to swim about a mile back to shore nearly drowning in the process. “You almost lost a son today,” he said, when he called me!

Fishing Boat Launch

He lost his wallet, credit card and phone with the boat so we spent quite a bit of time finagling with banks and getting him a new phone.

Understandably, Doug decided to get off Samui so he flew from Samui to Chiang Mai and I flew from Bangkok on Dec 23rd to meet him for a couple weeks. He had his motorcycle sent from Samui to Chiang Mai…through the post! Amazing!

While in Chiang Mai we took a 4-hour trip north through the mountains in a van to Pai for a couple days. Couldn’t believe how much Pai has changed into a hippie backpacker town! Seemed like there were more foreigners there than village people!

I’m about fed up with Japanese princesses who take up more than their fair share of space on the planet to take those blasted photos! And loud crude Russians! And besides that the princesses hold up the van for 20 minutes while they talk on the phone and pack the van with bags of gifts. Perhaps I’m just getting tired. Sigh.

Then…serendipity! A guy I know used to live across the street from us years ago in Salem Oregon. He turned up in my life again in the late 80’s when he happened to be the legislative fiscal officer in charge of the budget for the Commission on Hispanic Affairs where I was the Executive Director. I would run into him occasionally over the years at a coffee shop whenever I was in Salem in transit to Asia.

Well, here in Chiang Mai, one day I was strolling down a little soi near Suan Buak Haad Public Park in the SE corner of the old city and saw a nice looking new guesthouse. The Tulip. I walked into the outdoor reception area to check it out and who was sitting at a table with his laptop open on the table? Geronimo!

What are the chances?

Christmas Chiang Mai 2013

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Christian holidays are an excuse for a party in a Buddhist country. I spend it quietly…with Doug in Chiang Mai and skype calls from Greg and Josh…bless their hearts. Greg spends it quietly too in Las Vegas…making my recipe for Beef Stroganoff. Josh is busy feeding hundreds of Christmas celebrants at the American Club in Hong Kong where he is the Executive Chef. Such is the life of a family scattered all over the world. Far from each other…but close to me.

Impressions…Thai Politics

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Meanwhile I try to track Thai politics so I know which intersection and skytrain exit to avoid. My Yellow Shirt friend feeds me information. My Thai friend who is a professor of fisheries at Kasetsart University issues warnings. I scour Twitter and read the ThaiVisa alerts on my local phone.

The middle class has finally risen. People from Bangkok and the rubber workers in the south continue with hundreds of thousands of whistling anti-government demonstrators scattered throughout the city. The whistles are deafening and remind me of the unceasing cicadas in the spring in Oaxaca. The Reds, supporting the ruling party with Thaksin’s sister as the puppet Prime Minister, have been instructed (I assume by the exiled Thaksin who is holed up in Dubai) to remain cooped up in the stadium to avoid clashes.

Politics in Thailand is inscrutable to the outsider but also to most Thais themselves. Speculation abounds in the alternative press and on twitter. Mainstream press of course is all government controlled. But by the end of December it certainly looks like Thailand is headed for more violence or at the least a silent coup to get the ruling regime out. The poor countryside Reds from the rural north who are the majority argue…but the ruling party was elected! Well, an election with votes and a leadership bought off by the wealthy Thaksin does not a democracy make. I’m convinced by looking at both Mexico and Thailand…and the lack of effort by governments to upgrade the education systems…that the oligarchies do not want people to be educated or informed. They may revolt…as many people have around the world where consciousnesses have been raised and information made accessible by social media.

Wondered around in the Silom district at the Saladaeng skytrain exit. I forgot how much I liked the area. Stopped to buy a whistle on a side soi from an anti-government seller for my friend. An article had just been written in the NYT comparing the situation of Thailand to the Ukraine. As if that wasn’t insulting enough, the US Ambassador to Thailand had just issued a statement…that sounded like a warning…to the people of Thailand to please avoid violence and settle their issues through democratic means. Patronizing for sure! The seller, sitting on the street in the middle of mounds of whistles on red white and blue ribbons, head bands, wrist bands all around her on the sidewalk… looked up at me and admonished this American angrily. “We liked Obama! What he doing?! Why he do this to us?! He make problems all the world!” These anti-government demonstrators are no dummies. What could I say? Except “I know, I know.”

Later, back at the guesthouse I have an interesting conversation at the hip cafe next door with a 40ish German businessman who has an up-close view of things. Says the King should appoint a care government made up of neutral parties like a rep from the UN and people completely outside the system and give them time to write a new constitution to allow election, instead of appointment of ministers, and initiate reforms. Then hold an election in a year or two. The election scheduled for Feb 2 will just restore the ruling party and the country will have all the same corrupt politicians and judges and just have the same problem all over again. I said I felt sorry for Thailand. He retorted “I don’t!” The meaning, I assume, is that they do this to themselves and don’t learn. Only in Thailand. Even Mexico, with all it’s corruption, isn’t this convoluted.

Off The Tourist Grid In Bangkok

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VX The Fifty Guesthouse in Bangkok

Sukhumvit 50, a nice quiet street, is at the OnNut Sky train exit with Tesco Lotus conveniently at the corner. 10 baht takes me down 50 to the guesthouse/hostel on the back of a moto taxi driver. Lovely proprietors and friendly staff. The lady wears the latest panty hose.

I liked the other backpackers staying there and made some friends…one a nice young French woman, Isabelle, who I chatted with in the courtyard every day. She was looking for a job with a nonprofit working with refugees. Talking with her for a week, my anti-French biases went out the door. Alas her grandmother died and she returned to Paris early.

A very talkative guy from Sri Lanka had been ejected by his family to get him out of the way while his wife gave birth back home…another country…another cultural difference. He talks constantly with them on skype on the hostel computer. He makes me a Sri Lankan shrimp dinner cooked in the hostel microwave with cold rice.

As with most hostel/guesthouses there are issues:

Americano coffee at the hip cafe next door was 45 baht. Directly across the street a cafe offered coffee for 25 baht…less than a dollar. But people liked the hip cafe so paid twice the price for coffee. Go figure.

Unfortunately I took a wildly twisted fall on the slippery floor getting out of the shower one morning. Now I know what it feels like for time to stand still. Ex-rays taken at Bumrungrad Hospital showed no broken bones but the fall sure wracked my bad leg and knee for a week or so. I was lucky it was no worse. The lovely semi-retired Thai orthopedist who had practiced in the states for years suggested that I have my knee replacement soon, however, to take the stress off my good knee or I would wind up having to have two replacements. $40 worth of good advice. Doug and Luk found a beautifully crafted cane made of Teak. Perhaps I’ll need it again one day on the narrow broken sidewalks of Oaxaca.

Bob bussed it in from Pattaya on Thanksgiving…great turkey dinner at the Bourbon St. Bar and Restaurant owned by an American. On the Sunday after, we enjoyed the wonderful Indian buffet in the penthouse of the Windsor Hotel on Sukhumvit 20, my old neighborhood. What a welcome change from Oaxacan food.

Had lunch with Tom L., one of Bob’s golfing buddies. Can’t resist posting this photo of Bob and I. Get a load of the body language. 🙂

King’s Birthday

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All has been quiet today in honor of the King’s birthday. American born, he is 86 today. And dearly loved by Thai people. But he is very ill and people are worried what will happen to Thailand when he passes.

The last two weeks Bangkok has been beset with protesters again…a conglomeration of Yellow Shirts, the business elite and others who want to oust PM Yingluck from office. PM Yingluck is sister to former PM Thaksin who has been charged and convicted of corruption but is now exiled in Dubai. Of course Yingluck is charged by her critics as being a figure head of Thaksin’s.

But after some violence, with 4 people dead, the protest took a bizarre turn a couple days ago when the occupied municipal police commander laid down their riot gear in the street. Crowds of protesters were allowed to enter both compounds unopposed after police were ordered to stand down in a bid to prevent further violence. The protesters were given access to Government House and the municipal police station.

Only in Thailand.