Chiang Mai Mountain Men
Doug and friends
Doug
Chiang Mai
Sushi in Maya Mall
On November 21, I flew from Hanoi to Chiang Mai where I am staying at the Galare Guesthouse on the Ping River where I’ve stayed before. Doug is here and we’re hanging out together. After a month I’ll move to the much cheaper Smith Residence where Doug is staying until he flies back down to Koh Samui. I’ll fly back to Hong Kong on January 2nd and bunk with Josh and Polly until the 5th when I fly out to Portland, Oregon.
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Galare House
Doug In Chiang Mai Thailand
Doug said he leaned over to take a photo and she jumped up and wrapped her arms around him.
He’s been in Chiang Mai and border towns since November and now embarking on a fishing trip from Koh Samui. So out of reach for the next 6 days.
Funny Little Conversation
My middle son is visiting his older brother in Las Vegas for a few days before he takes off for Thailand again. The middle one, Doug, called me.
Me: Are you guys staying out of jail?
Doug: Attempting to explain why he wouldn’t go to jail…
Me: No I wasn’t worried about you! I was worried about Greg!
Doug: Oh, because you are afraid he will be the Commander of the Revolution?
Me: You got it!
Greg in the background: Oh, thanks, Mom!
Hanging In Bangkok
Doug’s 45th birthday is today but he is in Chiang Mai and I am wishing I were with him to celebrate his 45th. I sing Happy Birthday when he calls in the morning. “Oh quit it!” he says. 🙂
As for me, people seem to be looking curiously at my clothes I acquired in the islands. At least I think it’s my clothes they are looking at. lol Thais are usually curious about my wild curly hair…natural as it is.
This week in Bangkok, my VX50 Guesthouse only had a room on the 3rd floor so I moved to the Imm Fusion Hotel a bit up the road on Sukhumvit near the On Nut Skytrain exit. It’s fine and has an elevator. Doug will join me for a few days here before we take off for the States. So I’ll just cool out and meet up with a couple people who live here who I met through Facebook and one I met and hung out with in Chiang Mai. And Jiraporn…my friend who teaches fisheries at Kasetsart University. And of course my Yellow Shirt friend. Oh and I can’t forget Leila from Australia who I traveled with in Lao and Thailand and then met up with again in Las Vegas several years ago.
Anxious to get Jiraporn’s take on the weird current political machinations occurring in Thailand with anti-government (but mostly anti-corruption) protesters clogging up the intersections and trying to “ShutDown Bangkok” in a bid to force the Thaksin regime out of power. Good luck with that, I say. Bangkok is a big place. But people are losing patience with seven huge 8 lane intersections closed. It is a party atmosphere. A huge stage is set up at each one with music groups playing to keep the attention of protesters in between video speeches by the leaders. Vendors abound along the “walking” streets selling everything they usually sell including Shut Down Bangkok and The People Of The King T-shirts adorned with the Thai character for the 9th Dynasty King.
The boys’ dad is still living in Pattaya Thailand. Here he is with his Bingo Bango Bongo Golf Club buddies in Pattaya. 2nd from the end on the right. We meet in Bangkok one weekend to talk taxes and kids.
Ao Nang Beach Krabi
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
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
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.
Samui-Chiang Mai-Pai
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?
Family Reunion on Koh Samui
The Big Deals...Josh, Greg, Doug
Me And Greg
It had been Christmas 15 years ago, Josh remembered, when the whole family…Bob, Greg, Josh, Doug and I…had been all together at one place at the same time.
Bob Charmed The Help
Luk, Doug's Thai Wife
Polly, Josh's SO
So Bob, retired from his pediatric practice in Salem, Oregon and realizing we weren’t getting any younger, rented a resort villa on the island of Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand where Doug lives part of the year in a rented bungalow with his Thai wife Luk. We chose Thailand because Doug was already there and it was easier than trying to get Luk a tourist visa to any other country.
Josh brought his Cantonese significant other, Polly, from Hong Kong where he lives and works as the Executive Chef at the American Club. (Not that it has anything to do with America!) Greg had taken off a couple weeks of his anesthesiology practice in Las Vegas to meet Josh in Hong Kong and then spend a few days in Hanoi together before flying down to Samui. Bob flew in from Pattaya where golf is his life. In November 2012 I had flown in from Oaxaca Mexico where I live so it was no problem to fly down from Bangkok where I had been sitting in a dental chair for days.
Four whole days together was wonderful but it was just about the right amount of time for resort living. We all had our own villas right on the ocean. Several Thai girls and a cook were at our beck and call. They spread out an elegant breakfast of our choice each morning by the pool. A massage table by the pool was ready for us. Doug and I had rented a pick-up and Josh and Greg rented motorbikes to run around the island. The only decisions we had to make were what to eat the rest of the day.
Sitting there watching the boys in the water I shivered remembering Christmas of 2004 when Doug and Luk almost lost their lives in their bungalow 14 feet from the water when the tsunami hit the Krabi coast. About 8 in the morning Doug heard what he thought was a bomb. Lukily they had the doors and windows closed. When he pulled back the curtains to the sliding doors, the water was engulfing the entire bungalow. When the first wave went out they grabbed their phones and ran up the hill behind the house.
But then Luk wouldn’t live on the Krabi beach anymore. She said there were many ghosts and she wouldn’t eat the fish because she said the fish had eaten the people. So Doug had rented a pickup to move them to Koh Samui on the other side of the Thai peninsula in the Gulf of Thailand. I was in Bangkok at the time and seeing the news on TV I was frantic. But after 30 minutes of trying to get through to them on the phone I heard those sweet sweet voices. A movie about the tsunami is in the theaters now called “Impossible.” I can’t bear to see it.
Anyway, this was the first time any of us had experienced a self-contained resort like this. But as we were all very familiar with Thailand and Thai life, we weren’t sacrificing anything by isolating ourselves. We did remark how sad it is that many people only experience a country in this way though. Our time together ended with “When are we going to do this again?” All of us looking at Bob who footed the bill! LOL
Laughingnomad 