The other night I went out with Ian, Richie, and Landon, so Mrs. Columbus decided to go back to the hotel and get to sleep early.  No big deal really as this often happens but it means that when I come back to the room later in the evening I usually have to tap lightly on the door and wake herself up to be let in – sometimes this is met with a bit of a scowl, so I typically don’t make a habit of it!

Anyway, it is approaching the wee hours as I tap lightly on the door, and am surprised when Mrs. Columbus throws the door open because every light in the place is on, and the Mrs. has her sleeping mask on? I am about to ask why she just did not turn the lights out instead of using her mask, when she leaps into a story of her evening.

According to her rendition of the story, she has not yet had any sleep, and she is not at all prepared to shut the lights out because when she returned to the room earlier and went into the loo, she saw a giant cockroach running around on the wash basin.  By her description it was a big as a dog, and should have had a collar and a leash!

After trying unsuccessfully to trap the dangerous beast with a glass she decided to close the door and leave all the lights on as a warning to the rascal to keep his distance.  The downside of course was that with all the lights on she would not be able to sleep, so the solution to that problem was the face mask – sadly that did not work and no real sleep was had….

So on my arrival I was ushered to the dunny to try and hunt the creature down, but he must have been sufficiently scared by Mrs. Columbus that he had retreated to some dark corner and I was able to negotiate turning off all of the room lights as long as we left the bathroom lights on to create a dangerous photon barrier to those within.  Of course the simple solution would have been to just go to the reception desk and let them know, but it took another night of trying to sleep in a semi-lit room for the creature to re-appear and for us to engage ‘the big guns’.

The big guns it turns out are a couple of equally squeamish girls from housekeeping but armed with some sort of spray (labeled in Thai) that does in fact – kill bugs dead!! After a thorough fogging of the bathroom Mr. cockroach flips himself over on his back and gives up – oddly somehow in the intervening time he has shrunk from the dog sized villain that Mrs. Columbus originally saw to a still reasonably sized bug the size of a small thumb, but not nearly quite as threatening, especially now as he gets swept up by the housekeepers and carted away.  As a warning to some of his friends, the maids gas the room quite well, and when we return later in the afternoon, it looks like remains of a shootout in a drug den as the floor in the bath is now littered with the carcases of a handful of dead comrades.

All is well that ends well though as Mrs. Columbus has now once again strengthened her resolve, and upon seeing the 2nd round of casualties was not even startled, she just brought the maid over to deal with the aftermath and we went on about our business, so kudos to her for being a good trooper!  (We are however still sleeping with a light on 🙁  )

Having been to Chiang Mai and blogged about it a number of times I often wonder if I should write something new or not.  On one hand it seems like deja-vu and I am just writing similar things over, but on the other hand I really write for myself (so that one day when I am old I can regale myself with my own stories – that will seem all new again) and for the people who want to read along I guess they can skip things if they like 😉

The trip over from Seattle was mostly uneventful in terms of the flights themselves – everything was on time and we were quite happy with the JAL service.  The leg from Vancouver to Tokyo was on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner which was a new experience for me.  We know a fair number of people who work for Boeing back home, so it was cool to experience the ‘new’ plane we have heard so much about.  Overall I will say it is quite a nice plane, there is a fair amount of room in the cabin so you don’t feel quite as jammed in, and everything is new and modern.  I thought that the electronically dim-able cabin windows were quite cool – no window shades, just a button that makes the glass ‘magically’ change tint from clear to dark to block the outside light.

I did become a little concerned as we waited for our connection to Bangkok as the waiting lounge started to fill fairly rapidly with Russian tourists – who I think are in a heated competition with the Chinese to see who can be the more obnoxious travelers – I cringed to see what seemed like dozens of completely un-managed children running around the airport, running into people, tripping over other people’s stuff, etc. with the parents just letting them run the place like if 12yr olds ruled the world I guess.  At any rate I certainly give this round of the competition to the Russians.  Fortunately for me I have two things working in my favor: 1) it turns out the flight is only about 1/2 full, and our seats are well away from the antics of the Russian circus, and 2) the Russians all go to the beach in Pattaya or Phuket, so they are not going to the north where we are! [FWIW I know they are not all obnoxious, but for any Russian or Chinese readers, you should know that some of your comrades are not creating a great impression 😉 ]

Our routing includes a short overnight stop in Bangkok, and after a few hours of sleep it is back to the airport to catch the short flight up to Chiang Mai in the morning.  This is where we encounter our first travel hiccup.  After arriving at the airport in plenty of time to check in for our flight we are informed that the flight has been canceled 🙁  The check in agent assures us that they had sent us email over a week ago with this information, but as I run my own mail server I am quite able to ascertain that to be false but it is tough to win a ‘he said, she said’ when you don;t have a lot of options.  The only thing they can do is book us on the next flight and offer us each a meal voucher for 300 baht (about $10US) to compensate for the inconvenience.  The new flight means that we now have an extra 2 1/2 hours of sitting around the airport so it is a bit of a grumpy start to the day for me.

One would think it would be fairly hard to spend $20 on two meals in Thailand given that an order of Phad Thai or similar is typically less then $3, but we are in the airport so I know things are going to be inflated.  Given my indigence over the flight change I am completely focused on spending every baht of my voucher to punish the airline, and so off to the food court we go.  In the end, in order to spend all of our money we had to resort to (gasp) American food, and so it was with a lot of reluctance that Mrs. Columbus stepped up to the McDonalds order window!  Even then we each had to order a full meal – double Big Mac, fries, drink and dessert to extract our victory over the airline!  Sadly I think it was again them who won in the end as the meal seemed to sit like brick with us for the rest of the day.  I did feel victorious for about an hour tho, so maybe it was worth it.

We have now been in Chiang Mai for a few days, and are settling into our normal routine for here – take in some sights, relax, and do as little as possible.  On our first day back, we spent a few hours in the afternoon wandering around and then headed straight off to see our friends Tee, Ian, Richie (#2), and Landon at Ginny Cafe.   We had a great first night, catching up with what everyone was doing, having a few beers, and some great food – Khao Soi Gai FTW!!

Laurie peaked a little early and so around 9pm decided to go back to the room, and Ian, Richie, Landon and I decided to wander out on the town for a night cap.  A short tuk-tuk ride later we ended up back at the Crazy German so it was shades of last summer all over again aside from Thomas not being here 😉  After the coup earlier in June the military put in a curfew that had everyone going home by 10pm, later relaxed to midnight, and finally lifted completely a couple of weeks ago, but one of the lingering effects was that the legal closing time for bars of 1pm is now strictly enforced (you used to be able to hop from one place to another right thru to the morning if you liked) so at 1pm sharp the doors at the German start to close and it is time to call it a night – I must say it was quite different walking back to the hotel without some of the usual night-life going on.

On our 2nd day here our friends Bruce and Jackie from Australia arrive in the evening just in time to go for dinner and a cold refreshment.  We met them in Laos 2 summers back during a long bus ride and a few days in Vang Vieng, and have stayed in touch since then.  Some fortunate scheduling allowed for us to meet up with them for a week or so, and show them around our home away from home in the north.  We of course took them over to meet the rest of our local friends at Ian and Tee’s where we had a chance to catch up on things over a good meal and rough out some plans for our next few days here.

Tomorrow we will be going out to ‘the farm’ for the soft opening of the new restaurant that Ian and Tee have been building in Mae Rim.  It was basically just some marking on the ground last year when we were here, so it will be exciting to see now in a finished state.

Our last day here is pretty low-key. We are leaving for Penang, Malaysia in the morning so we need to get ourselves packed up and sorted out for the next leg of our journey.

It seems that enough stuff has worked it’s way from the various markets into our room that Mrs. Columbus has gone off this morning in search of a larger backpack to stuff all of these new possession into – and we still have another week or so in another country to get through!?!

We are able to get in some time at the pool, and catch up on some reading and some blogging, and I’m sure that later in the day we will head back to Ginny Cafe for our last dinner in town and to say goodbye to Ian and Tee.

Chiang Mai continues to create fond memories for us and we know we will be back, but for now it is farewell to to city and the people we will hopefully see again next year.

Sabai sabai (สบายสบาย) – very calm; tranquil; easygoing; comfortable

Today was our last day of adventure here in Chiang Mai before we pack up everything tomorrow and head for Malaysia on Tuesday, but what a perfect finish to our time here as we had a fantastic day!

Our friends Ian and Tee have been working on a piece of land they bought a year or so ago, buildings are now starting to appear and there is a lot going on out there.  I have been following the progress by photos, so one night when we were at the restaurant chatting Ian suggested that we get some people together and make a day trip of going out to the ‘farm’ (as they refer to it currently) and into the surrounding mountains for some exploration, and today is the day.

I start the day off with a full American Breakfast at Ginny Cafe – because I can, and because I have yet to find anywhere else here that makes them properly, with real sausage (not a hot dog), hash browns, and properly cooked bacon! Richard arrives shortly after 11am with a foggy head from a late night out (which I avoided by going home early last night) and it is me and Mrs. Columbus along with Tee, Ian, Richard and Tee’s son and his friends who are hitching a ride with us.

We head off to Mae Rim where the ‘farm’ is located and we get to have a look around at the land they have purchased and the construction that is going on.  The land used to be a rice field and they spent most of last year backfilling it to raise it up above the flood level, and then built a brick wall around the perimeter – I’m sure to keep the crocodiles out 😉  So far they have completed the garage (AKA the man-cave), a sala and a hawng nam (restroom) and they are well on their way to completing Tee’s bungalow, and a kitchen that will be used for the restaurant they will have out there.  The plan is for a handful of bungalows that they will rent out, a restaurant, a pool, and a house for them to live in along with all the various landscaping etc.  They have an interesting vision for the place and they are clearly excited to see it developing – maybe next year when we return we can have a place to stay out there 🙂

Our next destination is the village where Tee grew up, and it is about a 10 minute walk away from the farm. The area is so peaceful and it is a really nice day so we send the van and the kids off ahead to the village and the rest of us make the short walk along the rice fields to the village and the house where Tee’s parents still live.

It is a Buddhist holiday here on Monday and Tuesday and when we arrive at the family home, Tee’s parents and some of her sisters are busy at work making packets of food that will be taken to the temple on Monday and given to the monks.  It is always a special treat for us to be invited into their homes as we get to see the true local parts of Thailand and it is a privilege for us to be there.

After a short stop it is back into the van for everyone for the journey up to Mon Chem. The mountains around Chiang Mai contain dozens and dozens of small villages that are home to the hill tribes – these are groups of ethnic minorities typically from Burma who have been living in Thailand as refugees for several decades now.  Mon Chem is a small Hmong village up near the peak of one of the mountains and in along the steep slopes (40 degree+ slopes) where they grow huge crops of various vegetables on the hillsides, and they have built a restaurant on the top of the ridge.

We stop here for lunch at the restaurant and get ourselves a small sala that overlooks the Ping River valley to the north.  The views from here are breathtaking and we can see for miles in almost every direction. I could sit up here and shoot photos for hours, but we have other stops on our agenda and after a leisurely lunch late in the afternoon we have to make our way back to the van and the trip back towards the city.

On the way down from the ridge to the parking area we stop to see a few people riding downhill on Hmong go-karts. Certainly not anything that looks overly street worthy, but they look like they have been ridden for a lot of years so they must hold together some how.

We take a different road back towards the city through another scenic valley, and head towards Huay Tung Tao – a small lake near the city where the locals go for picnics, sort of like Cottage Lake back home. This is the real reason the kids came along as all they really wanted was a dip in the lake, but the trade off was having to put up with some ‘old people’ sightseeing for several hours to get there.

The water level in the lake is really low compared to the short visit we had out here a couple of years ago, and perhaps it is a sign that the heavy part of rainy season is still a bit later this year – I would guess that the lake is down by about 8 to 10 feet from what we had seen before. Nonetheless it is still really scenic, and for the kids very refreshing! We load ourselves into a couple of lakeside salas and dangle our feet in the water, watching the kids swim while we have a couple of beers and a small snack.  Mrs. Columbus must not be all that hungry thought because when the fried fish arrives she does not seem that interested – perhaps it is the head staring back at her that throws her off…..

It is truly a treat to be able to spend a great day with friends and to be able to see parts of the country that 99% of tourists will never see, and with a few days in a row like that, it is certainly one of the highlights of our vacation.

Back in the city and Mrs. Columbus darts off to the Sunday market for her last chance to add more stuff to our growing pile, but I have seen all the markets I need to see here and opt to sit for for a last meal and a couple of beers with Richard who we will probably not see again until hopefully next year.

As we get close to the end of our time here it is sad to have to start saying goodbye to people, but it is a reminder of our good times here, our friends back home, and people like Thomas who we have met along the way – makes me happy, happy, happy.

We only have a few days left here in Chiang Mai, but we have saved some of the best adventures for last!

When we were here last year our friend Riam talked about taking us out to the Samoeng area to see where she grew up, and where her father still lives. Samoeng is in a valley north west of Chiang Mai and to get there we head north up to Mae Rim and then across the mountain ridge and then down into the valley.

The drive is taking us through some spectacular county, surrounded by jungle and crossing over a mountain ridge provides for some postcard views along the way.  Fortunately for us Riam indulges our desires to stop frequently to take pictures and it seems like we have hundreds of questions about the sights we are seeing along the way.

Today is more of a friends and family day out so Riam’s children are along for the ride, it is nice for us to be included in the trip, but I think the kids are a little shy at first being around a couple of foreigners 🙂

Our first stop is at Ban Pok, a small village near Samoeng and where Riam grew up.  Riam knows most of the people in the village and some of her friends from her childhood still live in the same houses.  As we walk through the village everyone stops to chat for a moment to say hello, and I am reminded of what it is like to go into town back home with Mrs. Columbus (the mayor).

We get to see the original house where Riam lived, and then just up the road is the new house that her father built and lives in now. Her childhood house is a stark contrast to the kind of places we grew up in as children, and it is a good reminder of how most Thai families are not at all focused on material things. Her father’s current home is quite a bit more modern, but still reflects the Buddhist minimalism that the majority of Thais believe in here.

After Ban Pok we drive along the winding road through the valley and stop in Samoeng for some lunch.  Riam and her husband know the people that own the small local restaurant and the food is fresh and very tasty.  We have a nice leisurely lunch visiting a little over some good food, and the kids are starting to even get used to us being around! And who can beat lunch and drinks for 6 people for 280 baht (about $9 US)!!

Back in the van we start the drive back to Chiang Mai – we are going along in a loop so our rather than going back the way we came, we are going south through another pass across to Hang Dong, and then back up into the city.  It has been a great day – we get to see some more of the country outside of the beaten track, and spent the day with some good friends who we enjoy seeing each time we come back. Of course you can’t have a complete day without some shopping, and I think that Riam has sensed a bit of Mrs. Columbus’ pent up anxiety, so we stop at a roadside stand that sells all things banana, where we pick up what seems like a year’s supply of banana chips. I will however admit to getting into the bag of sour cream and onion banana chips and helping herself finish the bag – if the rest of the flavors are equally tasty, we may not have to pack any of them home!

This is the last time we will see Riam and her family and it makes us a little sad to say goodbye at the end of the day, but we know we will be back, so we are grateful for the great day we had and look forward to next year.  Pop gun mai bpee naa krap!  (see you soon next year)