Chiang Mai, Thailand

We have given ourselves four days in Chiang Mai, mostly just as a base for day trips and little jaunts to the surrounding area, then another 3 or 4 in Pai, then three days in Vientiane and four in Luang Prabang in Laos. We had been told that Chiang Mai was a pretty cool, laid back city, but as it's Thailand's second biggest city, we couldn't imagine it being overly laid back. Siobhan had been banging on for quite some time about massages and foot rubs and facials and pedicures. It appears we had entered the rubdown capital of the world. And legitimate rubdowns too! They are so serious about their massages in Chiang Mai, they have a program to rehabilitate and train female prisoners as masseuses, and there is a shop dedicated to the trainees and another opened by former inmates. I love looking and exploring every city we visit, and there is a wealth of things to do and see here, so Dominic and I spend our days exploring the temples and wats, talking to monks, and watching as Dominic is taught how to bow and pray in front of the statues of Buddha. He gets quite an audience every time confidently strides to the front of the temple, gets down on his knees, puts his hands together and bows forward, placing his hands on the floor in front of him, sits up and repeats until he's had enough. The tourists and locals alike adore watching him, and they all laugh incredulously as the little blonde boy bows and prays like an old hand. Siobhan, at the other end of the spectrum, finds several favourite masseurs and masseuses which she has studiously investigated by getting as many massages and manipulations as she can cram into one very long day, over several equally exhausting days. The massage parlours are not 9 to 5 affairs. She seems happier. We meet up at dinner time, and look for places to eat. Most times we decide to save some money and eat what the locals eat where the locals eat. The local food is fantastic, the freshest and most vibrant flavours, and we decide to find cheap local places all the time. Then we discover that Chiang Mai is crawling with expats and their expat food, many of these establishments are expat owned. Mexican restaurants dot the culinary and physical landscape, and they are all exceptional, with some of the best Mexican this side of Los Angeles, and likely the world. There are Israeli restaurants with hummus and felafel which Dominic loves, there are Indian restaurants with butter chicken which Dominic loves, and pizza joints and sandwich bars and fresh fruit stalls and stalls that make smoothies from the fresh fruit and deep fried street food and fresh street food and food and food and food. All this makes me feel that this places is designed to make you fat, and all the outdoor activities are to help you burn it off. Then we discover Butter Is Better. This is an American style diner with biscuits and gravy, pulled pork, chili dogs and muffaletta, cake and pie and everything that makes American cuisine both delicious and notorious. Temples, massages and good food pretty much wraps it up for the old city. Outside the old city walls, the new city is a dirty, busy, modern southeast Asian city with all the charm of a dry fart. Oh sure, the night clubs and rock and dance bars, strip clubs and drugs and underage prostitution and every seedy vice is there to be cheaply and easily obtained, but truly I have never been less interested. I took a trip to Chiang Rai, a little town an hour and some away, to the White Temple. If you want the effects of hallucinogens, just come look at this. It's the creator's vision of the voyage from hell, on one side of the bridge with demons, screaming, pleading faces, grasping hands and erect penises all projecting out from a plaster pool of the damned, over the bridge with it's stern guards protecting the way to heaven over the bridge to the temple itself. Inside the temple is the ubiquitous Buddha , but the walls are the real stars of the show. The wall murals are an equally hallucinogenic thrill ride, this time through the creator's brain. Amongst the heavenly imagery is scattered pictures of George W Bush and Osama Bin Laden, Alice Cooper and Michael Jackson, the moon landing and too many more images of iconoclastic figures of the 20th and 21st centuries, people who are clearly important to the creator, but perhaps a little less heavenly than you or I might imagine. That type of thing is more my speed, and our stop in Sihanoukville in Cambodia is the perfect example of the sort of thing I would have nothing to do with. My tastes, and my life, have no room for that anymore. I shall try not to judge those who still find the cheap ladyboy sex and drugs angle enough to fill their needs, but it's difficult not to when one's life now includes a little child for whom one is responsible. The whole place is been redesigned from a former royal city to a tourist haven, and we are told by one local that the Thais feel they are losing their culture due to the influx of anywheretourists, but the Thai youth are just as happy to absorb the latest and coolest trends from America and England. The films, TV and pop music could be easily replaced by anything westeem.rn. Sitting in a partially outdoor Mexican restaurant, eating Mexican food and drinking root beer, I see nothing but white, albeit tanned or burned, faces, listening to the live guitarist play Steely Dan, one feels that this could be anywhere in the western world. There is no hint of Thai-ness save the wait staff, and the singer sometimes betrays his locality with his accent as he sings a heartfelt acoustic rendition of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun". I am not at all complaining, there is loads to do that is very Thai in spirit, what with the food, the music and dance,and the temples every few blocks, but with the the Burger Kings and Dairy Queens, the booming discos and the mobile phone shops, even the long neck Karen tribeswomen (that's the tribe's name not the name of that girl you dated in highschool) are originally from Burma, one gets the sense that the city has not just welcomed foreigners, but has changed most everything about it's lf to cater to them. That being said, we actually stay for a fortnight. I wander around the city, Siobhan gets more massages and exfoliations, and Dominic just goes with the flow. I think he likes travelling and seeing the new things, just so long as he can get in a taxi, which are cheap and plentiful, and if you miss one there is one not far behind. He also talks about the trains, boats, tuk tuks, and after having been to the zoo and feeding the elephants and hippos and giraffes, he talks about the animals and the monorail which circumnavigates the zoo. He loves all methods of movement and wakes up talking about trains and falls asleep talking about boats and mumbles in his sleep about airplanes. He's still very much the star of the show too. When he rides on my shoulders he finds himself telling admiring strangers about the boats he's been on and the trains we go on and how mama was scared of the airplanes, and they just hang on his every word, smiling and cooing and telling him how cute he is and trying to get a picture with him. One woman actually pulls him off my shoulders and walks off with him to meet her, and I suspect his, new family. I follow closely behind smiling but making sure that they know he belongs to the world, not just them. No little boy has been admired by so many in so many different places, and they all want to touch him and kiss him and pinch his cheeks. Some get a little more aggressive trying to pose him, and I have to step in and tell them to be gentle, but for the most part, he just rolls with it and looks at me like it's just another day at the office. Our time here is coming to an end and we have rejigged our schedule as much as we can, and cancelled the cancellable in order to stay as long as we can. We have even discussed coming back here next year to stay for a few months. We'll see about that. Laos is coming up, but I am dead excited to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia, so I will have to work hard to give Laos a chance. We are officially half way through our trip and I am starting to get anxious about the upcoming university year already. India for a month after 3 weeks in Cambodia, so I will try not to get too worked up yet.