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Day 56 - Saturday 21 March
Chiang Mai
In the end I slept quite well but was awoken before eight o’clock by the kids of the house making plenty of noise. I continued to doze, on and off, until ten o’clock and then got up. I had an American breakfast at the guest house before going out on an exploratory tour of Chiang Mai. I was not totally happy with the Watana Guest House and decided to check out some of the places on my shortlist. The Youth Hostel I couldn’t find at all, although I did then stumble across the second branch of it when looking for Mandi’s Guest House, which I couldn’t find either. Dormitory beds at the hostel were thirty baht and rooms fifty. I couldn’t see one of the former as they were all currently occupied but was allowed to take a look at a room in one of the wooden houses. It was large but a bit dim, perfectly adequate and the shared bathrooms were fairly basic, but no worse than mine at the Watana Guest House. The bathroom for the dormitory looked quite clean. The guy on duty at the desk told me that there were a few room vacancies at the moment but I said that I already had somewhere for tonight, having had to pay for a minimum of two nights, but that I might return tomorrow. He said I should come before midday. Gemini House was the only other place that I looked at but it was already full.
After this fruitless search I went for a Coke and a bottle of water at a café on Moon Muang Road, one of the main travellers’ hangouts. I sat pondering when I should leave for Mae Hong Son, eventually plumping for Tuesday, meaning I would have only four nights in Chiang Mai. I thought I would be better off doing any trekking from there rather than Chiang Mai as it was that much closer to the main areas of interest.
On asking at a travel agency about bus tickets I learned that they had to be purchased at the Chiang Mai Arcade bus station, but what the woman neglected to tell me was that the tickets could only be bought on the day of travel. I only discovered this after walking the four kilometres or so to the station in the midday sun, and this after I had first made a futile journey to the TAT office, only to find that it was closed. The morning buses for Mae Hong Son began at six-thirty and then ran on the hour from eight o’clock to ten o’clock. As the journey was supposed to take some nine hours I thought I would need to get one of the first two departures. I was told to be at the terminal an hour before departure, which would mean a very early start if I wished to catch the half past six bus. After slaking my thirst with another Coca Cola and water I asked several tuk-tuk and songthaew drivers their prices for the ride back to the city centre. They all started off at forty baht, which I felt was exorbitant for such a short journey, but even after some hard bargaining none were prepared to go below twenty. As I thought that ten baht was a reasonable maximum price I decided to walk back again.
By the time I arrived back at the guest house I was in fairly urgent need of a squat on the Thai toilet, and I only just made it in time. When I emerged once more from my room I bumped into Patrick, the Flemish guy, and we got to talking. I asked him what would be a fair price for the journey to the bus terminal. To my surprise he replied forty baht. I also asked him if he knew of anywhere that I could get the zip on my backpack repaired as I had been unable to get it back on again. He said that his mother-in-law would do it for me when she awoke from her afternoon nap.
He then asked me if I could do him a favour. That depends I replied, now very much on my guard. Sit down he said, and then went on to explain that he was five weeks behind with the rent owed to the landlord for the guest house. Thinking that he was perhaps looking for payment in advance for my stay, which I was prepared to comply with, I asked how much are we talking about? I was totally flabbergasted when he replied ten thousand baht. There was absolutely no way that I was going to lend anybody that I barely knew that kind of money, about £250, not even if I had been at home. In the perspective of a budget tour of Asia that represented almost a month’s worth of expenses. When I told him no he reduced his request to seven thousand baht, adding that he could drive me to the Catholic church tomorrow, which I had asked him the whereabouts of earlier, and also deduct the cost of any trek that I decided to book with him. Once again I refused. After a period of uncomfortable silence he asked yet again, assuring me that I would get the money back. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? No, I’m sorry I replied, I wouldn’t do it at home and I’m certainly not going to do it here. He replied okay, I shan’t ask again. Just forget I ever asked. And with that I got up and went back to my room.
I had decided earlier that I may as well stay here for the duration of my time in Chiang Mai, but I now felt totally uncomfortable about staying at the Watana Guest House and just wouldn’t feel right remaining here any longer, so I changed my mind and now planned to leave in the morning. I would leave very early in the morning before the family got up in order to avoid any unpleasantness. I would leave all the money that I owed along with a letter of explanation with my reasons for leaving and suggestions as to how they could avoid the same thing happening with other travellers; in short, do not ask the paying guests for loans.
Back in my room I brought my diary up to date, had a shower and then went out to look for the Catholic church. I got as far as the bridge across the Ping River and could see two church-like structures, one on either side of the river. I tried the one to my left first as it was the nearest and showed signs of life; I could see people milling around outside and the cross on its roof was illuminated. But this turned out to be the First Church of Thailand so I walked along the road to the other. That appeared to be disused, however, for the windows were all boarded up and the gates padlocked. I went back to the first church and approached some of the people I could see, who appeared to be partaking in a buffet. One of the women spoke to me in English, asking if she could help me. I asked her if she knew where the Catholic church was because someone had told me it was in this area. After a brief consultation with a young man she gave me directions, telling me to re-cross the river, turn left at the first intersection and keep going. I thanked her for the help but before I walked off she asked me if I would like to stay for some dinner. I thanked her for the kind offer but graciously declined.
It was a much longer walk to the church than I had been led to believe and I only found it just as I was contemplating turning back. There were absolutely no signs in English and I got the impression that there would certainly not be a service in English. My feeling was confirmed when I spoke with a priest, who added that there were no services in French either, only in Thai. The Saturday evening service was due to begin in fifteen minutes at half past seven but I couldn’t really see any point in stopping if I wouldn’t be able to understand a word.
I returned by a different route and by chance stumbled across the night market. There were masses of stalls selling all manner of clothing, handicrafts and food. I had not intended buying anything but then decided that this was as good a place as any to get a couple of T-shirts. The initial asking price for the cheaper ones was forty to fifty baht and the more expensive between B90 and B120. I finally settled for a gold on black Singha shirt and one of the ever-so-trendy, in Asia currently at any rate, Tin Tin shirts for a combined price of B160, as I couldn’t really bothered to bargain too hard. No doubt by the time I returned home the Tin Tin shirts would be all over Europe as well, but at least I would be able to boast that my Tin Tin in China shirt came from Asia, if not China itself.
Ignoring the temptations of the many food stalls at the market I ate at the Daret Restaurant on Chaiyapoom Road, just east of the moat near the Tha Phae Gate of the old city walls. I had a generous plateful of fried chicken with cashews, mushrooms and vegetables on a bed of rice for the very reasonable price of sixteen baht, even if the chicken was a little sparsely represented, and a delicious pineapple and lemon shake for eight baht. In fact, so good was the shake that I followed it with a strawberry and lemon version. All in all it was a decidedly good value establishment and I vowed to return again.
I returned to the guest house at around nine-thirty having decided, more or less, that I would stay at the Watana Guest House until Tuesday after all. It just didn’t seem worth the effort of trying to find somewhere else and then moving just for the sake of another two nights, besides which I had spoken with Patrick again before going out and he seemed perfectly okay and didn’t appear to be harbouring any grudge. I had also met three other guys, two Californians and one from France, who had just returned from one of Patrick’s treks and they had been very impressed. Not that I was intending to take one, but I made a show of being very interested and asking them all about it in Patrick’s hearing.
Tonight Patrick was talking with three new arrivals and I sat down to join them. The new guests were all female, all English and all extremely attractive with well-educated Home Counties accents, although I later learnt from the register that one was from Derbyshire and another from Shropshire. They had arrived in Thailand from India, where they had been for two months, five weeks of which had been spent on the beaches of Goa. They only planned to spend five days in northern Thailand and seemed anxious to get to Bali in order to spend another month on the beach there; truly arduous travelling indeed! After a while they went out for dinner, leaving me with Patrick, before he too went out with his wife and child. I stayed in the courtyard writing my diary for a short while until I got fed up with the mosquitoes and retreated to my room, finished writing and then read for a while before going to bed.
