Chiang Mai, Thailand

CM is a relatively big, hot town with gobs of Tuk-Tuk, mopeds, cars and food stalls. I am staying in the northwest corner of the old walled city. They have Starbucks, 7-eleven and ATMs. Obviously the Thai are flooring it towards modernity.

I am in a typical tourist ghetto: everyone sells planes tickets, bus rides, massages, treks, rafting, elephant rides, beer, smokes, laundry, rent anything and places to stay. Stream-of-consciousness travel is the norm. I stay at places until I get excited about someplace else. I am leaving for Angkor Wat tomorrow. I just went into some places, handed over $250 and came back a day later. No receipt. Why bother, especially if you have no cash registers.

The Thai appear genuinely pleased to offer assistance whenever I ask. I appear genuinely thankful.

The Thai would like to be whiter. They buy cream to look whiter and many of the TV personalities and persons in advertisement are lighter skinned. Conversely many of the northern Europeans want to tan.

Organization of large groups appears effortlessly as, no doubt, the Thais have been serving tourist the same way for quite some time. When I went to my cooking class this morning, the tuk tuk driver just showed up to pick me up and then meander through the maze of alleys to pick up. Clockwork, I tell you.

It is perfectly normal now to pack 10 people into a car the size of my pick up truck (can only carry 3 people in the US...). Remarkable. In traffic, a dog was simply sitting on the back seat of moped as the owner maneuvered through traffic.

I stopped by a used book store and got two books for Cambodia. I'll fly there tomorrow. One is a academic biography of Pol Pot and the other was The Rape of Nanking by the Japanese in WWII. My alternative choice was TVs most Hilarious Bleeps, Bloops and Blunders Volume 17.

The cooking course was a blast. Exceptionally well run too. We all met up in a large covered back yard with about 20 burners and 20 woks. After coffee we went to the market (via tuk-tuk of course) and learned all about ingredients. We cooked about 8 dishes and ate all of them. I go a cook book to . Typically the cont ruction of the facility was, unplanned shoddy but highly functional. Dogs where running around the whole time. Great course I am psyched to have people over. Several of my fellow cooking students were engineers. We started talking about solar powered air conditioners and solar heaters and the environment. Did you know Melbourne is going to run out water in 3 years? Kriykey!

Afterwards, the Dutchman remarked that it will take a long way to get where your going if you are walking in the wrong direction. He was talking about getting back to the guest house through the maze of streets. I thought he was talking about Bush. Zing!


Last night we we went to see a Muay Thai boxing match entirely produced for the sake of tourist. I think the fights were real though. Our waitress was formerly a guy. I think, alternative sexual orientation is much more normal in Thailand. Anyway we drank a bunch and stumbled home.

I meet people on the fly all the time. After thirty seconds after I said goodbye to Nancy and Fredo, I met a Swiss girl (don't worry Kris) who I have been travelling with for three days. She came here via the trans-Siberian railway through Mongolia China and Laos. My 6 week itinerary is relatively lightweight, most people I meet travel for 3 to 6 months. OK off to the night market and street vendor food.