Subject:   [adventure!] Hotcha! Hotcha!

Date:   6/2/2004 6:26:00 AM

 

 

 

Howdy folks!

 

When I last wrote you, I was in Bangkok waiting for a train, having made

half the journey from the Southern islands to Northern Thailand. The train

to Chiang Mai departed on time and I was just settling in for a much needed

early night when the Germans boarded. All the Germans I know in real life

are very cool people, but most of the German tourists I have met in Thailand

are horrible, horrible people. These ones were of the horrible drunken

variety and stayed up late to practice yelling and harrassing Thai people

before what would apparently be a big test of their harrassment and yelling

skills in Chiang Mai. I can tell you that by 1:00 am they were ready to

take on the Russians.

 

Anyhow, reaching the city alive, I scrambled out of the train station past

maybe 20 desperate tuk-tuk (taxi-motorbike-things) drivers and suddenly I

was free! I was just about to think 'hey, that was a little too easy' when a

stealthy rickshaw driver, who was approximately 104 years old jumped out of

nowhere, crouched, jazz hands out at his sides and shaking as he said 'you

wan rie i take you nie guesthow'[1]. Damn. So I accepted and we slowly

ground through the traffic and to a guesthouse in the old city where I was

promptly hassled by several people, alone and in teams, to take a mountain

trek. I told them 'maybe', which they interpreted as 'please wake me up at

7:00 am to ask me again, then at 9:00 am, then at 9:30, then every time you

see me'.

 

The part of my brain that hates being harrassed[2] decided that I would not

to go on a trek, despite all the wonderful reports from people arriving back

every day or two. A few days later, as the harassment stopped and I was

starting to come around to the idea of going on a trek, I got sick. Nothing

serious, just a fever and a little cough. That day I sat and had breakfast

with the group that was leaving, which consisted of 6 gorgeous young women.

Alas, I was too sick to do the hiking. Ah, half of them smoked anyway.

 

So, I have spent the past few days just bumming around Chiang Mai. I rented

a motorbike and zipped around in the mountains and saw some little villages.

This time I was wearing a helmet. But it was a Thai helmet, made for tiny

little Thai heads. The kind of heads that don't reach and smash the tops of

door frames. And this motorbike wasn't cool like the one I had on the

islands. It was a scooter. You change gears yourself, but there's no

clutch and the gears are brilliantly set up in the opposite order to a

normal motorbike, so that you push down to upshift. Dangerous. Riding

around on this bike, I did not have 'Born to be Wild' stuck in my head. I

also did not have 'Flight of the Valkyries' stuck in my head. To be

precise, I was zipping along on a scooter, past safron-robed monks and giant

rainforesty plants, wearing a tiny grey helmet with a red strip down the

centre, singing as loudly as I could (without letting too many bugs in):

 

In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina ...

 

Yes, this scooter ride invoked the soothing voice of James Taylor. Not that

it was soothing coming from my mouth, trying as I was to keep from

swallowing too many insects. But I did a couple nice renditions on my walks

down the street (the song has been in my head for a week!). I don't care if

the Thai people hear me singing. If they don't like sweet baby James, screw

'em! I have held back on James Brown though, until I get to Cambodia. They

seem a tougher sort who might be better equipped to handle his stylings.

 

Anyway, my toy helmet did not come with a visor thing, and my eyes fared

much worse than my mouth did. Every kilometre or so, I would swerve around

on the road, trying to pull doubly foreign objects out of my eye sockets,

risking life and limb for vision, so that when I reached the bottom of the

mountain, there was probably an arm- and leg-filled stream of tears drying

on my cheeks which, in Thailand, may have made me appear to be a messy

eater.

 

I have been to the pharmacy and picked up some prescription-only sleeping

pills (only available to those who ask for them), which are complete crap.

I expect that all those rock stars who died of overdoses on sleeping pills

just spent too much time in South-East Asia downing handfuls of them, as is

necessary here.

 

I'll be on a night train or bus or something to Laos, possibly via Bangkok

again, tonight.

 

I hear that Laos is much less touristy than Thailand, and further, I expect

I will try to stay out of big cities there, as I am looking forward to

breathing actual non-black air. For those two reasons, I don't expect that

I'll be able to write you for a while (oh, it's like that Dixie Chick song

that made me so sad on the plane out of Turkey![3]). Oh, and I'll probably get

to VietNam too!

 

Don't panic!

 

And speaking of not writing for a while, sorry I haven't been very good at

responding to all of your individual emails. This will continue for a

while, and then when I get home I'll write each of you every day!

 

Have fun!

jay

 

p.s., Oh yeah! Spent the other night chatting with some Thai prostitutes.

Lots of fun! Until they started asking if I was going home with them, which

is when I ran away, Eastward, into the rising sun.

 

p.p.s., I found a great restaurant/bar here called 'Hug'. If any of you are

in Chiang Mai or will be (Ben ... Eilish ...), definitely go there! And tell

the owners (Aey and Lin) that Jay sent you! Best food in town, great music,

and great people.

 

 

[1] Okay, no jazz hands, but I think he was crouching.

[2] Cortex

[3] It's a very good song, you should listen to it! Hey, have any of you

Urbana people heard from Julie Eisengart lately? I wonder what she's up to.