Nicole and I decided that we should commit our last week in Thailand to moping and whining about how it's our last week in Thailand. But for realsies, Chiang Mai was a fantastic little city to spend our time. I'll spare any grandstanding for now and just go straight into the happenings.
Rock climbing. I finally got my fix! The little climbing retail shop in town provided rental and transportation an area dubbed Crazy Horse Buttress. A very hungover and sleepless Nicole greeted me that morning, but she was cognizant enough to send me up some routes that day (with 5 to 20 minute naps squeezed in on the truck or while setting up gear or even while I cleaned routes). The rock features were pretty slick but the climbs were a lot of fun. Due to lack of topo reading skills I accidentally started our day on something that turned out to be around 10c/d level. The numbers are pretty arbitrary, especially when you're in an entirely different place with no sense of a baseline. While I've climbed harder stuff, this was the hardest I've done on lead, especially after being quite out of practice. It got really heady, really fast as I found myself in the middle of a sequence I couldn't work out, started shaking and just let go, taking about a 10 foot fall plus rope stretch. It certainly seemed much more dramatic to my now wide-awake belayer, but it was actually a clean fall and I avoided hitting a nice pointy rock jutting out a body's length below. I made my way back up and got through the sequence: a nice fat bulge that was pretty smooth on top but had a beautifully solid underclinging handhold below. I had to move out somewhat far to the left but I stayed calm, clipping in my protection and letting out a loud breathe of That-Felt-Harder-Than-it-Was. It was a nice reminder of how mental this sport is, and I felt pretty accomplished already so early in the day. We spent the rest doing much easier routes and just cruising up and down. A rock climbing guide from a nearby group put up a nice, overhung 6b+ for me to try on top-rope, but even that proved to be too much at the end of the day. I was sufficiently toasted and drenched in sweat. Time to go home and eat/shower/sleep.
Nicole and I spent a bit more time getting physical activity in Chiang Mai. A few mornings I woke up early to walk or run around the moat (about 4 miles), but another highlight was checking out the foothills around Lake Huay Tung Tao. A large group at the SpicyThai hostel was set to spend the day at the lake for food and relaxation, so we were able to catch a ride together and get dropped off near the starting point. Accompanied by our new friend Johnny from Scotland, we walked around the west side until we found our first landmark: a massive golden Buddha statue standing at about 20 feet high. The Buddha statue possesses a striking gaze which seems to pin you down under its weight. I wouldn't say I experienced anything spiritually significant, but I could understand how poignantly this might affect an individual. Impressive, but without enough context the symbolism is lost on me.
Moving on up into the woods, Johnny proves to be a capable navigator in finding the correct trail in a series of unmarked junctions. While the trails are well maintained, I find that my general sense of direction isn't quite doing the trick. We make a lot of wrong turns, but we also don't really have an objective other than to sweat and exercise and get fresh air. There is purportedly a waterfall along this hike, but a passing-by mountain biking guide informs us that it is not worth seeing. Regardless of whether or not we want to press on, after a couple of hours we hear thunder rolling in towards us and decide to turn back before making any conclusions about said waterfall's objective value. We make it down and cross to the other side of the reservoir, finding our group of backpackers under a comfortable bamboo gazebo just in time to be treated to a nice little thunderstorm. The flux in temperature is a welcome change and I jump in the warm water (which would have been relatively cold an hour prior). I see the Golden Buddha from across the lake and it still feels like its staring at me. No, that's too mystical sounding. I see the Golden Buddha from across the lake and I admire the serenity of this little nook outside of Chiang Mai. Something about an impending storm usually elicits a feeling of urgency in my behavior, but today it feels like I could play in the rain forever. We take the truck back to Spicy and I pop two blisters before walking to my hostel. Unfortunately these make it difficult to run again, let alone walk, so I take it easy on my feet for a few days. Although I set a high goal for exercise that I didn't achieve, it was nice to be more physically active than most other places. Working against me was all of the incredible food from street vendors: Turkish pizza, sweet pancake-like crepes filled with banana and eggs, fresh fruit smoothies forever, mango and sticky rice, super spicy pad thai, veggie spring rolls, and so on. It was all so readily available and inexpensive that I found myself hoping to be hungry again sooner just to try something new. I definitely didn't lose any weight in Thailand.
Days in between activities were typically spent doing just this. Reading and writing. We also spent many an evening wandering and face-stuffing with Kiersten, going on some sort of quasi-failed nightmarish clown crawl (costumed pub crawl, but we didn't make it to any pubs before I fell asleep) one night and then out to street markets on the others. Nicole and Kiersten teamed up for the late night adventures, but my body seemed to be on a less agreeable schedule (waking up at 6am most mornings and losing steam by 10pm). It was cool to have a relatively long-term friend in a new place again, but I didn't feel that same connection like I had with Jeanette or Harry. In my idealistic little mind I think that I'm so gregarious that I can just strike up friendships left and right, but I found myself feeling too withdrawn to put in the effort. I moved to a different hostel for the last week in town under the directive of Divide and Conquer: you make friends and I'll make friends and then we share all of the friends. Simple enough, but I just couldn't seem to click with anyone at Tipsy Manor (named after the owner's adorably surly Beagle). Additionally, due to lack of advanced bookings, I spent three nights at another guesthouse in which I was the only inhabitant. Even the staff lock up and disappear at night... leaving me all alone in a tiny wooden room (redeeming qualities include an awesome mosquito net and comfy bed) and not really lending itself to any social time, lest I conjure up some imaginary friends on the go. Besides, Reginald doesn't like to go out to bars to meet people either so we just sit in silence, occasionally exchanging glares and grunts in the dark. A mosquito catches a bit of light from my phone as it flies by and I think of a scene from the Simpsons involving an inside-out mosquito net. I fix the net and secure the ends to each corner of the bed and roll around in my little fort, reading Infinite Jest and chatting with Janet from Bangalore on Facebook. Well there's a good example of a long-term friend (relatively again, or at least it has already exceeded the expectation of a required physical presence). We have been able to have lots of cool conversations still, and she makes me want to come back to India where I might feel all that newness again and meet even more people and relish the excitement. Janet is an avid environmentalist and Christian, but not in any rigid indoctrinating way. She's passionate and puts herself out there and we get to have some stimulating, thoughtful chats. I'm always happy to meet spiritual people who don't let their beliefs create a distancing effect between us, too, like my good friend Kevan who seems to be infinitely happy and kind and hilarious. And I'm glad I took the time to ask Kevan how important religion is to him (very, reportedly) and to understand how it affects his life. That would be like me telling someone how important peanut butter is in my life and getting those affirming nods of Dude-You're-Speaking-the-Truth-the-Whole-Truth-and-Nothing-but-the-Truth. But I guess we're all a patchy brocade of little-t truths that are personal to each of us. Our lifestyles may be dissimilar, but they aren't usually in conflict if you think about our core desires. And it's a rush when people encourage the sharing. Surely I have some beliefs that are hard to comprehend sometimes, but I know what it's like to feel comfortable in expressing something important with someone who acknowledges you and shows interest. It's a treat to have that reciprocity and trust.
I must also shout out to my friend Paul Bernhard who got me to read Leviticus for book club relevance. He is another exception to the rule, also making me consider that it has been inverted all along, that people with religious convictions are generally good and it is the exceptions who create stigma by misusing the ideas to inflict harm. Historically I can't see it because we tend to focus on statistics of death, but on an individual level I can jibe. Nobody who is convinced of religion's hindrance on progress (which I don't deny) seems to want to acknowledge all of the lives it has saved or improved. It's not much different from me finding my personal Mecca in literature. Books need a subject to give them any power after all, so why blame religion or books (ideologies) for human action. And then there's censorship, but
Wrapping up Chiang Mai, Nicole and I rented a scooter and made our way to Mae Rim to see the Tiger Kingdom, which is essentially a tiger petting zoo. Like any zoo, it's simultaneously disheartening and exciting. Disheartening to see such majestic beasts lazing around in captivity, but exciting to be up close to such massive and fascinating creatures that I would otherwise never encounter. It's a conflict I usually assuage by convincing myself that they have it so much better here than in the wild (a case you could make about most animals), but at the core of it you're compelled to wonder more and more. This feeling is exaggerated as the animals get more exotic, as we fantasize what their lives might be like if they could "run free." When we see a caged rat we aren't so compelled to imagine how awesome it might be to scavenge the streets for all sorts of food, so it doesn't strike us as much of a crime against nature. I wonder what animal is due for mass domestication next. Maybe it's the tiger. Or the porcupine.
Fortunately this particular establishment does seem to treat the tigers well and isn't involved (yet) in any illegal trading of tigers (unlike Tiger Temple of the same ilk) as far as we researched. We just get to walk in and out of their ostensibly ordinary lives, which might just be as full of routine and habituation as most people's. Even if left alone in the wild these big cats would probably still be sleeping through the heat of the day. It's just unlikely we'd be able to approach them. So what's the harm in caging them up but caring for them. Are we talking harm or irreversible effects.
<More endless rhetoric about quality of life and whether its fated to improve or suffer under our global, decisive powers>.
This brings me back to a book titled Silent Sky by Allan Eckert. It's about the mass extinction of the passenger pigeon. Like anything of this nature, it will likely make you furious. It will make you wring your eyes out to dry. But hopefully it will make you think. Like any good book should. I'm not going to tell you to go read it, but just wanted to relate the feelings to all of those other harrowing things in the world that you've watched or read about or experienced first hand but struggle for the words. The ones that really teach something profound. I feel for the creative minds who delve so deeply into dark worlds so I might understand them. And I try to pay tribute to the ones that didn't make it back. Each time you go there I think you return with a little bit more to give. (Much respect to DFW for giving what he did before his departure, among many others.)
I mean, such whimsical fun with the tigers! Yay! Nicole spends the rest of the afternoon piloting our Honda Wave 125cc Automatic scooter while I ride pillion, taking pictures and admiring the beautiful landscape. An excited motorist comes alongside to express some enthusiastic and affirming sentiment to Nicole, which we assume to be an inclusive gesture in our typical humor:
"I'm one of them now!"
"What, Thai?"
"No, a biker."
"Yeah, you look like a Thai biker!"
Nicole later proposes (on one knee) that we travel part of Asia via motorcycle after some more extensive training. Location to be determined based on expense but more importantly the government's relative enforcement of possessing a valid motorcycle license.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
With our visas expiring on May 10th, we say goodbye to Tipsy and head to Mae Sot and the Burmese border by bus.
Bingo.
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