Reverend Ken's Blog: #2216: Monday, January 21: A party and a gig

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Post 2216
- 8 years and 21 days since I started this blog -

Journal
(written 1/19/19)

Read this once (it won't change for the rest of the trip(s): I'll be linking this post to Facebook. If that's how you got here, here's some background: About 8 years ago I started this blog as a food journal. I had a medical situation and needed to lose weight. Initially, that's all I did here: Journal my food intake and my weight. It contributed to helping me lose 20+% of my body weight in 6 months, and continuing has kept me on track since then. I started adding commentary after a while, but lately it has become infrequent.

While I'm traveling, I let go of the weight-tracking and food journaling, except for the occasional food shot when I've eaten something interesting. And that's where we find ourselves now.

Last time out, I left you having just gotten an invitation to a party while finishing up breakfast.

That was quite an event. It was a gathering of musicians, and the first time I've been to one of the prevalent gated communities where expats tend to live in Chiang Mai. This was south of the old city, whereas most of the expats I met at Chiang Mai Expats Club - predominantly British - live in the more upscale area northwest of the walled city.

Anyway, I had my first brush with the downside of the loss of Uber. I couldn't get a cab. At least, not right away. Grab kept on telling me there were none available. This was, except for my ride to the airport, the longest cab ride yet, and I simply had to keep requesting - for fifteen minutes - until someone relented. This happened again twice the next night. At one point, I just took a tuk-tuk, at approximately twice the cost, with less comfort.

So now the setting was suburban, very non-Thai. No matter. The vibe was great, everybody was there for a good time. Nearly everybody I had met in Chiang Mai was there, along with a few new people to connect with.

The pot luck provided excellent food, filling a dining table with savory dishes, so a separate space had to be found for the desserts. I must say, these expats can cook - and bake.

It wasn't too long before the musicians started swapping war stories. I especially liked a British trumpet player, Roddie, who had played for all the major studios in England, and had also played for a bunch of American acts, including sessions for Stax. I got to air my appreciation for George Martin, which, as it turns out, he agreed with, while we both praised the Beatles for what they became working with him. My new best friend, lol.

But then the playing started up, and I got on bass for a good while. It was a fun jam, not really any kind of blowing session: all sing-alongs, and everybody having a good time (lots of phones out for lyrics, a few for chords). At one point, there were five guitarists and a conga and me on bass. After a while, I gave up the bass to friend David, and played conga for a bit. Then switched to guitar.

And then it was David on bass, me on guitar, and Daniel - the gypsy guitarist from my first night at the Siam Tulip - as things wound down, and it was requested that things move indoors because of the hour. Daniel resisted - he wanted to show me some some chords to his gypsy songs.

Playing with him was amazing. I had to up my game considerably, and we managed to do some pretty good stuff. At the end, I couldn't stop thanking him. He had instantly upped my guitar game (still pretty weak, but now less so).

The party broke up at around midnight, I left a little later, walking up the road where he taxi took fifteen minutes to get to me, even though, according to Grab, he started five minutes away.

I found myself on a mission to find a good local restaurant on Sunday morning, to replace the temporarily closed Tikky Cafe, and came up with one less than a fifteen minute walk away - a Thai-Japanese coffee shop with American-style breakfast specials.

Chiang Mai's old town is a mile-and-a-quarter-per-side square. That square is surrounded by a wall and a moat. These were built around the 13th-to-14th centuries, and wrecked by an earthquake in the 19th Century. The moats have been attractively restored, but most of the wall has not, although there is work going on. This year, I am staying inside the walls, in the Northwest corner.

It was a beautiful day for a walk. I enjoyed walking along the moat, and when I got to the corner, I took some pics.

My selection turned out to be a major stroke of good fortune - the food was delicious. I couldn't stop tasting stuff, and, even though the food was cheap, managed to run up a nice bill thanks to the variety of food I ordered.

I walk back to my room, only to realize I had to walk back to do some shopping for a few items I needed - shampoo and body wash (I didn't like the soap provided by the airBnB), hair ties (forgotten) and an extension chord.

Originally, I had planned on going to one of the markets, but today I wasn't into cabbing to the other side or town to safe a few bucks that would probably be less than the cab ride. And I was close to a mall, and I hadn't ever been to a Thai mall before. So...

The mall was four stories up and one down. One floor was dedicated to electronics. The top floor was a movie theater. In the court in the middle was one of the nicest children's playgrounds I'd ever seen.

I kept hearing a lot of screaming and applause, which I followed to find there were auditions going on for Thai Star Search. There were hundreds of teens, all dressed up, some in traditional costumes, some in gowns, some were in groups. The talent was variable, and I was puzzled if this was some junior version - all the performers seemed to be high-school age.

So my interest wasn't held for long.

While I was there, I visited a few interesting shops - a hi-fi store, a music store with an interesting selection of guitars, basses and amps. A few American names, but I think there were actually a lot of counterfeits.

The Thai retail mall concept is interesting as well. The sellers are, for the most part, dedicated to one specific type of goods. I found my hair ties at a shop thatI was led to by a worker in a drug store nearby - who led me out of the store to her. like the friendliness and service. I couldn't find a hardware store for the extension cord, but at one of the customer service counters, they knew which store had some - a Tops, that had a household section including light bulbs and a few bathroom fixtures.

As I was walking back from the mall, David messaged me a song list, asking if I could cover these - which I easily could. He said he had a gig for me that night if I was interested. He had played with this group previously, but couldn't - he had a better gig that night. He said he would lend me a bass for it.

Of course, I said yes.

And so, later that evening, after my first meh meal ever in Chiang Mai, I got to David's. Well, specifically, I got to Miguel's Restaurant, because the tuk-tuk driver couldn't find his place, and I knew that David always said to meet him at Miguel's - the nearest landmark to his place and a number of clubs and restaurants I frequented last year.

And so I found myself, a half hour or so later, behind David's girlfriend Mai, scootering to the club with a bass on my back. It has been forty-five years, at least, since I rode bitch on any kind of bike, and it was... thrilling. Not nearly as scary as I'd anticipated.

It turned out, the band is Trevor's, the owner of Annie's Guest House and Bar. He sings and has a band to back him up. I couldn't place his English accent - he laughed telling me East London. Trainspotting (Guy Ritchie) territory, I didn't mention.

As the other members arrived, I got a definite sense of wariness of the new guy. Would I be up to the gig? They hadn't met me before, so, to them, it was an unknown. I did my best to set them at ease, but it wasn't going to happen until I proved myself playing.

Which happened pretty fast. Wanting to test my mettle, the main guitarist asked me to pick out a song we could do instrumentally to open the show. I suggested 'The Thrill Is Gone' we agreed to play it in the standard B-minor key, and, when the audience loved it, the night was all smiles from then on.

At the end of the gig, Trevor came to say to me, I can pay you with money or a drink. Without hesitation I replied, firmly, "Pay me both. Please."

That cracked everybody up. But he did. Miniscule money - about eleven dollars - but great in that I expected to always play for free, and it covered my tuk-tuk and my extension cord.

I spent the next half hour in the nearby Sunday Walking Street Night Market, and that was, as always (I went three times last trip), but it was late and basically over. Amazingly, even as it shut down, there was still plenty to see and eat. I wasn't really that hungry, but bought a small bag of crisp-fried crickets for about fifty cents. It was better than the last time I ate crickets (at an ice cream store in LA, that's another story), this time mostly like eating a savory crisp rice cracker).

And then, a long struggle to get a cab later, I was on my way back to my room.

Happy and grateful, I was expecting, and actually got, a good night's sleep.

Food Comment