#2218: Monday, January 28: Day-to-day stuff, you know?

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Post 2218
- 8 years and 28 days since I started this blog -

  

Harry's pic of me, post-processed.

Journal
(written 1/28/19)

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.

As I have stated, I haven't come to Chiang Mai (twice) as a tourist, even if, technically, that's what I am. This is my toe-in-the-water, checking out how my life would be if I lived here. I do this by... living here, day-to-day.

I don't get too far ahead of myself. It's very much a 'what do I feel like doing today' or 'what do I feel like doing now'kind of thing. It is largely un-planned, and unhurried.

I was walking to breakfast, which was on the other side/outside/northbound traffic side of the moat. (I live by the moat that frames the old city in a nearly perfect square). As I approached the first of two crosswalks, there were two young women who crossed before I got there, and then I had to wait for a hole in the traffic, Frogger-style, for a moment or so.

I caught up with them before long - and I thought to myself, "Why am I walking so fast? What, on this gorgeous, sunny day, am I hurrying to get to?".

And I deliberately slowed my roll. I have the luxury of real leisure, and I wasn't taking advantage of it. This was an impactful insight.

On another day, I walked into the Bird's Nest Cafe for my first meal of the day, and saw a young woman wearing a Boy Blues Bar T-shirt identical to the one I have on. She is alone at her table, actively engaged with her phone. As I pass her on my way to the terrace, I say, "I like your shirt." (I know, ever-suave).

She automatically replies, "Thank you." Then she looks up, "No way!" and laughs. After I've eaten, on my way to order another Americano, I ask her if she's going back. She explains that she's headed south in a few days. I say, "I mean, back to Boy's," laughing, and we spend the rest of the afternoon in conversation. There's a nominal amount of self-disclosure, she helps me with some new features on Instagram, and also my iPhone, an exchange of good near-by places to go, a selfie. She leaves open the possibility that she will come to hear me play, but no commitment. I never see her again.

This is the day-to-day. This is cafe society. You have time to take it slow. You can stop and have a conversation with a stranger. you can engage in and savor your life.

It doesn't require travel. Of course, my circumstances are just that: my circumstances. I am lucky. I am privileged. No matter how I got to this place, I never forget how lucky I am, how little my life prepared me for my good fortune at this 'Third Stage'. What I am comfortable doing has nothing to do with what other people are comfortable with. What works for me is difficult, if not impossible, to generalize.

I am an optimist. I have assessed my life and found that every negative thing that has happened to me has led me to a more positive place, right up to that moving target, Now.

I am not without pain. I have not totally freed myself from want. I have learned to live with and accept that not everything is know-able, that I don't need all the answers. I have doubts, and I've learned to be happy even when they're unresolved.

As best I'm able, I have no expectations, or, more typically few and low expectations. I forgive myself when I fuck up.

And, once I settle in, which I feel like I have here, there are few differences between being in Chiang Mai and Syracuse. The novelty isn't in what I am doing, but that the place I'm doing them in is so exotic. And that I eat every meal in a restaurant - at home, I average less than two restaurant meals a week.

In the main, though, eating, sleeping going out and seeing people and making music - that's just what I do.

Disruptions of the day-to-day generally involve events: birthdays, weddings, reunions, shows. A lot of these involve traveling to other places, and that is something I've never been reluctant to do.

Chiang Mai doesn't seem like an event to me. The only schedule I'm beholden to involves airlines (flight in, flight out), and playing opportunities, which are not mandatory.

So here are some other things that happened the last few days - mostly same old, same old, except:.

I found a pretty little restaurant, Fern Forest Cafe that I enjoyed being in, but wasn't crazy about the food, or the very American theme. Although, throughout my meal, I had the company of a pretty bird on the seatback opposite me. Anyway, the overall failure of Fern Forest Cafe led me to find a restaurant next door that I really like, Goodsouls. Believe it or not, these two restaurants are my first Chiang Mai experience of restaurants catering to expats. Most restaurants just accommodate expats, not the same thing.

The envfironment at Fern Forest Cafe

My dining companion at Fern Forest Cafe

The overall failure of Fern Forest Cafe led me to find a restaurant right next door to it that I really like, Goodsouls. Believe it or not, these two restaurants are my first Chiang Mai experience of restaurants catering to expats. Most restaurants just accommodate expats, not the same thing.

Goodsouls is an organic vegan restaurant that would be a great restaurant wherever it was located. Having an all-day breakfast menu that includes vegan adaptations of American dishes, but is primarily Thai (ownership and staff, as well) with local-sourced ingredients, and the parts of the menu that I've tasted have incuded a few things that are all-time favorites now, and that are, at least as far as my limited experience informs me, exclusive.

I've been roaming the neighborhood on my way to discovering new places to eat, or walking 'crosstown' to David's neighborhood, something accomplished in under twenty-five minutes.

I've become very taken with two beautiful and uncrowded wots (Buddhist temples). One is practically next door and on the way to almost all the good new local places I've found. The other is only a little farther away, and on the way to these same restaurants, and also on the way to David's.

Wat Pa Prao Nat, right around the corner!

Wat Dab Pai

Wat Dab Pai

There is one irksome problem with where I'm staying. I cannot get a cab or hail a tuk-tuk at my current location. The Grab-taxi cab-hailing app, which replaced Uber, has really been a letdown. I don't know the underlying reason, but I can almost never find cabs available to pick me up from the vicinity of where I'm staying. And, also for reasons I don't get, available tuk-tuks are scarce. I've waited for one or the other to come get me for upwards of twenty-five minutes - on the great majority of occasions now, so now I have to leave a half-hour earlier to get to any place on time.

But I digress. Sadly (because I actually based my airBnB search around its location), Tikky Cafe has become so popular that after the first time (right before closing) that I ate there, the wait to get in, and the pressure to turn over tables so great they preclude leisurely hanging out, writing, which is what I loved to do last year, that I haven't gotten to eat there a second time, yet.

The Bird's Nest and Goodsouls have replaced Tikky. The former, clearly not as good, food-wise, is still very, very good. In a different way, Goodsouls is every bit as good a place to eat and hang out, though. Both are more expensive, Goodsouls being much more so. I think all Thai restaurants over-deliver for the price, whatever it is, though. Still, I find myself dropping what last year would have bough all my meals for the day in one stop at Goodsouls. Still cheap. And Goodsouls has the best coffee I've ever had in Thailand.
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I had a couple of wonderful encounters. First, I was hanging out with David, and Daniel came over. Daniel is a guitarist I met on last year's visit. He and David have been in a band together, one specializing in Daniel's passion: Gypsy guitar. Daniel is a great guy and an amazing guitarist. When Jean Marc, a world-class and, I guess 'famous' gypsy guitarist came to an open mic on my first day in Thailand, he and Daniel played spectacularly together, and I was beyond thrilled to be present for that event, which was so purely chance and luck.

I ended up having some one-on-one time with Daniel and a couple of guitars. I got a free guitar lesson. Henceforth, although I will still suck, I will suck a little less. Actually, I am going t5o have to spend time in the shed on everything he taught me to be able to use any of it, but I feel just playing along with him, and the knowledge he communicated not directly related to showing me new chords will enhance me going forward.

I'm really grateful for Daniel's generosity (and tenacity in believing I can do better with him).

The next night, I had dinner with another friend I met in Chiang Mai last year. I hadn't really known that much about Harry, other than that he seemed like a nice guy from the first time I met him, he was a long-time friend of one of my favorite new friends I made on last year's trip, and he was a good guitarist.

We met at a Mexican restaurant around the corner from David's, I ordered a pitcher of margaritas. We decided to order two burritos and trade halves. And started talking. The conversation went wide and deep. There were a lot of laughs. I was certainly alcoholically well-lubricated. Harry is a really interesting guy, an adventurer, a musician, a curator of antiquities, an entrepreneur. I had a great time over the four hours we hung out. Harry took a picture.

Harry's pic of me, unprocessed.

Next up I had a gig at the Cha Cha Bar, being house bass at an open mic. This is a fun place out by the airport. I had breakfast in two parts, at Goodsouls before my walk to David's, and at The Hideout, after it - the Hideout is right around the corner from David's place. David was loaning me a bass for that gig, and I had to pick it up there, and I allowed enough time for my walk and breakfasts, as well.

My role in the open mic ended up not being what I expected, in that none of the acts that played beyond the ones I had arranged for when I got the gig needed a bass player. On the other hand, I got t5o play with long-lost friend Jubal. who was the very first musician I spoke 5o in Chiang Mai - and then, due to his schedule and circumstances, never saw again - until today. Jubal is an excellent drummer, one of the best I played with in Chiang Mai.

Still, I maxed out the fun on those two sets, and then got to sit in with Daniel and John at the very end. Did I have fun? If you have to ask, you don't know me.

I had drunk and eaten my pay, and I needed to go home and rest. For once, Grab provided a cab, and fairly quickly, too (after only two tries). I got back t6o my airBnB and took a nap.

I wake up with the options of an open mic and a gypsy band concert with Daniel, David and Jubal. Of course, I elect to try and do both.

After another long and frustrating wait for Grab, I finally find a tuk-tuk to deliver me to the open mic. I don't see much going on there, and make the ten-minute walk, in a vibrant, colorful part of Chiang Mai I know about but never been before, to El Patio.

El Patio is a Spanish wine bar/restaurant, whose restaurant business closes before the music starts. Not coincidentally, I think, it is the first place recommended to me by the woman in the Goy Blues Bar T-shirt I met at the Bird's Nest a few days ago.

The owner is a fun, affable Brit, who makes me feel immediately at home. The music is great! In addition to my friends, there's acquaintance John (from the set I did with Daniel earlier that afternoon) on guitar, and a clarinet player whose name I never got, but whose addition added a nice layer of warm instrumental variety to what is otherwise a guitar band. What a wonderful night it was. Great to hang with and appreciate friends. I got to play bass for a few songs (another lesson from Daniel) and totally exhausted myself.

Daniel's Gypsy Jazz Band (l-r): Unknown clarinetist, Charlie, Jubal, Daniel, David.

Charlie gives me a ride home. He is the only person I know in Chiang Mai who has a car. 

When I get to my room, sleep comes quickly. I have a lot to be grateful for.

Food Comment

American breakfast at Fern Forest Cafe: French toast, bacon, scrambled eggs, salad, mixed berries smoothie.

Papaya salad, seafood rice at Tikky Cafe. So far, still my favorite papaya salad in Chiang Mai.

Breakfast Noodle Soup, in a bowl as big as my head, at Goodsouls.

Vegetarian sandwich (with cheese and avocado) on (fresh) baguette with a mango-pineapple smoothie, at the Hideout.

At Goodsouls: Beetburger (beets and chick peas and spices) - this was so good! The cup top right used to have Golden Tea, a mix of turmeric tea, ginger, cinnamon, coconut and herbs and spices - which I love at this place, and can't find anywhere else (although that may be entirely on me).

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