Post 2222
- 8 years and 44 days since I started this blog -
(written 2/13/19)
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.
I'm in my last days here. I have only five more full days here before my morning flight to Taipei, and then New York. I've been having an extraordinarily good time. I've made new friends and gotten closer to the friends I made last year.
I've played almost every day since I first got here, and I've played gigs - in fact, since I started my last week, I've gotten a lot of 'we wish you weren't going' correspondence from musicians I've played with.
I am eating so well, that, as opposed to last year (and earlier in Lisbon), I have gained weight (it shows). I have discovered many new favorite dishes. I am spending more money on food, to be sure, but I am eating a much greater variety of foods, often of higher quality.
But I'm not the only one leaving. Many in my circle of friends are planning on getting out of town in the next week, or two, or three. A number have already left.
And weather is the reason.
Chiang Mai is in a valley in the foothills of Northern Thailand. It is surrounded by mountains and farms. As is traditional with many farm communities, every year after harvest the crops are burned. My research says this happens at the start of the hot season, which lasts for three months. This drives up the pollution in the enclosed valley to unacceptable levels, accompanied by very high temperatures.
The plan was always, if I chose Chiang Mai to live, to get a place for the year and go back to the US to visit friends and family for the 3 hot, polluted months. Chiang Mai's very low cost of living makes this possible, even desirable.
In fact, most of my expat friends here do something like this, except, by and large, stay in Thailand, going further North and to higher elevations, or spending those three months at Thailand's (or the other surrounding southeast Asian countries') Southern beaches.
But it turns out that many of my friends spend less time in Thailand than I'd thought, because after the hot burning season comes the hot, wet season, characterized by frequent flooding of the streets, and steamroom environments between storms.
It turns out a majority of my expat friends here are 6-month residents. Nobody was surprised I was leaving (or that anyone else was leaving). It's what happens at this time of year.
This snowbird-like migratory pattern among expats is an indicator, and it makes Thailand slightly more attractive as a place to visit than to live for me at this point (do I have to qualify that statement to include that no final decision has been made? Done!).
It doesn't eliminate it or immediately cross it off my list, but if it looks like Chiang Mai is not going to be the only place I live for a year, if I'm not going to maintain a year-round residence here (which I would if I were here nine months out of the year), my life will be more difficult. Certainly not impossibly more difficult, and probably worth it, but it means that the search for my future residence must continue, possibly with a new criteria: Easy flights to Chiang Mai.
However, it is likely that I will relegate Thailand to an annual visit, as I've done this year and last, maintaining my residence somewhere else. I'm not ready to let go.
So, there's that.
Meanwhile, my day-to-day experience here continues to include exciting new discoveries, surrounded by a very comfortable, slightly routine living routine.
I have been tapped to play multiple shows/gigs, as well as being given more playing time at the open mics I go to. I no longer have to buy my drinks at Boy Blues Bar, where last night I was making my last visit there of this trip.
In fact, yesterday was a really interesting day for me.
Until yesterday, I had never experienced bad weather here. No rain, no uncomfortably hot temperatures, no days of noticeably bad pollution during my seven weeks here last year and this.
Yesterday, I had one of the few active morning days in my travels, because I had to get my laundry to the lady who does it by ten. So, I was up and out a couple hours earlier than usual. It came as a shock to me to wake to an overcast Chiang Mai, with a temperature of almost 30º C (mid 80s).
After dropping off my laundry (just a few steps from my airBnB), I went back to my room and turned on the air conditioning.
I had an appointment to have lunch with Harry (who I met last year, but really only got to know this year - such a smart and interesting man!) at Butter is Better, a restaurant that was an American-style diner, containing a bakery and a Jewish deli. The owner was a chef in the US, and this place makes their own corned beef and pastrami and bakes their own rye bread.
On the way there, the cab driver, with limited English, cautioned me that the pollution was very bad - complete with a charades-driven directive to wear a face mask when I was out and about in the "bad air"!
Harry was already there when I arrived, and that's when I got the weather lowdown that, somehow, I'd missed in all the preceding time I'd spent in Thailand, as well as the new information that many of the expats I knew who called Chiang Mai home were actually six-month residents, with some actually only here for the winter.
But the restaurant is a trip. Decorated in diner/malt shop/candy store/deli chic, with 45s and album covers from the fifties and sixties on the walls (some good stuff, too) and comic book pages under glass on the tables, with lots of fifties artifacts around (and a room dedicated to Fred McMurray), everything about this place screamed 'you're home' to me.
The pastrami was excellent. Since I'd heard about this place, I'd decided on what I was going to have there (without the benefit of a whole menu to guide me) and I was thrilled to see my pastrami and eggs choice as a menu item.
It was glorious. The rye bread was great as well. I haven't had good rye bread for months.
After eating that, I walk to the dessert counter, and decide on the carrot cake, which looks perfect. And, it is.
I go back after for a little smoke and nap, then I have an early evening rehearsal for a gig on Wednesday.
Afterwards, a farewell dinner party for Joyce (Jo), an Australian singer who lives in Chiang Mai who I'd met and backed up some last year, and who I played gigs with this year. She was going back to Melbourne for the 'smokey season'. Some of my favorite people were there, and pitchers of margaritas were uninterrupted.
And it turned out the farewell party wasn't just for her, but two other friends in the group were getting out of town - not going 'home', but not staying in Chiang Mai.
Once you know something, you see your evidence and proof of it everywhere you look - confirmation bias. Hit me hard, in my drunken state, last night.
Drunk and happy, I caught a ride on the back of a bike driven by a Dutch woman (Corinka) to play a final set at North Gate Jazz Co-op, backing Jo one more time.
I get all hot and sweaty on the bandstand, and take a cab home, even though I've always walked home this year.
I make a drunk call to a friend, talking about this revelation, my good night, and minutes after I hang up, I'm asleep. I slumber peacefully, because even with some of the negatives of the day, the highlights, being great food, good company, snf getting hours of playing time in, all inspire gratitude.
Food Comment
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| Mushrooms and brown rice from Goodsouls Kitchen. |
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| Pastrami and eggs with rye toast from Butter Is Better. |
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| Butter Is Better's carrot cake. |
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| From Tikky Cafe, the amazing Tikky salad. This one has chicken and bacon (perfectly crisped - a first in Chiang Mai) for the protein. I said it last year, and I'll say it again: Best salad I've ever had, and, by far, the most beautiful. |
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