#2976, Monday, December 26, 2022: Quick Chiang Mai update

Post 2976

- 12 years and 360 days since I started this blog -

Journal

(written Dec 26, 2022)

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 12 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 food shots when I've eaten something interesting or pretty. And that's where we find ourselves now.

Time is flying by. A good time, for certain. I have a week left in Chiang Mai now. I'm already feeling a little wistful.

I mentioned in a previous post that the Monday night jam at Boy Blues Bar was my introduction to the Chiang Mai music scene. Sadly, the eponymous Boy has cancer, and has been in hospital out of town for the entire time I've been here. So very sad.

But he is coming back to Chiang Mai, and we'll be celebrating New Year's Eve at Boy's Blues Bar, and I will be house bassist for the jam and a band performance with some of my old expat and Thai musician friends.

I am so grateful for that opportunity.

I notice that I have been taking far fewer pictures this trip. Mostly it's because I haven't been going to too many new places. This is my fifth time in Chiang Mai. I've taken hundreds of pics on previous visit. This time? Dozens. And many are only of personal interest.

There is, however a new decoration on the moat, preparing for New Year's Eve.

Prepping for New Year's Eve on the moat looking towards the Tae Phae Gate, which is where the Sunday Walking Street Market begins, and very close to my guest house.This decoration is not the finished product. There's more being built close to the Tae Phae Gate (itself already a tourist - both Thai and falang - picture spot). I will keep updating the pics.

Speaking of the Sunday Walking Street Market, I decided to eat late breakfast there (See Food Log, below). Shuffling along in the crowds, I stopped to throw some Bhat towards the "Elder Musicians" who have been part of this market forever, and who have entertained me for years, on every past visit. There are others I have enjoyed, but these folks have two attractive things: A bass player (lower left), and a lead player who makes great rock'n'roll stank faces. Plus the music is just great. Fascinating. I stop and listen for a while every time.

A poor attempt to capture the feeling of the crowd at the Walking Street Market. It's amazing to me: The street is closed off at 4pm, the Market officially opens at 5pm. And the enormous cross-section of streets that participate in the Market are immediately crowded. Disney World waiting for the Space Mountain ride crowded. Stop-and-shuffle progress crowded. And, 80% Thai. Although a major tourist attraction, the Sunday Market is definitely geared to the local citizenry.

Another example of me not taking pictures (when I really should have been) was my attending a Christmas Eve party given by Ollie and Lulu. Some of my Thai friends and all of my expat friends were there. I played quite a bit, and saw a few people I hadn't seen since my last time here. I got to play with some old friends that I hadn't had a chance to play with this trip, as well as some brand new friends.

I live for that.

But I didn't take a single picture. Too busy playing, eating, smoking, talking and just having fun.

Luckily someone else - I don't know the photographer, it wasn't mentioned by the poster - got a couple of pics and put them on Facebook, where I could edit them, and steal them for your enjoyment here.

Making music at Oliver and Lulu's Annual Christmas Eve party. What a blast!

I kind of buried the lede there. Ollie's Christmas Eve potluck was a highlight of this trip. 

I've posted a few pictures of this wot - the closest one to the guest house I'm staying in. I walk past it several times a day - but this particular shot caught my eye as I passed one day during the 'Golden hour' (just before sunset), when the light is very warm, and the wot's night lighting had just come on.

Food Comment

Bhodi Tree Cafe's mushroom burger was really special. No, it didn't taste like a hamburger, but it was delicious in its own right, and the sauce on the burger, as well as the turmeric aioli on the side were both killer. And, I do appreciate the beautiful presentation.

I laid back big-time Christmas Day, only emerging, at 5pm, for a really, really late breakfast. I decided to 'forage' at the Sunday Night Walking Street Market, along with what seemed like the entire population of Chiang Mai (meaning, it was crowded, as always, although it seemed to me to be worse than usual - possibly due to it happening on Christmas, which means little to most Thai folks, but seems to have a similar commercial impact as the West. Go figure). I decided to make this food cart my first stop - that's my Thai omelet with rice in the lower left corner.

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