Post 3345
- 14 years and 12 days since I started this blog -
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 14 years ago I started this blog as a food journal. I had a Type-2 Diabetes diagnosis, and needed to lose weight. Initially, that's all I did here: Journal my food intake and my weight. It contributed to a loss of 20+% of my body weight in 6 months, and continuing has kept me on track since. I started adding commentary after a while, but recently it has returned to a food journal only.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). I write about my experiences, and use it as a photo dump. And that's where we find ourselves now.
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Random musings: I realized recently that in all my visits to Chiang Mai I have never heard of a male masseur. It seems to be a closed shop for women only. The clientele are universal, of course. for more than two weeks, now. For the first two weeks, my daytime activities were somewhat limited by a knee injury and the weather, which was about 10ยบ hotter than I've previously experienced here, that, when walking, feels hotter than the upper 80s it has reached every day.
I was walking back to my room after breakfast, and had an encounter with a middle-aged Thai man on the street. As I passed him, he asked, "How many months?" I was intrigued, and said, "Only one week." He patted my full stomach and said, "No, 'til baby!" I had to laugh. It's a fact that you can easily tell when I've just eaten - the swallowed basketball effect. We ended up chatting for a while. When he found out I was from New York (everybody assumes when I say I'm from New York, I mean New York City. They are, of course correct), I found out he had visited the city forty years ago, part of a Thai boxing exhibition. I asked him how he liked New York. His eyes lit up: "I saw a Ricky Martin concert!"
A lot of my friends here are under the weather. A lot. But they are all suffering from different things: pneumonia, flu, covid, common cold, stomach distress. It has affected my music schedule.
Last week I got all upset for a few hours in response to hearing that Troubadour, one of my favorite hangs in Chiang Mai, had been ordered to stop live music. I mean, I started doom-tripping, and got myself all worked up about it: I was sad and angry (outraged!). But when that happens, I do exercises for letting go of the unproductive (and largely self-generated) emotions. So, when I stopped by to have a drink and commiserate with Sebastien, the owner, I found instead a full house watching a performance by my friends Jojo and Ron, aka Sensitive Side.
It turns out, the whole story was that some 'neighbors' (unknown) had made noise complaints. There would be no bands for a while. But it's Chiang Mai. This week the new schedule went up, and lo and behold, my favorite bands are back playing at Troubadour.
Another weird encounter, this time with a cab driver. After an unusually prompt pickup and quick easy trip, as I prepared to leave, the cabbie said, in clear English, "Please make sure you take everything with you." Over the last seven years I've spent more than eight months in Chiang Mai. In that time, I have in fact, left things in cabs: my phone, an umbrella, even my wallet, when it fell out of my pocket, once. It's happened more often in Cuenca. But, in all that time, In all that time, nobody has ever made this suggestion at a time it was useful. I had to ask, "Did I drop something?" "Please check, he replied.
It's like he knew me. (I did check, and had not left anything).
Across the street from where I'm staying, there's a cat bar, one of a few I've seen in Chiang Mai. No, not a place for cats to drink, you pay about $3 an hour to hang out in a bar with a roomful of house cats. I haven't checked it out and probably won't, but a couple of days ago met someone who had, and she loved the experience. My encounters with cats here (people bring their cats to work, they are tolerated in restaurants) have convinced me that Thai cats are 'way more chill than American cats. They are unafraid and affectionate without reserve. I'm sure there are cats like that in the US. I just haven't met them in this lifetime.
Butter Is Better Diner and Bakery, a New York City-style deli, is one of my favorite restaurants, and I've been talking about it since my friend Harry (RIP) took me there on my first visit to Chiang Mai. Today, I got my usual pastrami and eggs. I was ready to dig in, but no silverware on the table. I called the waitress over and asked her for some silverware. Ollie, sitting next to me, thought I asked for cebolla (Spanish for onion), and he and the Thai waitress looked at me in bewilderment. I repeated my request, with appropriate pantomime of knife-and-fork work.
The waitress laughedt and pointed at my plate, where a knife and fork were indeed sitting there wrapped in a napkin. I corrected Ollie about what I was asking for, and we thought it was a) kind of typical for me; and 2) hilarious.
In less than three days, I begin my trip to Cuenca, Ecuador. When I booked the flights, it was six flights, but a cancellation and rebooking added a flight, and six hours to my total flight time. I will arrive in Cuenca 48 hours after my first flight lifts off from Chiang Mai, although only one day/date will have elapsed since I cross the International Date Line (the other way, subtracting 24 hours from the 'clock'). Basically, thirty hours in the air, eighteen hours of layover. I'm packing some very strong edibles.
On to the photos:
People (in this case, just me) Pics
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| At my fave dispensary, 64Buds (which was medical before it had to be), I got to help sort and assess some new product. My idea of fun. |
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| UN Irish has been one of my go-to breakfast places from the beginning, but I haven't really gotten any pics there, until now. |
Wandering
Lots of Buddhist temple (wot) shots, from new-to-me wots, the result of going on longer walks, earlier.
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| This is one of my favorite Thai restaurants, Dash. Besides being the place I met one of my Thai musician friends, who's been doing solo guitar-and-vocals there since before my first visit seven years ago, and serving above-average Thai food, and being very popular, it's really pretty at night. |
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Food
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| From Kati Breakfast and Brunch, Overnight oats, the new winner and oatmeal champion of the world (except for my own homemade). With a side of the most perfect scrambled eggs I've ever been served - and consistently - this is my new favorite breakfast in Chiang Mai. |
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| Another favorite breakfast, and another repeat, is the green shakshuka (with falafel) from Hummus Chiang Mai. This is not really a shakshuka - they have a great classic shakshuka - it just has a kind of similar form. Nonetheless, it is just amazing, and completely unique to Hummus. It wasn't on the menu in previous years, so represents another new find this trip. |
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| From Alice's Kitchen, Chiang Mai-Thai classics: Papaya salad, tom kha (chicken) and fried rice, with iced green coconut tea. |
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