Chiang Mai

Piercing blue eyes of expatriates everywhere amble down the dirty side streets. Foreigners here, foreign to there places of birth. Yet Thailand is the one place that makes everybody feel at home. Friendly loving people have been welcoming the tourist and expats for decades and it shows. Travellers can find nearly every convenience imaginable, whether it be a late night snack from the 7-Eleven just around the corner, a tasty cheesebuger from one of the American run joints, or their morning cup of joe from Starbucks. While many people (including myself) find these corporate invasions to be unsightly and depressing, a large mass of white skin tourist can always be found lingering inside such establishments (including myself). I love it here. There is no end to what one can do and the prices are all too reasonable, however inflated prices can be found in more places here then in either Viet Nam or Laos. While an hour long massage cost less then three US dollars the price of a beer at a popular night spot can cost up to four. The live music scene in Chiang Mai is wonderful. Incredibly talented musicians bearing the most amazing smiles of joy and jubilation strum the blues like BB King on a low bar stage next to unfortunately dressed expats sporting socks with their sandals and blowing hard into shiny harmonicas. This city is alive but hardly in your face, which makes it one of the most attactive places I have visited on the entire trip. Sadly I have to leave tomorrow for Bankok, a place (so I have heard) that is dreadfully crowded and contains the pushy in your face locals peddling anything from a tuk tuk ride to prostitution. I will be joining two of my good friends though, Evan Huggins and Nick Runkle, so I carry very few doubts about not enjoying myself. I have come to discover that the most important thing in this world are the people who you are surrounded by, and in Thailand nearly everyone is on vacation or greatly benefitting from those who are and it just so happens that people on vacation are some of the happiest people in the world. This population makes it easy to enjoy Thailand because there is harldy an unhappy face in the crowd. I should note here that my Thailand experience is limited only to Chiang Mai and a few mountain vilages I visited on my first organized group tour so I am premature in passing judgement. In any case I am alive and well, enjoying every possible moment and thinking of Dean Moriarty all the while. Man would he have digged Thailand. NTC

Cup of Holiday Cheer

Thailand. Each of the southeast Asian countries are drastically different from each other, Thailand might be the strangest of them all. First world icons scatter the streets giving the place a developed and advanced feeling, but the culture and prices are still trapped in the third world. Perry and I crossed the border into Thailand yesterday without any trouble, in fact the just waved us through on the Thai side without even stamping our passports. After several hours of bombing down the modern divided highway we were still ages away from our goal, Chaing Mai. I had had enough of the highway drive and was not looking forward to another 10+ hours the next day so with after prodding Perry into springing for an overnight bus we loaded Ramos and Meigal onto a rather ancient looking Mercedes bus and tried to make ourselves comfortable for the 11hr ride. The bus was frigid and my knees were buckled under the seat, comfort was not an option. I popped the remaining half of a sleeping pill I had been carrying for this exact purpose and managed to get a couple hours of back aching sleep. Perry was less fortunate. By the end of the ride we had found some blankets in the overhead rack and huddled together, not in an act of man love but as a means of survival. At 5am are bus pulled into the Chaing Mai station and we unloaded our bikes into darkness. We were delirious, or still are delirious, and spent several minutes considering our options. We didn't really have any however and walked our bikes to the 7-Eleven for a cup of coffee and a packaged and processed pastry. In our daze we managed to get directions to the center of town, which we decided was our best option. A few minutes later we were staring at the familiar sign of corporate America, a three story Starbucks right on the corner of the main town square. Despite the stamp of corporate America, Chaing Mai has struck me as a very charming and inviting town. Perry wandered into the square and fell asleep in his sleeping bag while I wandered into the familiar decor of the corner Starbucks and swallowed my pride and my budget. I sat down in one of the purple overstuffed chairs with gold spiral pattern and sunk into the terrible holiday covers blasting from the speakers in the corner. I am ragged, wild eyed, and my fingers are perpetually tinged black from oil and grease, but with my overpriced coffee and horrendous holiday tunes all is right in the world and for the first time I realized it is actually the holiday season. NTC

Trouble in Laos

I realize it has been ages since my last post and will most likely be another several weeks for a follow up for this one. I am in Laos now. Perry and I met back up in Hue (Viet Nam) before trekking through several hours of rain and across the Laos border. What is most surprising is how drastically different Laos is from Viet Nam even though they are so close together. Viet Nam is aggressive, loud, and overrun with traffic. Laos is calm and friendly with hardly any traffic on the road, an ideal place to explore by motorbike. We crossed the border without any hitches and continued into Laos just as the sun began to break through the clouds. Things were looking up, I liked Laos already and I hadn't been here more then fifteen minutes. We roared down the countryside road seeing far more goats and pigs then other vehicles. I liked Laos even more. Then just 20k outside of Savannakhet Ramos ran out of gas. I switched to the reserve tank and began heading back to the nearest gas station. Less then 2k down the road Ramos again came to a halting stop, this time the loss of power was preceded by the most terrible noise in the biking world. His engine had seized. Ramos had a heart attack. I tried not to let the feeling of despair sink in, instead Perry towed me back to the closest town and I rolled Ramos into a mechanic. He took one look at the top of the seized piston, laughed, and then motioned for us to take it into Savannakhet. It was growing dark and flagging down a flatbed truck was proving difficult. Finally a white truck pulled up and the girl in the passenger seat rolled down the window and spoke english to us. I was shocked by her ability to communicate in our language that the question she asked us didn't register immediately. "Are you Christian?" I paused, Perry answered, "Yes." It was the right answer, because the next thing we knew was that our Christian sister was ordering her Christian brother to help me load the bike onto the truck. Ramos and I had a ride, I was thankful. Little did I know I was going to be forced to defend my claim for the entire ride into Savannakhet. Somehow, but not without difficulty, I managed and they took us all the way in and right to the door of a mechanic. They discussed the price for me and after a few minutes told me that it was expensive, fifty dollars was the price quote. I ridiculous sum for a country like Laos, but after all Ramos did need an entirely new heart so I agreed. Then our Christian brothers and sisters dropped us at a guesthouse where we collapsed after the full days adventure. The next morning I went straight over to the mechanics, he said he couldn't do it, I began to panic. What now? We spent all morning searching for a mechanic who would take the job without success. Defeated we went back to our guesthouse where the owner, a very nice man who speaks some english, decided to help us solve the problem. Within the hour he had one of his mechanic friends willing to take on the project. I was relieved but still a bit sceptical. Well it took two days but Ramos breathes again. However the new piston is fragile and it will take some time to break it in, but the ride will continue. Tomorrow we set off for Vientiane. NTC