Travel with Indigo

I flew on Royal Thai Air, my first ever alcohol-free flight (their rule, not mine), and can’t really recommend it. Just where this daffy idea of jetting about a country without proper fortification came from I can’t say but it needs to be quashed at once. Most likely it came from those pesky Buddhist monks. I mean celibacy is one thing, okay, but to foreswear the restorative effects of fine wine is just not in keeping with the best interests of the cosmic order. It is well known among the most cultivated of men that nothing smooths the rough edges of crowded transportation more than a small nip or a glass or two of a fine wine. This inexplicable tilt in the unhealthful direction of abstemiousness is the one flaw I’ve found in Thailand and I intend to correspond with my Buddhist acquaintances on the matter.

Flying all too soberly from Phuket, I changed planes in Bangkok and traveled on to the northern city of Chiang Mai (pop. 200,000). My guidebook describes it as a “lively mountain city filled with ancient temples, modern chic and loads of culture classes,” that last part not especially inspiring. It has more than 300 Buddhist temples, far more than any U.S. city of comparable size would have churches. Very little in life is more certain than the fact that any place with one temple for every seven people is not a place in which the baser spirits are apt to run loose. An inquisitive mind then is set buzzing when it discovers that alongside this dismaying surplus of temples sits Chiang Mai University packed with 20,000 students who, if they are anything like their U.S. counterparts, are resolutely devoted to the loose running of baser spirits.

Just outside the city is a Four Seasons resort hotel where I stayed two nights. Set along the perimeter of a working rice farm thirty minutes from town, the hotel is a large, tastefully designed, rambling affair with superb rooms each with an outdoor seating area looking over densely landscaped grounds and flowing creeks and of course rice paddies. If I were to return to Chiang Mai, as I would very much like to do, I would instead stay in town closer to the sights and sounds and loose running baser spirits of the city. Not to take anything away from the Four Seasons, but lying about gazing upon lethargic water buffalo plowing rice paddies was just a bit bucolic for my tastes.

The most memorable of my few experiences in the city was a pleasurable stroll through its vibrant night bazaar. Each evening a part of the central city is closed to traffic and along these streets hundreds of stalls are erected, which when stocked offer the consumer an astounding array of stuff. There is hardly anything legal that cannot be bought here. It’s a popular place for the Thai hill tribes (about whom more in due course) to peddle their handicrafts, for artists to sell their works, and for street entertainers to perform in front of an enthusiastic audience. There are stalls offering the traditional Thai foot massage and lines of push carts from which street food vendors dish up aromatic local favorites. It’s about as bustling a thoroughfare of commerce as there is anywhere.

If it had offered in the great tradition of America’s county fairs a Thai version of the bearded fat lady or maybe Toad Man, I would be able to report to you that I had visited a bizarre bazaar, something that from somewhere deep within I have always wanted to write. But my therapist suggested strongly against it.

I rented a comfortable SUV and with maps paper and electronic headed next day some two hundred miles or so down the road to Chiang Rai. Unlike the aircraft of Royal Thai Air, my vehicle was properly equipped with essential social amenities. A small and tastefully designed cooler bag full of iced down Thai beer sat within easy reach.

Primary roads in Thailand are uniformly excellent and well signed both in Thai and English. Outside of chaotic Bangkok, drivers are mindful of the speed limits, a bit too mindful if you ask me. Here and there are police checkpoints searching for contraband, drugs, expired licenses, and illegal immigrants from Burma and Laos. Thankfully not on their list was SUV’s littered with empty beer cans.

Scenery along the drive was more arid than I had expected, the habitations less scuffed. Agriculture was devoted to pineapples, melons, and various truck vegetables, these offered up at roadside stands. But for signs in Thai over commercial shops and the like, I could have easily been driving through say central Mississippi.

At Chiang Rai I turned onto a secondary but still nicely paved road to Chiang Saeng, a sleepy town on the Thai side of the Mekong River. Just across the river by ferry was Laos, though if you are Thai you would have to stress your brain to come up with a reason to go there. It would be like living in San Diego and wishing for a trip to Tijuana.

I followed a narrow country road along the bank of the Mekong to a village that for commercial exploitation has adopted for itself the name The Golden Triangle. The term actually encompasses a large area of Burma (now Myanmar), Laos and Thailand that in recent history had a nefarious reputation for being one of the world’s largest producers of opium poppies and the drugs made from them. These are still a major crop in Burma and Laos and are still cultivated in remote areas of northern Thailand. But the Thai Queen and her government have taken enormous and quite successful steps to wean Thai, mostly hill tribe, subsistence farmers off the stuff by introducing alternative crops, job training and rehabilitation clinics. The Thai police have largely chased off or killed the war lords who controlled the trade for so many years. Tourists have now replaced opium as the local industry in the tiny village of The Golden Triangle.

As I was sitting at a bar on Railay Beach a week or so before visiting northern Thailand, a personable fellow came by hawking colorful hats of a sort that might come out late at night at a party that had got into its spirited stage. Lampshades have been overdone in this arena. With the aid of an interpreter he said that he was from one of the hill tribes of the Golden Triangle area and, with the candor of a man who had already done penance for his offenses, confessed that he had formerly raised and sold opium poppies and also had become addicted to the drugs they produced. He said that the Queen had helped him kick the drug habit and helped him and his family learn new trades, which included in his mother’s case the hand sewing of these unique hats done in a zippy style peculiar to the hill tribe of which he and family are members. I of course bought two hats, which were for a short time among my most prized treasures from Thailand.

I say a short time because what the man neglected to mention was that one of his newly acquired skills was the fine art of flim-flam, a skill of sorts at which so far as I could tell he had risen well above the level of journeyman. I learned later that these hats were not hand sewn by his mother as he had sworn and were not in the style of any known hill tribe. Instead, I was disillusioned to discover, they were mass produced in a Chinese factory and sold all over Thailand to unwitting tourists like me. Still, they were particularly handsome hats.

As the bussed-in package tour folks do, I wandered around the waterfront of The Golden Triangle, took photos of a giant statue of Buddha perched on the bank and wandered about the souvenir shops. Quickly growing bored with this, I drove a few more miles along the bank to a tiny road marked only in Thai, turned there and soon found myself on a rutted dirt trail that suggested I might be lost. Just as I was looking for a place to turn around I spotted a small dusty wood sign mounted on a simple pole pointing the way to the Four Seasons Tent Resort. Turning at the sign, now on a seriously potholed pig trail, I continued along a hundred yards or so to the bank of a fast flowing muddy river, the Nam Ruak, where by prior arrangement the welcoming staff of the hotel stood in the bushes waiting to greet me. Nowhere in the world is there an entry into a five-star resort hotel quite as unobtrusive. Right away I knew I’d like this place.

My meager luggage was loaded onto a finely built long-tail boat whose driver, apparently a fan of stock car racing, took me at a bracing speed down river to the resort’s landing dock. From there I hiked up stone steps to the reception where a cool and welcomed drink (Royal Thai Air take note), ice cold face towel and genial greetings awaited. My room was a tent of a sort. Its walls and roof were of a sturdy canvas-like material to be sure, and the flooring, bathroom and furnishings tastefully suitable to the rustic safari motif. But by any measure it was a sumptuous accommodation and a welcomed improvement over the tents I once occupied while serving involuntarily in the U.S. Army. This was my home and base camp for two nights of what would prove to be a remarkable but too brief adventure.

While at the resort I became proficient at riding an elephant. It has a small school staffed by expert mahouts, the term for elephant wranglers, and some twenty animals of varying age and size that are sacrificed to the beginning student. My elephant, a large and thankfully docile creature named Yuki (Japanese for happy), much to my amazement followed the commands I shouted, in Thai no less. These were helpfully printed on a card worn around my neck in case the words didn’t leap to mind. She turned left and right, backed up, and stopped all as I instructed. She also adjusted her stance to three different positions each of which allowed me to climb onto the back of her neck by a different route.

With the elephant as with all animals of the lower orders it’s essential to ingratiate yourself right off, to establish that you mean it no harm but have thought of it always, along with the dog, as among man’s most endearing friends. This is best done by feeding it at close range, which in the case of the pachyderm is a task not to be taken lightly.

As I approached her for the first time, making sure to keep my feet out from under hers, Yuki sniffed me thoroughly seeming to sense my benign intentions and the quality of my after shave. I patted her head and trunk and whispered flattering words in her oversized ears being careful not to say anything about her weight, a subject on which the female elephant is known to be sensitive.

In feeding elephants, you are coached by the resort staff to stand a comfortable distance from its gaping maw, to offer stalks of sugarcane for it to wrest from your grasp with its trunk, and whatever else not to tease it by feigning a game of keep-away. When it comes to food the elephant, and most especially the female elephant, has little humor. From the manner in which Yuki gnawed at the sugarcane there was the suggestion of Bugs Bunny munching the carrots of Elmer Fudd.

After graduating with high honors from the mahout course, an achievement of such distinction that I was presented with a parchment certificate attesting to it, I was ready for the big time. After mounting up in proper form, legs straddling her neck, knees clasped together with feet behind her ears, we set off on a two hour trek through the jungle, our pace best described as stately. Intelligent as beasts go, the elephants of Asia don’t wish to use up their limited supply of energy by darting about unwisely.

In due course we came to the same muddy river I had traveled down the day before on my way to the resort. Kicking her gently behind the right ear, the indication for a left turn, I directed Yuki over the river’s bank and into the cool waters of its flowing stream. This evidently agreed with her, so much so that she just couldn’t bring herself to stop despite my increasingly desperate commands that she do just that. She kept going until her entire body, and nearly mine, was completely submerged. Her head tossed about a bit more exuberantly than I would have preferred and her trunk, now like a submarine’s periscope, rose out of the current as if it were a gray serpent gasping for air. She got her mouth out of the water and did a few of those elephant trumpets very often heard in Tarzan movies but these of a cheerful sort. Soon tiring of her brief swim, she acceded to my wishes and headed for the high ground but not before filling her mouth and trunk with water and expelling it an impressive distance into the air. Yuki was having a ball and so was I.

After cavorting with elephants, I retired to the bar for a small restorative in time to watch the sun set over Thailand’s tightly controlled, closed border with Burma and, just across the Mekong, it’s more laxly monitored border with Laos. In the distance, I could see long-tail boats plying the Mekong and farmers behind ox-drawn plows and, in the foreground, the resort’s livestock grazing in the meadow. Off in the distance dark rain-laden clouds were forming and beginning their march across the landscape. No scenery anywhere could be at once so pastoral and so exotic.

Next day I met up with one of the resort’s tour guides, an amiable, gracious gentleman called Kuhn Tee, a nickname indicating the youngest son from a family of Chinese heritage. About 35-years old, he spoke fluent English, Thai of course, some Laotian, and Burmese. As with Kuhn Nong back in Phuket and so many other cultured Thai Buddhists I had met, Kuhn Tee displayed the serene untroubled air commonly found in men who have recently won the lottery and paid off their creditors. Together we set out on an event filled tour of the local area that though brief was one of the most memorable of my travels.

Our first foray was a speedy ride downstream in the resort’s long-tail boat passing by frowzy Laotian villages, kids frolicking in the turbid river waters, fishermen in dugouts, and freshly plowed fertile fields. In short order we came upon the wide muddy waters of the Mekong River, which is to Southeast Asia what the Mississippi is to the Eastern U. S. Turning north on the Mekong, Kuhn Tee directed the boat driver to a point mid-stream where the borders of Laos, Burma and Thailand meet. Here other long-tails passed by, some filled with local tourists others with farmers transporting crops and almost certainly contraband to market, all apparently oblivious to the convergence here of these national boundaries.

Back on land, we visited the huge and quite modern and I must say impressive Hall of Opium built by the Thai government. It is the world’s leading exhibit and research facility for the study of opiate use. Just about anything a person could want to know about poppies, opium, heroin, drug addiction, drug history and its use is found here in balanced and tasteful displays. If your mind runs in the direction of profitable but unlawful careers, there is a quite detailed exhibit explaining how valuable drugs are produced from these seemingly innocent flowers

Following our river trip, we climbed into a Land Rover and drove to the village of Chiang Saeng, where we transferred to a more suitable tuk-tuk, a three-wheeled, motor powered conveyance with two passenger seats. Aboard this Kuhn Tee and I went to the town’s farmer’s market to gaze upon strange and noisome creatures many of which are more usually encountered floating in formaldehyde in a biology lab. There was a tub filled to overflow with squirming dung beetles and another with recently deceased grub worms. In other tubs were writhing masses of shiny, slippery serpents, which I identified as deadly snakes but he called edible (though most assuredly not by me) freshwater eels. Bloody gobs of offal, lamb brains, pig stomach, and sausage factory floor sweepings added color if not allure. Salad seemed like a good idea for lunch.

Our next stop was one of the many ancient Buddhist temples that dot the area. It seemed a bit dowdy to me, as if fund raising had not gone well of late, but who was I to complain. After all the head monk for the area was there, a buddy of Kuhn Tee who asked if I would like for the monk to administer a blessing of good luck, health and prosperity. Sensing an opportunity, I asked if I could maybe instead be forgiven for past infractions, which I assured him were of the most inconsequential sort. In that way I could start out with a clean slate, so to speak, and just take my chances with luck, health and prosperity. Kuhn Tee replied that no, Buddhist monks differently from Catholic priests don’t erase past misdeeds. Not wishing to seem ungrateful, I knelt before the saffron robed monk, who sprinkled special water on me while chanting his blessings, a bit longwinded I thought but then maybe he figured I could use the extra help. When the chants finally stopped I held out my right wrist around which he tied a little piece of white string with a knot in the middle as a talisman. So far the thing seems to be working okay.

Outside the temple walls were a few stalls from which ladies of several hill tribes were selling their handicrafts. From my experience with the scam artist back in Railay Beach, I knew that some of these are of a doubtful quality, often made in China. There is almost no opprobrium that an artisan may cast upon his competitor’s product more damning than to say that “It’s made in China”.

But from my close examination aided by Kuhn Tee’s knowledgeable eye, it quickly became apparent that the items offered here were of exceptionally high quality and finely made, maybe because they were being sold on temple grounds. The tribeswoman, commenting on a particularly handsome quilt I was admiring, said that it was stitched by hand and took the better part of a year to complete, a claim with which Kuhn Tee agreed. Its stitch work was done in the manner of needlepoint but with finer threads in a wide variety of vibrant colors describing elaborate geometrical patterns peculiar to the Yao tribe. After a round of perfunctory negotiations, I bought the thing for Indigo’s salon where it now resides.

On my final day of adventure in the delightful and learned company of Kuhn Tee, we visited the nearby town of Mae Sai. There we stopped in at a jade factory where the semi-precious stone, mined mostly from the northern reaches of Burma, was cut, shaped and polished into every manner of human decoration. In my uncultivated mind, jade is forever associated with gewgaws, bric-a-brac, and the dust collectors found in the homes of doddering grandmothers. Sold mostly by cheapjacks and oriental souvenir shops, the stuff long ago lost any appeal it might once have had. Still, I had to admire the artistry that goes into some of the more intricately carved pieces.

My next stop with Kuhn Tee turned out to be an entire country. Just over a short narrow bridge from Mae Sai through a customs and immigration post is Tachileik, one of the very few towns of Burma open to the outside world. With the huge advantage of Kuhn Tee’s Burmese language skills at my side, we parked the resort’s car and walked across the bridge, passed through the border formalities, engaged a dilapidated tuk-tuk and headed out into Burma, called the Land of a Thousand Pagodas, or something like that.

So of course we went first to an enormous golden Buddhist pagoda sited on a hill overlooking the town and the river valley. There at its entry we bought from commercially reticent vendors a tiny bird enclosed in a simple bamboo cage, incense and a nosegay then walked around the pagoda’s base until we found a small shrine devoted to those born on Tuesday, one of whom was me. The matter having never before seemed to be of any consequence I had to consult my handy iPhone calendar to determine this now essential fact. Buddhists believe that those born on particular days possess certain favorable characteristics, which we carry throughout our lives.

No mention is made of those features, all too common among today’s citizen of the world, which could be said to fall somewhat short of laudable. Maybe there’s another pagoda for that. Though I had hardly begun, this whole Buddhist pagoda business was beginning to give me the sense of reading my horoscope in three dimensions.

Poised at my Tuesday shrine and with Kuhn Tee as my guide, I performed the required unction involving pouring precise amounts of water on Buddha’s hands and a lesser amount on my designated animal god, who resembled an irritated hound dog rendered in colorful ceramic in the Chinese gargoyle style. I then placed the nosegay in a nearby stand and lit my incense and waved them about in a solemn manner hoping nobody was watching. Finally, I opened the door to the bird cage setting it free, a supposed gesture of my good will, or karma, directed to one of the smallest of nature’s creatures. Before leaving the pagoda grounds, we stopped at an enormous gong, which I rang the required nine times using a hefty log. My sins thus expiated, or so I judged, and all set right with Buddha we departed.

Our next stop was a Burmese Buddhist temple, where to our good fortune an event was going on in which young boys were being initiated into their required temporary service as monks. It was all very casual, with moms and dads and sisters and extended families hovering about and fussing over the robed lads, more like the first day of Little League than a solemn religious occasion. The temple itself, as the town, was a touch derelict compared to most of those in Thailand. But with a per capita GDP of just $1,900 compared to Thailand’s $8,000 this was a pardonable infraction.

Our last stop in Burma was at a demonstration village depicting the daily life and culture of the Asian hill tribes. There are ten (though possibly up to twenty, the matter a point of some debate among the experts) of these tribes living in mostly remote villages spread throughout much of Southeast Asia. Semi-nomadic subsistence farmers with no national identities, each tribe has its own language, customs, style of dress, and spiritual beliefs. Northern Thailand is home to six of these tribes who live much as they have for the past 200 years, or at least they do if you don’t count their newly acquired skill at fleecing unsuspecting tourists by selling them colorful hats.

The village we toured featured only women and young girls living in typical huts and dressed according to the style of their tribe. Men dress pretty much as Thai farmers, but women wear vividly colored and intricately patterned clothing usually accompanied by headwear some of which you wouldn’t be surprised to find perched on the head of a royal attendant to the Court of St. James. Women of one tribe, the Karen, also called the long neck people, affix brass rings around their necks beginning at a young age adding rings as they mature. Those of other tribes have equally exotic fashions from which the wearer’s tribe is easily discerned if you have skill in the subject.

After a brief stroll through the little village, we were escorted to a small outdoor pavilion. There young girls and older ladies, dressed in their respective tribal costumes, danced to the innocent rhythms of their tribe, which to be candid about it reminded me of the Disney tune It’s A Small, Small World. Hip-hop it was not. Their dances were just simple steps and twirled arms that even I might have been able to pull off. Still it was fun to watch. Following the show, we got a few photos with the entire dance troupe and made a modest contribution to the village welfare. Well, I imagined it was modest until I learned later that the average annual per capita income in Burma is $470.

With our Burma tour at an end, I went back across the Thai border with Kuhn Tee collecting on the way one of the world’s rarest passport stamps. There I said a heartfelt goodbye to my guide, whose knowledge, language skills and genial manner contributed enormously to one of the best experiences in all of my travels, though much too brief. As he went on his way, I climbed into the comfortable and blessedly cool Land Rover and was driven to the airport in plenty of time to catch my flight to Bangkok, my last stop in inland Thailand.

Bangkok is not mine, nor is it likely to be anybody’s, favorite city in Asia. Big, noisy, and traffic choked, there hangs over it a visible mixture of smoke, particulates and hydrocarbon fumes that passes for air. Its streets are a befuddlement, made more so by the local practice of changing their names every few blocks or so.

On the plus side though the place is largely free of petty crime save for a few enduring scams to which only particularly dimwitted tourists are likely to fall victim. And there is that matter of fine Thai food. You almost can’t get a bad meal there.

I stayed two nights at the iconic Mandarin Oriental Hotel, as fine an establishment as there is in all of Southeast Asia, though directly across the river is the equally fine but more contemporary Peninsula. Two of Southeast Asia’s best each within a pitching wedge of the other. Between the two, tastefully outfitted jitneys shuttle passengers back and forth across the Bangkok River (not its true name but briefer and more apt than the proper Thai name).

I didn’t really do too much in the city as I was not up for the wild club scene, which only gets going at midnight, and after two spirited nights on Phuket’s Bangla Street the city’s four wild party districts held little appeal. But there was one excursion that made my stay there memorable. Under the guidance of the obviously high-born, matronly and charming Kuhn Diamond, I spent several hours wandering about the inner sanctums of The Grand Palace, ceremonial home to the King and Queen.

With the stern air and officious manner of a U.S. Marine Corp general, Kuhn Diamond chased away pesky hawkers with a glare and instructed traffic cops that it was high time they stopped the flow of cars to allow us across the street. You dare not get at odds with this formidable woman.

The 236 wall-enclosed acres of the palace grounds are stuffed with more than a hundred buildings. Most important are those that accommodate the fabled Emerald Buddha, an enormous reclining Buddha, a royal throne and such. Their architecture is an odd mixture of styles but the terms ostentatious or maybe garish come to mind or just plain vulgar. The visitor is requested to dress conservatively, which means arms and legs fully clothed, to refrain from taking photos inside some buildings and always to be respectful so revered is the site. The whole place is said to be for Thais something akin to what Washington, D.C. is for Americans. Judging from its colossal waste of the Thai treasury I’d say the analogy is just about right.

Following my brief and largely uneventful stay in Bangkok, I returned to Indigo where the long-awaited parts had arrived and had been installed and sea tested. We were ready to set off for our next stop, the remote Andaman Islands.