the vieng tai is a couple blocks from khao san road, an infamous little cultural microcosm: it has an extremely high concentration of tourists. the neighborhood is middle class, with lots of western style hotels, bars, internet cafes, travel agencies, and other material comforts. there are dozens of wats (buddhist temples- we explored one, the wat chana songkhram), compounds for monks, statues, political monuments, and massive ornate pictures of the king and queen, as well as plenty of palaces for the royal family to lounge around in (the military coup in sept 06 didn't overturn the traditional monarchy, which probably has about the same amount of political power as that of england. it also didn't overturn the parliamentary democracy, but it did oust billionaire businessman prime minister, thaksin, rewrote the constitution, and stacked the new government with military generals).
the tourists attract thousands of vendors hawking souvenirs, so a kind of commodity market thrives there that wouldn't anywhere else. khao san itself is the epicenter, and at night it all hits its peak, even on a wednesday night. nightclubs, outdoor bars, no laws prohibiting drinking in the streets, a different western pop music blaring every hundred feet or so.
white people hold a clear majority. speaking all kinds of languages, but plenty dialects of english. we say the same people over and over- in the hotel elevators, in the internet cafes, in the restaurants. clearly this all adds up to hell on earth for me, but eli liked it. he likes everything though- it's his first time out of the states.
we kept ourselves awake until about midnight, then slept soundly until about 8, so we managed to land on our feet in terms of sleeping schedules. it feels wonderful. on thursday we went on a walk along the choa phraya river, the big one that winds through bangkok. it was full of water taxis and tourist expeditions. we had to hurry along though, to catch a puddle jumper to chiang mai. it's too bad we just blew through bangkok (less than 24 hours), but i'm sure we'll be back. not to that neighborhood though.
we got to chiang mai (one of the bigger cities in the north of thailand) in the late afternoon, and took a cab to philip's apartment. philip is eli's dad, who does contract work programming databases on the internet, so he can live wherever he wants. the apartment is within the boundaries (a moat) of the old city. he's been here about two months, along with his daughter, rachael, who is 11. you can read her blog, which i highly recommend, at http://rachaellightstone
rachael's mom, margie, has been here with them too for the last two weeks. we went out for japanese food and then to the night market, which i loved. clothes - western and thai, art - paintings, jewelry, carvings of wood, marble, jade, soap, etc, food - we got a dessert version of indian roti bread, stuffed with banana or chocolate, a seafood market, massage parlors, and all of it packed to the gills. this was also fairly upper-middle class, but not nearly as touristy as the markets of rattanakosin in bangkok. so, still bouncing around the sheltered, familiar territories.
this morning (friday) eli and i went with philip and rachael on their customary jog in buak hat public park. i went barefoot, as i don't have good shoes for running. it might have been overly optimistic, but if i keep it up i will have awesome feet again soon.
this bring us up to this moment. we plan to stick around chiang mai for the next four days or so, going on hikes up into the hills, getting to know the city, going out on brief expeditions. then we plan to head off (all of us but philip, who has to get work done) to vietnam, for at least a week.
