Crash, Chiang, Wallop

Day 51 - Chiang Mai

To avoid further mishaps I book a direct flight from Sydney to Northern Thailand. Several days of negative covid tests mean I'm highly unlikely to fail one at the airport but I just want the ease of a single flight. The mishaps that ensue anyway are minor and entirely my own fault. I spend 20 minutes on a bus in Sydney that is going in the wrong direction but only decide something is amiss when the driver pulls over the otherwise empty bus, gets out and locks the doors. Having located the correct bus I make it to the airport. At check-in I'm given a sticker to wear but no explanation as to why. It's got something to do with baggage I think. I don't like wearing stickers so during the flight I take it off. Wine for breakfast makes you reckless. The belt trundles around it's circuit now empty of luggage, the hall now empty of people except me. This is becoming familiar. That sticker, it transpires, was to help staff guide me to the correct baggage claim area in Chiang Mai airport and this is not it. It is impossible to go back to the other area so I must wait for 30 minutes for sometime to retrieve it for me. I blame the sticker.
The old town of Chiang Mai is ringed by a moat and broken walls and my hostel was near the north gate.

I take a stroll to find a beer and end up at Wetherspoons. I don't think it's an official part of Tim Martin's empire of stale beer and sunlit uplands (uplands currently closed due to staff shortages) but it does the job. I'm sanguine about my return to solitude but after a week of pep talks and harangues I know that I can't let this become the norm again. But it does allow for some, occasionally deranged, introspection in the moment. I feel like I am in a post-apocalyptic Disneyland where Mickey, Minnie and the gang are all deathless animatronics. They put out chairs and tables then take them in again. Metronomically and unceasingly. They take my order with a silent nod and bring me food and beer. And the food is dust and the beer is flat and I speed through this landscape like a bowling ball on an endless lane without a set of pins to break my course. Like that. There's a night market near the north gate and I seek out cowboy hat lady. She does a renowned kow kah moo which is slow-cooked pork leg with rice and pickles and a soft-boiled egg on the side. It's excellent and compensates for the swampy melange of a noodle soup I had for lunch.
There are signs of life but no life. I'm in a Hmong (Northern Thai ethic group) village in the coffee growing hills west of Chiang Mai. I would like a coffee. Shops advertising locally grown, organic beans are numerous but not a creature is stirring in them, not even a mouse, gecko. On my way out of the village I do find a small family-run operation with a deck looking out over a wooded valley. It's very instagrammable if you're into that sort of thing which, as of this moment, I have decided that I am.

Wincing as I lean on the table, the scrape on my arm is still raw. I'd had my first little crash on a scooter half an hour before. The marvellous three-lane road that lead up into these hills had, after a time, become two lanes and then one. On a turn with a large 4x4 coming the other way I tried to give it adequate space. Too much space. The dry leaves along the side of the road concealed an abrupt end to the tarmac and a slight drop that was enough to put the scooter and me on our sides. Slight damage to my arm and my pride, scratches to the bike that I'd likely have to pay for. A rite of passage I decide. A series of switchbacks take me down the Doi Suthep mountain and onto the Samoeng loop. It's 100km of fine riding. The scooter begins to feel comfortable, the turns become smooth and swift. I lean into the corners and open the throttle on the straights, it wouldn't be the same with someone else at the wheel. It gives me a sense of control but in a healthy, non-obsessive way. Waiting on no-one else's timetable I point this scooter where I want to go. Stopping in the town of Samoeng roughly halfway round I find it a quiet, dusty kind of place rather than a bustling stop on the tourist trail. There is a ubiquitous 7eleven and while I'd rather support local shopkeepers than American mega-corporations there is an irresistable reassurance to seeing one. Familiar products and reliable prices are an indulgence I allow myself in a country where so much else can be unpredictable. There is also a single noodle restaurant. After ten minutes of sitting I abandon the wait for a menu. A bit of pointing at ingredients on the counter gets things moving. Turns out i'd pointed at all the options and I get a hearty broth of noodles, pork, chicken, egg (or was it egg, chicken?) and dumplings.

The ride back is also scenic and is given a dramatic edge by the burning vegetation on either side of the road. I'd seen these fires from train windows too and reason that it is the Thai method of keeping roads and track clear. Back in Chiang Mai I realise I need onward travel plans for the next day. While Northern Thailand had plenty more to offer I was feeling like I'd been in the country forever and was itching to try somewhere new. In reality few things on this trip will be 'unmissable' and there will always be another waterfall, another temple, another trek. I choose not to dwell on the things that I don't do. With all that in mind I set a course for Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Except I don't because the buses are booked up for the next few days. There is, instead, a boat to Luang Prabang in the north of Laos which instantly sounds like a better way to travel. Cruising along the Mekong at the pace of life. Gazing out onto the empty banks of the river and thinking profound (or deranged) thoughts. Yes, poor planning had steered me right. Back at the hostel I get talking to a young Australian guy called Josh. He is my antithesis. He has an easy-going attitude to life that I have to admire. He came out for a holiday but a girl told him to quit his job and keep travelling, so he did. Nothing is a bother, he'll talk to anyone, try anything. The fearlessness of his youth in enviable. The world rests so lightly on his shoulders he could float. We have a few beers and chat into the darkening evening. We (he) gets talking to a Vietnamese group on a school trip. We (he) gives food, cigarettes and weed to the homeless woman at the table next to us. She ignores, smokes and eats the offerings, in that order. We (he) says hello to three young English lads who arrive though he is stumped when the conversation turns to football and I have to step in. I'd never think to talk to them myself, too young, too raucous. What conversation could they offer me? This does not now feel like the right attitude though. It begins to rain, it thunders, it stops. The monsoon season skulks behind the hill. It gathers its strength like Voldemort gnawing on unicorns but is not yet powerful enough to wash these streets clean of their dust.