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(Nick and Jodie are off on an epic tour of the Far East. They will be gone for nearly a year, and are sending back reports via email. You can follow their journey here).
Episode two: Chiang Mai
Wed 18 Dec 2002
Chiang Mai is an amazing place and Jodie and I have been having so much fun here. On our first night we took a taxi to the Happy House guest house, a tall narrow building down a quiet street lined with bookshops and restaurants. It was the perfect location for us as we were right in the centre of town but away from all the noise. Our room had a comfy bed, a table and chair and a private bathroom with a very temperamental hot shower and the ever present gecko. We had come here on the recommendation of our Canadian friend Lynn who we'd met in Phitsanulok at the Little Oasis youth hostel. She had left for Chiang Mai a day before us and said that she would find a nice place for all of us to stay and email us so we could meet up. The following day we met up with Lynn at a small bar opposite our guest house. It was quite a funky bar with tall bamboo stalls and a bar to sit at out the front. We sat chatting and soaking up the sun for a while and then slowly started to explore Chiang Mai, after all there's no rush. That is one thing I am really starting to enjoy about this holiday. There's absolutely no sense of urgency and no deadlines to meet. We can stay wherever we like for as little or as long as we want and can go to bed as late or as early as want with no consequences. Total freedom!
Not far from the guest house we were staying at is a large paved area similar to a pavilion where various public events are held such as the Rattan matches (similar to volleyball, except that you can use any part of the body except your hands). It was the evening before the King's birthday (King Rama the 9th) and the place looked incredible! A huge scaffold structure had been erected with a giant painting of the king towering over the pavilion. In front of the portrait was a stage and the whole area had been decorated with lights and colourful drapes. All the trees and the surrounding area were covered in fairy lights and banners. As Jodie, Lynn and I got closer my eyes moved down the giant portrait of the king, across the stage and focused on a large crowd surrounding what seemed to be a boxing ring! It was, and as we crossed the road and onto the pavilion I could see that in the ring were two young, wiry Thai men wearing shorts and headbands. They were doing this crazy dance on their knees, rolling their heads to the sky and manically swinging their arms around. This was Muay Thai boxing and the dance they were doing is a ritual that the fighters do before each fight. A Thai lady who was standing next to us informed us that the Muay Thai was part of King Rama's birthday celebrations and would be going on all night and right through to the following morning!
In
Thai boxing kicks and punches are considered to be the weakest form of attack
and are really only used to soften up one's opponent. Knee strikes and elbows
are the most effective and it is perfectly acceptable to grab an opponent and
bring his head down onto your knee. Quite savage really. We watched quite a
few bouts of different sized and aged fighters with varying skill levels and
sampled some of the delicious banana pancakes one of the hawker stalls had on
offer. There were posters up around the pavilion advertising a night of Muay
Thai boxing. 10 professional fights and 1 special fight - Thailand VS Canada.
We had enjoyed the bouts we had seen and Lynn (being from Canada) was keen to
see the special fight. We agreed to buy tickets and and meet up on the Friday.
The next evening (King Rama's birthday) the celebrations were a bit of an anticlimax.
The boxing ring had disappeared and in its place were rows and rows of plastic
chairs facing the stage. We only watched for an hour or so but it seemed to
be some sort of prize giving ceremony with lots of long speeches in Thai. In
between each speech people would come onto the stage and take it in turns to
sing. One thing that did make me chuckle was the musical accompianment to every
song. On the far left of the stage was a small Thai man sitting on a stall behind
a Casio keyboard. Every time there was a song he would play one of his keyboard's
4 demo tunes and start grinning inanely, swinging his head and and body around
like Stevie Wonder.
The following morning Jodie and I were picked up at 8.30 buy a clean, white, air conditioned minibus outside our guest house. We had booked a tour to see a selection of craft workshops and factories, one of which specialised in furniture making and wood carving. Our first stop was a lacquer-ware factory where we were shown all the techniques used to make mainly pots and ornate boxes using bamboo and tree sap. The bamboo is carved and shaped and the tree sap is mixed with other stuff to make it into a lacquer. The bamboo is then dipped into the lacquer and decorated with gold leaf or hand painted designs. It was then on to the silverware workshop where we watched a guy creating a huge relief picture (a 3 dimensional image raised from a flat surface) out of solid silver! It was some kind of jungle scene with elephants and soldiers shaped to lifelike detail. This man had been working on it all day 6 days a week for 2 years and it was only halfway to being complete. I would have bought one of the many works on display in the in the showroom but at 1 million bhaat (18,000 pounds) and up it was all a little out of my budget. Besides, I didn't really fancy carting something with the equivalent weight of Rik Waller around the globe with me.
We pulled into the large gravel car park of the Teak and Rosewood Furniture Workshop. The main building was surrounded by teak trees, incredible carvings of elephants and gianormous tree trunks shaped into tables and chairs. Even the door frame to the front entrance had fine detailed, ornate carvings on. We looked at various pieces of furniture in the showroom, some of which were made to a higher standard and level of detail than I have ever seen, and were then taken to see the the wood carvers. There were about 15 men and women working on all sorts of different pieces of furniture and two men and an apprentice were carving a gigantic and amazingly detailed relief picture out of one long teak tree on its side. We only visited this place for about an hour so I decided I would return another day, with a camera, and spend as long as I needed to take it all in. I introduced myself to one of the guys that worked there and checked that it would be ok for me to take lots of pictures and spend a few hours looking around. He said this would be no problem and that he would show me around. His name was Boom Tham. We chatted for a while and I explained that I was going to be studying furniture-making at university when I returned home from travelling, and was very interested in seeing how all the furniture was made. Seeing the wood carvers and the showroom was great but there was no way that the handful of workers I had seen with their mallets and carving chisels had made all this furniture. Boon Tham explained to me that they had a few people working out the back to give people looking around the showroom an idea of how some of the furniture techniques are done.
(I must point out now that from this point on you are going to notice a bit of a drop in the amount of description I use for everything. This is because I have been doing so much stuff that if I keep on writing as I have been I will spend my 9 month trip living in Internet cafes!)
That
evening we met up with Lynn to go and see the Thai boxing. She had invited a
couple of people, and they invited a couple of people and the whole thing snowballed!
There were at least 15 of us from all over the globe. Australians, Americans,
Canadians, Mexicans, Irish, English and a women from Alaska. We hailed down
a samshaw, the next size up from a Tuk Tuk and with four wheels instead of three,
and all crammed ourselves in with people hanging out of the back and clinging
to the sides. The Vehicle was extremely over loaded and we slowly pulled away
with the chassis creaking and the engine burbling like a senior citizen eating
custard (apologies to the grandparents). The boxing arena was an old warehouse
and I remember thinking that the whole event had a real underground feel. None
of the matches were up to par with the ones we had seen before but I got a nasty
culture shock as a couple of the matches were children's matches and it was
full contact! The special fight (Canada vs Thailand) was fun though. The guy
from Canada was huge and looked like The Rock from WWF would look if he ate
a few too many pies. The guy from Thailand was half his size and every time
he started to attack, Canada would just bear hug him and pin him against the
ropes (not a traditional Thai boxing technique). In the end speed and skill
beat size and strength and with a cut eye and a broken nose Canada surrendered.
After the match we all went for drinks at The Interzone bar. We ended up all
getting invited back to a tattoo parlour/bar for late night drinks by an English
guy, Chris, who'd been living in Thailand for 2 years and had joined a biker
gang! It was not far and there was a huge group of us (plus the bar we were
in was just about to close) so we accepted their invitation. The place was owned
buy Sam, a soft spoken Thai tattoo artist. He was one of Chris's best friends.
There was a music video jukebox and 3 tables out the front and about ten Thai
guys with all the motorbike gear on. Now I don't know enough biker gangs (well
any at all in fact) to have an opinion on what kind of characters they are,
but going on hearsay and stereotype I was pleasantly surprised. These guys were
the most placid, sound-minded people you could ask to meet (and all spoke English
very well). We all had a blast drinking and chatting till the early hours of
the morning. When we decided to call it a night Jodie, myself and three others
all squeezed into a tuk tuk and told the driver the name of our guest house.
As we pulled away I felt as if I had been teleported into a playstation game
called Crazy Tuk Tuk Racers and our driver was going for the highest score!
I won't scare you with the details but I will say that we got to our guest house
in record time!
Everyone please keep those emails coming, it's great to hear from you all, all our love Nick and Jodie.
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