Fusion and Navels and Quizzes Too

February 5

After I sent yesterday’s e-mail, we went for a walk around town. I am so excited to be here, I started telling Joanna, this is where this happened, and this is the bar where ...

Whoa. Enough of that. So I’ve calmed down a bit, and am really enjoying the feel of Chiang Mai.

The sois here are quite different from those in our neighborhood at Bangkok. Soi 8, next to the hotel in Bangkok, for instance, had not one, but two place—a massage parlor called Lolitas and Kasalong, a karaoke bar—where the working ladies line up outside in schoolgirl uniforms.

I haven’t noticed anything like that here. There is a thriving sex trade, I’m sure, but it isn’t as obvious, at least in this part of town, as it is in Bangkok.

Not far from the hotel we passed Eden, which advertised French and Thai fusion. That could be good, but it was closed.

We came to the next soi and a short block away and across a main street was the U.N. Actually, you see the bakery. The bar is next door.

According to the menu, the business started as a bakery and then grew into the ex-pat hangout that it has become. According to the list of current events, Thursday is quiz night.

We sat in the garden. I had a beer. Joanna had pineapple juice. And we watched the cats wander around on the roof.

We needed a few supplies and I remembered there was a 7-Eleven across the road from the bar. But I didn’t see it when we came out.

We walked on that side to the corner, and then turned onto Rachaphakhinai Road. (No, there’s no way I could remember a name like that. I had to copy it from a map just now.) That’s where the Safe House Court hotel and a couple of ancient temples are. No 7-Eleven there, either.

We got to Rachadamnone. Again no 7-Eleven. We walked up Moon Muang, the road that runs by the moat, with no luck.

I had never walked that far in Asia before without finding at least two 7-Elevens.

When we got back to the U.N. Irish Pub, I was ready to ask anybody for help.

But then I turned and what to my blundering eyes should appear but “7-Eleven” on a sliding door.

There’s no sign over the street, no characteristic awning either. When the door is open, you can’t see the logo. I add these excuses in a vain effort to argue that I am not a complete greenhorn.

We took our yogurt and beer back to the hotel and headed out a short time later for dinner.

Eden was open this time, but we had to find an ATM. Eden, like many places here, only takes cash.

They call it fusion on the sign, but it’s really French and Thai side by side. The owners are a husband and wife team. He’s French and cooks the French dishes. She’s Thai and cooks Thai.

We chose to go with a Thai menu. The man called his wife out to talk to us. She adapted two dishes, She cut the salt and chili out of a soup with mung bean noodles and pork meat balls, and sauteed the Chinese kale with pork minus the soy sauce.

I had a green curry with chicken.

Everything was fantastic.

Eden seems to be a watering hole for the French ex-pats. At least, that was the language spoken at the bar.

We’ll be going back there in a few days to try the French part of the menu.

Joanna had been up since about 4:30 and was ready to pack it in. So I went with her to the hotel and then left for the U.N. and quiz night. I was hoping to run into Larry’s friend Percy there.

The first time I had ever heard of quiz night at a bar was at the U.N. Larry and I joined Percy’s team, the Forlorn Hope.

Anyhow, Percy wasn’t there. I asked the moderator, who may own the place. He may have thought I was trying to get a glimpse of his answer sheet.

I stayed around for a few rounds and more beer, just to see how little I knew.

Friday morning, we went to a place Larry had recommended for coffee. It’s right up the soi from the U.N. and specializes in organic local beans. The sign says “Mountain Coffee.”

Joanna had hot chocolate, a drink introduced to her on her cruise down the Danube.

We picked up rolls hot from the oven at the U.N. bakery and had breakfast at the hotel.

We dropped our laundry off at a shop in our soi. The place I had used before is now a massage parlor. By all signs a legit one. No Lolitas or karaoke girls.

If you find Boonthavon Court in Google Maps and switch to street view, you can scroll up the soi about three doors from the hotel and see a photo of her. Her face is blurred out, as all faces are in street view, but it’s unmistakably her old laundry shop.

There are at least three other laundry services operating in our soi. I hope the lady retired and wasn’t driven out of business.

The one thing we haven’t found yet in Chiang Mai is dry cleaning. I’m going to need it soon for my summer jackets. We asked the ladies at the hotel desk, but they didn’t know of any place where men have their suits cleaned. None of the men working at the Boonthavon wear suits.

So we went for a walk, to see more sights and maybe even a dry cleaner. We stopped at Black Mountain Coffee, on Rachadamnone Road at the end of Soi 1. I had been there before and the coffee is very good. It may be more local stuff.

Joanna was thrilled to find milk shake on the menu. I haven’t had one of those since I lived in Hong Kong, she said.

We walked by the moat and then found a market. A lady was cutting up squid, and another was slicing pork. A man was selling dried fish in little baskets.

Some of the meat stalls had slow, horizontal overhead fans with tassels at the ends of the blades to shoo flies away. There didn’t seem to be the same concern with the fish.

You’re going to cook it anyway, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.

We bought some bananas for breakfast.

Joanna was aware of the heat and suggested that we walk in the general direction of the hotel. We turned left into a soi and, damn, if it wasn’t the same one we were in morning, leading to the mountain coffee shop and the U.N. bar.

It was time for a beer anyway. Joanna asked the bartender about dry cleaning. She wasn’t sure what that was. A colleague drew us a little map to a place that might do dry cleaning, but she wasn’t sure about that.

We take the street outside, Rathvithi Road, to the Three Kings Monument and turn left. When we get to the next big intersection, turn left. It’s somewhere along there.

We found the three kings. These, I learned, are the legendary founders of Chiang Mai, which in the 13th century became the capital of the Lanna kingdom. All I know about the Lanna is that they were one of the many people perpetually at war in this region.

They conquered surrounding cities. They won some and lost some against the Burmese.

There are little animals in the plantings at the foot of the monument. I am particularly fond of the three kings’ pink flamingos.

Next to the monument is Wat Inthakin. According to Renown-travel.com, the temple is named for the Chiang Mai city pillar, which is Sao Inthakin (pillar of Indra) in Pali. Indra, king of the Hindu gods, gave the pillar to the locals to deliver them from evil.

The place is also known as the Temple of the City Navel.

The heat was getting intense, so we headed for the shelter of the hotel. But on the way we had to stop at the first place we found that was air-conditioned.

Most places here are not cooled; they just leave the doors and windows open. We found one store with the doors closed, a juice bar.

Joanna wanted a mango, and I had a cappuccino.

Back at the hotel, after we got new batteries for the air conditioner’s remote control and got the towels that the maid had forgotten to leave us, we settled in to cool off.

I’m pretty cool now, and getting hungry.

Be well, everybody, and enjoy.

Harry

Feb. 5

Fascinating stuff, Harry. Must make life in N.J. and N.Y. seem so mundane,

What, by the way, is a Soi? A street?

Peter

Feb. 5

Each main street has several alleys, or sois, running off it. They are numbered.

Our hotel, the Boonthavon Court, is on Rachadamnone Soi 1. 

That means it is the first narrow street branching off Rachadamnone Road. In this case, the street begins by the city wall.

You can find the street and the soi on Google Maps.

After seven weeks of this, New Jersey may seem strange and exotic when we get back.  I'll let you know.

Harry