Hot Springs and City Navels

October 17-18

We found out why the drivers keep trying to take us out of the Old City when we ask to go to the Boonthavon.

Tommy, the driver who took us to Chiang Rai, explained it to us. There is a high-rise hotel near the Night Market—outside the moat, that is—with a very similar name. 

In Roman letters it’s spelled “Duangtawan.” That’s pronounced, roughly, as “Dwohn-ta-wahn.” With my accent, it’s hard to distinguish it from “Boon-ta-wahn” (spelled “Boonthavon”), our little boutique hotel on Ratchadamnone Soi 1.

When you’re in a country where you don’t speak the language, and even in one where you do, you’re supposed to carry your hotel’s business card so you can hand it to a driver. I was being lax.

Despite the confusion, Tommy picked us up at the hotel a few minutes early. We were on the phone making sure he had the right bearings when a car came around the bend.

“Is that you?” he said.

“Does your license plate end in ’70’?” I asked.

Once you get outside the far reaches of the city, the drive goes through rainforest. There are broad-leafed small trees, perhaps bananas, mixed with bamboo and hardwoods with various leaf patterns. Sometimes there are vines, and the ground cover is always an intense green.

You know you are somewhere else.

Part of the route goes through a national park.

A couple of times, we passed places identified as check points, but they were unmanned and we weren’t asked to stop. According to Tommy, they are used to check for drugs and illegals. 

Reminds me of Texas.

Then we started to see policemen stationed at the roadside for several miles. We asked Tommy if that is common, and he said it’s likely that somebody important was on the road ahead.

Sure enough, at one point, all traffic was stopped and directed off the highway. We pulled into a side lane and got out of the car. 

This was in a small village with several houses. People were sitting on their porches watching.

According to one of the policemen, the new king’s daughter was on her way somewhere. We weren’t allowed to take photos and were supposed to kneel when her car went by.

A few minutes later a cop car flashing its lights ran past doing about 70. Then another. Eventually a string of SUVs with windows blacked out dashed by. Then more cop cars, then more SUVs. Done.

I guess most of the SUV’s were decoys. 

Everybody forgot to kneel and nobody noticed.

As we neared Chiang Rai, we came to a geological novelty, hot springs on both sides of the highway. It was worth a stop.

There was one well with steam rolling up and a smaller one where you could boil eggs in little baskets. They were doing quail, hen, and duck eggs.

Several kilometers outside of town there is a place called the White Temple that we wanted to see. 

It is a modern replacement of an earlier wat that had fallen into disrepair, and is now privately owned by a local artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat. It is almost traditional, but not quite.

When you first enter the area from the parking lot, you come to restrooms identified by anatomically exaggerated male and female demons outside.

The temple itself, except for all the hands and skeletons coming out of the pond by the entrance, looks at first almost like a conventional Thai wat. Almost, that is, because it is entirely white and its carvings a little more elaborate than usual.

In the press of reaching hands there's one with nail color, red on the straight-up middle finger.

Inside, there are wall paintings, as there are in many temples, but these too are unusual.

One is a weeping figure, possibly a demon or spirit, whose tears flow to form a stream full of bubbles, or maybe fish eggs, that also become the eyes of fish in the water. 

Another wall depicts Buddha figures and cropping up among the details are some non-Buddhist characters—Captain America, Kung Fu Panda, Spider Man, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson.

Almost traditional Buddhist art, but not quite. It’s the “not quite” that got Positpipat into hot water with the religious powers that be. 

Apparently there was agitation to have his worked banned. Then it was learned that  the late king had bought several of Positpipat’s works. End of story.

We saw monks at the White Temple, so it looks like the place is now considered orthodox enough for that. According to the Wikipedia entry, plans for the place include permanent housing for them.

We left the Boonthavon at about a quarter to eleven and got to our new hotel, Hi Chiangrai, around 3:30. That included the stops for the princess, the hot springs, and the White Temple.

Joanna and I were fairly wiped out by walking around the temple in the heat of the day, so we took it easy in the air conditioning till nightfall. 

We are a block from the Night Bazaar, and the street is lined with places to eat. 

It’s a new hotel so it’s air-conditioned throughout. There’s a pool in the lobby. There’s an elevator, and they have cold beer in a fridge near the front desk.

Hey, I’m easy to pamper. I don’t need much more than that.

We had shared a northern Thai dish of stewed pork leg with rice and some pickled mustard greens for lunch at the hot springs, so we decided to have some New Jersey food for dinner. We went to a shop called The Pizza.

It’s easy to find—across the street and up a little way from the cat cafe. 

The carbonara that Joanna ordered was pretty good. Not American style at all. Most important, there was no cream added to the egg. 

There was some onion, which I gather isn’t strictly traditional, and bacon stood in for guanciale, but even so, the result was good.

The pizza was fine, although partly obstructed by the language barrier. I opted for a build-it-yourself combination in which you specify type of crust, type of sauce, and other toppings.

I had asked for mozzarella, pepperoni, and anchovies. That came back as mozzarella, pineapple, and anchovies. Joanna caught that on the bill while I was off in the men’s room.

We cleared up the pineapple-pepperoni confusion, but apparently while everyone was focused on that, the kitchen lost track of the anchovies. So I still don’t know if anchovies will go with pepperoni or not.

The only beer they had was Heineken, and in Asia that’s all right with me. Unless you’re in one of the rare places with imported English ales or the new Thai craft beers, Heineken is probably the tastiest beer you can get.

The fridge in the lobby has been supplying me with small cans of Heineken—320 ml, or about 11 ounces. So three of them make up about two pints. 

The Night Bazaar has a little of everything, but isn’t as frenetic or as crowded as its counterpart in Chiang Mai. One possible reason for that is the Chiang Mai market is only set up on Sunday. 

The market in Chiang Rai has a dedicated space and seems to be open every night.

Joanna had been looking for a pair of Thai trousers with a peacock motif in muted colors. She found it here, a dark brown with tan. 

She also found a lightweight jacket made by local artisans. She thought it was linen, but we were told it was hemp. 

So now she has a jacket made out of marijuana. We’ll see if she can get it past the dogs at the airport.

Wednesday was a lazy day. We took a walk early for about a half hour. The neighborhood is OK, but nowhere near as active or interesting as Chiang Mai’s Old City.

After breakfast, we hid in the air conditioning for the heat of the day, and then took a cab to an ancient temple about a mile and a half away. It sits on top of a steep hill called Doi Chom Thong.

The full name of the place is Wat Phra That Doi Chom Thong. I know that “Phra” means “Buddha” and “Doi” is “mountain.” The stupa there is said to date back to 1300 or so, not long after Chiang Rai was founded by King Mengrai.

He also founded Chiang Mai as his new capital more than 30 years later.

Chiang Rai is much smaller than Chiang Mai. It is also calmer. You can cross the street, for instance, without feeling threatened with death.

Our room has a view of the distant hills and tropical trees and a Honda practice course for motorcycles. We haven’t seen anyone use it, but it is part of a Honda motorcycle franchise, not far from the store selling Buddhist supplies.

It was a pleasant ride up the hill to the wat. The driver dropped us at a large paved flat area that has a great view of the valley and glimpses of the town below, largely obscured by golden bamboo, huge flowering trees, and various palms and bananas.

We lit sticks of incense at the stupa, and then went into the main hall.

From the porch we could see the other attraction of Wat Doi Thong: the City Navel Pillar.

At the very top of the hill there is a monument that dates back about 30 years. As a celebration of the city’s 325th year and the king’s 60th, the town set up a pillar to mark the city navel, the spot where the town began.

The diameter of the pillar is five times the thickness of the king’s fist, and it stands as tall as the king.

It is surrounded by an array of smaller pillars on various levels that have Buddhist allegorical significance. They may stand for the levels of heaven, and the top one may represent nirvana.

Chiang Mai has a city pillar, too, in a building at Wat Chedi Luang. It is restricted to men only. I haven’t seen it.

The one in Chiang Rai is phallic enough. It sort of puts me in mind of the penis shrine behind the Swissotel in Bangkok.

I can only guess why Chiang Mai’s pillar is hidden from women.

The altitude must have made me arrogant. Without a printer, I was only able to jot down the street directions between the hotel and the wat. 

It’s all downhill. Let’s walk.

Right.

We got one block and I had us lost. I didn’t know which way to try or even if going back might help.

We saw one taxi. The driver waved at us and disappeared.

We stopped at an office that was closing and asked about a taxi. After a consultation, a lady who was on her motorcycle told us to wait. She went down the road and sent us a pedicab.

These are smaller than tuk-tuks and bicycle powered.

The driver, one of those wiry, indestructible northern Thais, was really working to get us up a small incline. Then he got a break because the road into the city started to go downhill. 

I had told him to take us to the Clock Tower. This is a shining golden landmark in Chiang Rai that plays music on the hour. It’s about a half-mile from the hotel, and I actually know the way home from there.

After all his hard work, the driver asked for only 60 baht. I can’t exploit a human being that much, so I paid him a hundred.

We stopped at the first bar we found, where I had two dark lagers from Beer Lao, a Laotian import. We watched the last part of a Star Wars installment with Thai subtitles. 

I can’t remember the title, but it’s the one with the Ewoks, the cross between Munchkins and Teddy bears designed for maximum merchandising appeal.

We stopped at a place called Aye’s around the corner. The menu had some Thai dishes, but nothing that looked appealing, even though we hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

The Western food was just too damned expensive—950 baht, almost 30 bucks, for a cut of steak. Hell, that’s the price of filet mignon back home at Egan’s in Montclair.

So we went back to The Pizza. At least it’s air-conditioned. 

I had eaten pizza the night before, true, but even so, this was just the thing. We enjoyed a thin crust pie with sausage that went down just fine with Heineken.

Then it was time to pack it in.

Be well, everybody. I love this country.

Harry