Hypertravel with Hardie #18: South Thailand

#18 South Thailand 2013 First the back story: my long coexistence with Asia, specifically SE Asia, is almost first and almost foremost with Thailand, beginning in 1992, mostly with Chiang Mai, to whatever extent anyone can truly circumvent Bangkok. That’s only logical, since CM is the main focus of Thailand’s handicraft trade, and that was my game back then, long since established, for at least a decade, in Latin America and looking to expand by this time. And, within five years, CM would be the central point of my business, even after I chose to live in Chiang Rai to the north. This is after spending almost half that same decade in Vietnam, and only gradually closing my business in Latin America. But my travel urge never really died, undergoing something of a minor peak around 1997, the year that I finally decided on Thailand, over Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, and Vietnam already mentioned. The logical goal then is to see all of Thailand, and if the Isaan northwest is the first goal; after Bangkok and the north, then soon the south presents itself as an equal if not better choice. Note that it is almost impossible to see all of Thailand in any one trip, so this narrative reflects that, as the south gradually became most important to me there. So, this trip starts in 2013, and focuses on the Songkhla are, where I would eventually go to ‘monk school’ in 2017. Still, all roads lead to Bangkok, and so that’s where this story starts, with bars, clubs, and pubs, ho hum. Fortunately, there’s a train straight to Songkhla. Christmas in Thailand: Songkhla I hadn't been in Songkhla in a dozen or so years, so jumped at the chance to put it back in the itinerary. After successively postponing and/or canceling trips to Bhutan and Burma, I was left with a hole in my schedule, so this fits the bill nicely. It's different. Normally when you think of southern Thailand, you think of tourist mega-resorts like upscale Phuket or backpacker havens Koh Samui, Pha Ngan or Tao. Then there are Koh Lanta, Krabi, Phi Phi, and countless others. Or if you're thinking about the dangerous and rebellious Thai Muslim 'three southern provinces', then you're talking Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani, or some other places that've made big bad news in the last decade's separation struggles. Then there are the boring provincial Thai cities of Nakhorn Sri Thamarat, Surat Thani, or others best known as transit points. Songkhla doesn't fit any of these easy categories. It has tourist interest, but almost no one goes there, Thais included. For one thing Songkhla's difficult—but scenic—position between sea and inland lake have kept organic growth slow, and access cumbersome. For another, its beaches have pine trees, not palms, and its most frequent visitors are likely Muslims from Malaysia, picnicking on the beach fully clothed. Songkhla likes to advertise itself as Thailand's original southern resort city, but that must date to a time when Marseilles was France's and Acapulco Mexico's. There are plenty of Western foreigners here, but they're not tourists; they're offshore oil workers. That's Songkhla's claim to wealth and fame, that and fishing and rubber plantations. Those workers all need entertainment, of course, so this is your last chance for whoring and drinking before the fundamentalist Muslim south, more fundamentalist than its Malay-national cousins across the border, I reckon. Sometimes you have to overstate a case just to make a point, I guess. The Thai southern separatists are more about politics than religion, anyway, I think, ethnic Malays who find themselves on the wrong side of the line that divides countries. There are many Thai-speaking Siamese on the other side, too, including many who reject the term 'Thai' for their ethnicity, 'Siamese' preferred. It's complicated. Songkhla itself is not so complicated, though, just bizniz and fun as usual, with only a few references to Malay language to remind one that danger is not far away. There are Muslims scattered over most all parts of Thailand, and for the most part coexistence is peaceful. And until recently, at least, with increasing fundamentalist sentiment, about the only distinction from other Thais was their refusal to eat pork, otherwise drinking and whoring with the rest. That has changed lately, at least somewhat. But Songkhla hasn't changed much, not from the first time I was here fifteen years ago, or the second time twelve years ago. That second time I fell in love and left precipitously rather than face the fact that the object of my affection was a special order for one of the local oil-field helicopter pilots. She needed money for her grandmother's hospital bill. By the time I knew what was happening, it was too late. She was an Isaan girl, and I'm sure long gone by now, but he may still be here. You never know. That little anecdote largely defines the situation here, foreigners with money all out of proportion to the locals' meager earnings, though earned locally, many of them Scots with experience in the North Sea, Saudi A, or even Nigeria. Fortunately I've done a stint as an oil-field roughneck, so I know the drill and the lingo. Most are pretty nice guys, too, albeit with usually only a tenuous relationship with the locals. So I gravitate to the bar with Nirvana on the play list, playing straight off of YouTube on a full-size screen, atmosphere more than making up for whatever the system lacks in fidelity. This is the Corner Bar, and Tom is the owner. He might as well be the King of Scotland, as far as I'm concerned. These guys are not stingy. For every drink I've bought, I think I've gotten at least two more free, often not even knowing who the generous donor is. I could get used to this, if I could get used to alcohol at all. I've been out of practice for years. There's only one rule: “No politics,” and that's probably wise, since there are US oil-field workers here, too. I doubt they voted for Obama. But after two nights of drinking, I'm in a daze. I really prefer an almost tee-total existence, like the last five years, but I also prefer some social intercourse, so you can't have it both ways. I'm teetering between a lost weekend and the dark night of my soul, uncertain as to how all of this plays out, while saving something for Christmas, at least, which should be interesting. It is, but I've had too much alcohol. These bloody Scots can drink me under the table. I should go see some more of the south while I've got the chance. Still it might be worth checking Songkhla out again, in a different season. If there's a dry season, then I don't know when it is. Floods were big in the news until recently, and even now it's cloudy and rainy much of the day... and hot. Any amount of exertion will yield an equivalent amount of water in the form of sweat, to the point that you might as well wash the item, since you'll have to wait for it to dry regardless. I do this two or three times a day, every day. It gets old. Thank God for air conditioning. Songkhla isn't perfect, but Thailand is something of a safe haven for me, and that's nice in many ways. I just have to define the terms. I'll be back. In South Thailand They Like it Hot... and Sweet The food down south, fierce and fiery, is renowned even amongst Thais for its spiciness. That includes yellow curries, and of course seafood, a welcome addition for us semi-vegetarians quickly backsliding into ovo-lacto-chicketarianism. Then there are the sweets, similar to the rest of Thailand, and heavily based on the use of coconut, or at least the 'milk' (not to be confused with the 'water'). This is native to the south, of course, and likely the point of dissemination toward the north, along with much of 'Thai' cuisine, curries originally from Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Indian sub-continent, in my theory, at least. There is also 'Muslim food', which is really not so much different, to be honest, and which I take to be vindication of my theory of southern origins. Still they make a distinction in numerous eateries, mostly in the oldest part of town. You won't find pork, there, though, that's for sure, and that's the main difference. BTW be careful with the coconut milk. Over-indulgence can have a constipatory effect, as I found out the hard way years ago during a brief love affair with sticky rice and mango. That's a triple whammy I don't want to repeat. That's What I Like About the South—Thailand, that is... If southern Thailand is a masala mix of tourism, ex-pats, rebellion, and boredom, then Trang somehow finds itself at the center of it all. And while it has few attractions of its own in the city proper, that in and of itself is one of the attractions. That is a Backpacker Principle: authentic is better, as long as it's not boring. Trang is not, though I have yet to see a go-go or 'dark side' (a la Songkhla) bar, good deal. It doesn't have the old-fashioned and well-defined Sino-Portuguese shop-house district of Songkhla, but that's an anomaly in Thailand peculiar to Songkhla. At the same time it's got more than the typical boring layout of 50's-era Stalinesque architecture, typically defined by a sh*t-stained white exterior that has obviously only been painted once in its stressed-out life. Trang reminds me a bit of Chiang Rai up north, actually, with a fairly well-defined center and tangents streaming off at all angles. And at that center is the railroad station, very convenient, and something hard to find in this day and age of remote transportation 'centers.' The problem for us authenticity-seekers is to find that authenticity and isolate it from all the rest of the mass-market BS. My favorite thing about southern Thailand, besides all the seacoast (not to be confused with beach), and the connections to neighboring Malaysia, are all the birds—the ones in cages. This seems to be peculiar to the entire region, and while the birds seem fairly ordinary, though quite audible, the cages themselves are very beautiful, wooden waxed and polished to a high sheen. And the connections to neighboring Malaysia are numerous, down to the curry-based cuisine and the tuk-tuks which look more like Indonesian becaks than Thai tuk-tuks. They also have two short benches in the back, more like Thai seelors or songtaews. I also like the little glimpses of history poking out from behind weathered teak, as much Malay and Chinese as it is Thai. There is even a sizable Christian presence here, which definitely precedes the current evangelical movement. Most of the tourist attractions here are centered around nature—caves and waterfalls, in addition to the beaches. That's nice enough, of course, but many typically look like most of the rest. I'm a culture vulture foremost if not first, and that's more prevalent in the cities. Though I love Nature intensely, if I focused entirely on that, then I'd be remiss. A visit to a rubber plantation might be nice, though, the product still known here by the Brazilian province the first trees were smuggled out of: Para. It'll wait I guess. I persevere in my search for authentic experience. Trang may not be the end of that search, but it's not a bad stopover. From here I catch the train back to Bangkok. P.S. I just realized something: I've only seen one 7-11 in Trang. I didn't notice until I needed one. This is huge! On the down side, this is the only place I've ever seen Buddhist monks smoking cigarettes, two so far; so much for non-attachment. Soon they'll be 'vaping', I guess. Meanwhile back in Bangkok, the ongoing political struggles between the two political factions best known as red and yellow, populist and royalist, only now increased by the blue and purple, probably best described as progressive and conservative. They all make good food. 2017 Fast forward to 2017 and I’ve not only done my first meditation retreat at Wat Suan Mokh in south Thailand, but I’ve completed my first semester at IBC Buddhist college near Hat Yai. I then converted to online study and am now on my way north to escape the torrential December rains and look for a place to hang semi-permanently, maybe Cambodia. But first there will be stops in Hua Hin, and Trat, almost on the seacoast border with Cambodia. That may have ended my flirtation with south Thailand, but it only started my flirtation with Cambodia. I cam back to south thailand the the defense of my master’s thesis in 2019, but I haven’t been back south since, only north, always a second home for me.

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Hypertravel with Hardie #19: Laos and Southern China

#19 Lao/Yunnan xPhongsaly, Laos: at the end of a long lonely road... It may or may not be the 'end of the earth', but it definitely qualifies as the outback of Southeast Asia, for whatever that's worth, probably not much, so long as China keeps encroaching, as it surely will, not so long ago Vietnam probably the greater transgressor, with its oversized population, locked into such a narrow sliver of prime southeast Asian coastline, and punctuated by rivers, this the only country in the world, that I know of, that is self-defined by its water, i.e. 'nuoc Vietnam', Viet-water, as opposed to Thai-land, Ire-land, Green-land, or Switzer-land, for example (if you're familiar with Vietnamese fish-sauce, nuoc mam, then you might recognize that same word nuoc)... But that's Vietnam, and this is Laos, though you might not know it at the crossroads town of UdomXai, a town of literally no more than a few tens of thousands, but with buses heading to all the four corners, i.e. China, Vietnam, and Thailand, every neighboring state except Burma, Myanmar, and locals can even go from Phongsaly to Luang Namtha, one part of Laos to another, via China, would that this option were only open to foreigners, and you might have a resuscitation of the backpacker market in this region... Which has largely left China out of that equation, not that they'd even know or even care, given the swarms of their own locals that have largely taken over tourist sites once almost the exclusive private reserve of foreigners. But that won't likely happen any time soon, much less the 'Five Chiangs' concept, of somehow re-configuring that original Tai-land... ...proto-state, with one visa for it all, splayed now over four national territories and the upper Mekong River, same as it ever was: Chiang Rung, Xieng Tong (Luang Prabang), Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, and Kyaingtong, which failed to thrive until reconfigured as Lan Na and Lan Xang, long before the modern states of Thailand and Laos came into existence... And the hills of Phongsaly sit overlooking much of that. But first you have to get there, and the fact that the bus driver's helper hands out little plastic bags before the trip should give you a clue. Hint: the bags are not for trash. And so it goes, up and up and up, but not so high, really, just twisting and turning, past the non-descript little burgs of Boun Tai (lower) and Boun Neua (upper), where much of the modern infrastructure of government is being relocated, apparently, as Phongsaly itself retreats further into the clouds... Confirmed upon arrival, the curly twirly road transforms into a curly twirly town, with no real center, much less a red light, or anything fancy like that, just a few key intersections holding place notation, for what constitutes the definition of a city, a place where roads meet and business is transacted, long before houses will be built and babies will be born, far less an entertainment district upon which to flail oneself and desires shamelessly... But the temps are cool, so this would be quite nice in the hot dry season March-May, while all the lowland dogs are dizzying with parched eyes ears nose and throat. And this is still the rainy season, too, though theoretically petering out, but I'm not so sure, as the third day grows torrential, and I'm worried about that patchwork road, and it's not so dirt cheap here, either, much less spectacular, the tribal peoples a bit dogged and tired-looking, a bit the worse for wear... So I leave after four nights, after a long 6-8km/4-5mi hike down down down a long country road and back back back the same way I came, Ban Chantane I believe was the name, calves now aching from the long uphill, and after torrential rains, and forecasting more of the same, figure I might better hoof on out of the woods while I still can, 'cause if that road washes out, then I'll be at the mercy of ditch diggers and tractor drivers, while all the fun is going on down below in the the green beautiful valleys... Ha! Luang Prabang, maybe, the pearl in Lao's oyster, but not UdomXai, just a hard-scrabble crossing, of roads and peoples, but that's okay, 'cause once it gets that groovy 'travel vibe', then it loses whatever authenticity it may once have had, but hard to calculate, because it's just too fluid and changing to measure with any accuracy, the comings and goings of peoples on landscapes, further confused by the dimension of time, and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which makes it impossible to calculate position and momentum simultaneously... And sure enough it happened! We get stuck! Or almost, anyway, the bus unable to climb the muddy hill without sliding into the ditch. So it'll take a wench and a large tractor to get us back mobile, and on into UdomXai before nightfall, rooms at the ready, unlike the previous stop, some four days before, after midnight and all rooms full, just Mary Magdalene roaming the streets looking for something and I not about to be the one to tell her either yes or no... It's better this way, I recovering my travel legs after two months of four walls, steeling myself for the re-entry into China, m*therf*cking China, full of face and lacking in grace and as inevitable as it is unfathomable. And that is my fate. But there is no rush, so first I'll go to Luang Namtha and Muang Sing, the latter apparently fallen from grace since its heydays of the 90's, last time I was there, too, so we'll see... If nothing else, it'll be worth it for the Tai Dam peoples, one of my favorites, and the start of any serious discussion of Tai history and culture. After all I can speak this language, and that's the Holy Grail of travel, chatting up the locals, especially here and Thailand, where people are infinitely chattable. So that's what's for supper tomorrow. And what did you do today? Time-Travel: A Tale of Two Towns in the Laotian Outback... At age 64, and after 155 countries and more than forty years of travel, it's all time-travel now, going back to see something I once saw before, and seeing all the changes that time has wrought, rather than seeing it all virgin-like for the first time, like a gap-year giggly-mouthed googly-eyed greenhorn, that prototypical wide-mouth chin-dropping awe that inspires sales of toothpaste and fashion, featuring credit cards and deodorant, dreams of midnights and long flights, and carrying prophylactics, just in case... But it's all different now. What was once exotic is now just chaotic, and International Standard Pidgin English ensures that you're not likely to miss a meal, unless you really want to. Hard-core travel cowboys consume geography like chocolate cake on Sunday, apps logging miles and journals logging impressions, with an index, and a table of contents, and an itinerary to be followed.... But once upon a time the mark of a true backpacker was his ability to get lost, and find the remotest track to the remotest border crossing in the remotest neck of the remotest woods of the remotest God-forsaken country, with a pristine people and a pristine attitude and a pristine culture, just so that we can change all that, in exchange for some sustenance in the form of a few crusty loaves and a pocket-full of tissues... But most travelers now it seems just want to party, the more the better, vast quantities of alcohol to help ease the transition into a once-foreign culture, locals reduced to extras in their own movie, culture and language just a sideshow for evening entertainment, to hold ones interest between the main acts of daily sightseeing and nightly binge-drinking... But before all this there was pot, grass, weed, joints, spliffs, reefer, marijuana, whatever, you smoke it and it gets you high, or so I hear. And for the really adventurous there was even opium, vestige of the old days here in outback Asia, religion of the masses back when not much else was available, and cash crop for many when the market got excited about heroes and heroin back in the late 20th century flowering of youth culture, and related fashion accessories... And that's where Muang Sing fit right in, a few years before Y2K (remember that?), as Laos re-entered the world after its aborted Communist nightmare, and travelers rushed in to enjoy cheap rooms, cheap highs and all the Lao beer one could drink. So when I stumbled in to Luang Nam Tha around '97-'98 from China, that's where all the travelers were heading, Muang Sing, a couple hours away, and nestled up against a Chinese border crossing that foreigners weren't allowed to use, still aren't... There were hill-tribe peoples there galore, and revolution in the air, Laos still proudly Communist, even if dependent on a helping hand from distant cousin Vietnam, while capitalist big brother Thailand stayed far in the background. I was buying crafts, and they were making them, so plenty of reason to hang around, just to see if something might make a splash in the market... And when I came back around 2002 it was even better, Tai Dam people coming in to the area from over-crowded Vietnam, and inviting me in to their houses, just as if I were one of them, ostensibly to look at crafts, maybe even buy, but no big deal, just chill with or without a deal. And Lao people from all over were coming in, too, just to catch the buzz, and hopefully make a few bucks... Back then Luang Nam Tha was just a stopover on the way there, nothing much to see or do, a provincial government center, and not much else, first stopover on the way in from Yunnan province, China, or connection point up from Huay Xai and Chiang Khong, Thailand, down on the Mekong, all secondary to the main tourist business a day away in Luang Prabang, and another day to the capital Vientiane... But that's all changed. For some reason Muang Sing has dried up, while Luang Nam Tha has made steady gains, if no big deal, but still steady. All the major latter-day-hippie trade in tricks and treats has moved far south to Vang Vieng, between Luang Prabang and Vientiane, and even farther south to the 4000 Islands, near Cambodia... There's little or no indie travel to China here now, even though the road from Thailand is now good, but the travel scene in China has largely dried up, too, for indie travel foreigners, that is, not the Chinese hordes, who have largely repopulated the groovy destinations that backpackers once put on the travel map. Meanwhile the travel scene that barely existed in Cambodia in 1997 is now near saturation, between foreign indies and those same Chinese hordes... And it's impossible not to compare with another prime location some twenty years ago, already written up in these pages a few posts back, i.e. Yangshuo, China, which is now totally overrun by the aforementioned hordes, to the extent that it is now imminently avoidable, and hopefully forgettable, as I struggle to erase it from my short-term memory before it writes itself into long-term. This is the extreme opposite of what has happened in Muang Sing, and honestly, I don't know which is worse, uh-huh. I persevere... YUNNAN 828 Leaving Laos, Enter the Dragon... So the nice lady at the Boten-Mohan border between Laos and China in the far Southwest decided to hassle me about my latest entry into the Kingdom—my fourth over the past year—inquiring as to my motives. “Tourism,” I respond, just like it says on the form. But that doesn't seem to satisfy her. “Sight-seeing,” I add, since I know I'd seen that word on the form, also. I have a ten-year tourist visa, BTW, so 3650 days, plus two or three for leap years, maximum 60 days per entry, so some 600 entries possible (but who's counting?)... Then she asks, in English, if I speak Chinese, so I shrug and respond, “a little.” That's what she wants to hear, I figure. If she wanted to speak Chinese, she'd've asked in Chinese. So she fumes and fusses and calls someone over, who quickly green-lights the entry, but just for a final 'f*ck-you' she holds my passport up to my face as I pass, as if to verify my identity. The passport and picture are less than a year old, so not much has changed, but that's not the point, is it? xTai Bizarro World in China? If I didn't know better, I'd almost swear that on some cosmic drafting table in some corner of the universe there is a blueprint for the Tai diaspora out of China from a couple thousand years ago, or maybe outta' North Vietnam in half that, in which the northern and southern flanks of this proto-Tai state are laid out on either side of what would become Laos like a mirror image of each other, in which the northern Tai towns of Jinghong (Chieng Rung), Mengla, and Mohan (Bor Han) would become Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai and Mae Sai, respectively... And it will take me a cool year or two to become fluent in Mandarin, no matter how hard it try. So Mengla has been my makeshift home for the last three weeks, while I finish my current term for online studies, and plot my next move. Frankly I really don't want to travel much in mainland China, due to the difficulties of indie travel there, here, mostly in the booking of rooms, but that is not so much of a problem here. I've been at the same place for three weeks and never even registered! That would be unthinkable elsewhere, where foreigners are often not even allowed, especially in the cheaper digs, and always thoroughly registered, complete with color glossy photos or at least smartphone pics. Remember that in case you need to 'lay low' somewhere sometime. But don't expect a 'travel vibe' here, as I have yet to see another western soul the whole time. I'm sure Jinghong has more, but not much... The bloom is off the rose in China, and rightfully so, as it ain't so cheap any more, and the hassles are endless. But that's next stop. Fortunately in this neck of the woods cheapie hotels are ubiquitous and not hard to find, so kinda' like the old days where you get off the bus and just start walking, Lonely Planet optional. Forget the booking sites, except for reference, or just to book the first night and then take it from there... Jinghong is perfect, so similar to my erstwhile digs in north Thailand, that they almost share the same language, if you care to take the time to learn it. And no I'm not talking about the lingua franca of Chinese, but the original Tai Lue dialect, so similar to northern Thailand's kam meuang... But these Tai ladies still wear the traditional rags, so as to distinguish themselves from the predominant Chinese, I suppose, something you'd only see in northern Thailand in such out-of-the-way villes as Pai or Mae Sot, where a northern Thai majority is not assured, and so becomes a matter of pride, similar to the African dress of Trinidadians, where a black majority of the population may or may not exist, and where such clothing doesn't exist elsewhere in the Caribbean where blacks indeed do have the majority... But Jinghong resembles Chiang Mai more than Chiang Rai, if only for the larger population and greater stategic importance, even if Jinghong is much more attractive, really, with its tree-lined streets, of mostly palm, something any place in Thailand could only dream of, that and clear clean sidewalks, which you do have to share with the occasional motorbike, unfortunately, but still... So my new project now is to learn the Tai Lue alphabet, so as to learn the Tai Lue language, half of which I know already, but I just don't know which half, and to learn Chinese characters, also, except in the case where I already know the Chinese character, so compare it to the Tai Lue script, to see if I'm right or if I'm wrong, or if it's a phonetic transcription of the Chinese character, or a definition thereof, or if by luck there's some Latin letters, too, then I'm in alpha beta heaven, no quibble between us where there's no stones to be thrown, Rosetta stone, that is... And so for kicks I go to the nearby town of Menghai, which apparently hasn't seen a foreign Westerner in many many years, judging by their reaction to me, ranging from fear, to endearment, to outright befuddlement, but the city's no beauty, and the altitude guarantees a chill, so I put it on the back burner for the hot season, just in case I have no other way to beat the heat... And that’s just about a wrap, for me, at least, with probably six months in China over the previous two years and with most of that in Yunnan, including the Tai far south and the Tibetan far north, in addition to Sichuan to the direct east and Guangxi and Guangzhou to the far southeast, all the way to Hong Kong. Still my favorite day was in the Xishuangbanna town of Mengla, already mentioned, when and where I was invited to attend a wedding celebration between two local Tai youths tying knots and what-not while I watched as Buddhist monks presided over the ceremonies and I spoke Tai Lue as best I could with the peeps, the final swirl to the linguistic dressing of Tai dialects that I’ve been rehearsing over my many years there. The same is true for the Kingdom of Laos. There isn’t time or space nor easily available pictures to rehash it all here, but much , if not all is available on my Backpackers/Flashpackers blog on Wordpress. There won’t be many more video episodes of Hypertravel with Hardie for better or worse, but i can put it all in book format, if the demand exists. Please like and subscribe.

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