Five flavours: Day 13 Bangkok to Chiang Mai

Soundtrack: “Young and Beautiful”, Lana del Rey

It probably says something about the last few days that I slept almost okay the night before a flight. I woke up once or twice too often, and certainly didn’t feel refreshed and bouncing by the time the alarm went off, but I’ve definitely had worst nights this (and other) trips.

It wasn’t the most organised and elegant packing job, but everything fit okay. It’s just over an hour to fly from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, so while I packed essentials into hand luggage, I wasn’t too fussed about making sure I had a book to read and stuff like that. There’s also an overnight train for the same journey, which L and I took some years ago, but it gets to Chiang Mai too early to then check into hotel.

I started this leg not really liking Bangkok, based on two previous visits. I now think I like Bangkok, or at least parts of it. I seemed to find that the further away from the noise, tourists, and soullessness of Sukhumvit Road, the more I enjoyed it. Part of me wants to go back, just to ride the buses around (the EV ones) various neighbourhoods, getting off at random stops and checking out all of the interesting things. To wander other night markets picking up lots of little tasty offerings. To have the time to relax a little, sleep in after late nights, just spend time sitting on benches in Lumphini Park watching the reptilian monitors. I still don’t love Bangkok, but found myself enjoying it most when I let myself wander without having to be somewhere at a specific time, away from the most heavily tourist parts. If I do ever make it back to Bangkok, I think I’d pick a different neighbourhood to stay, though my only real regret at my Sukhumvit stay was not trying out the vending machine in the carpark that had lots of wild suggestions.

I left plenty of time to get to the airport, as I don’t think anyone should ever trust Bangkok traffic. I couldn’t find a place to get some chocolates for the air crew, so if any of them ever hear about this, my apologies. I stopped for breakfast at Asian Corner, where I’m pretty sure I got the congee on a previous trip. Sadly they were out of congee, but I could have rice porridge. I don’t know what rice porridge actually is, and the pics didn’t look appealing, so I went with tom yum instead, as well as a coconut smoothie. It was risky, as I was wearing one of my favourite light coloured and patterned linen shirts. I don’t regret this life choice, as it was a very tasty tom yum, and I didn’t splash any. Tom yum, like many Thai foods, is a treat when done well, a soup heavy with lemongrass, some chilli, and tomato sweetness, backed up with other spices and kaffir lime. For an airport offering, this was very decent.

I really should correct my ignorance of rice porridge one day. But not today. I also know I need to stop using kaffir lime and replace it with one of its non-racist names. One step at a time.

The flight was fine, on Thai Airways, the only non-budget airline this trip, even without the thank you gift for the flight crew. They served a purple chicken salad wrap, and it was pretty decent. Supposedly with a siracha mayonnaise, I didn’t get a lot of heat but it certainly had good flavour.

Chiang Mai, Thailand’s largest city in the north west. Frequent readers will remember it as the home of khao soi, or of the wonderful drag show at 6ixcret club. It has an old city, bounded by a moat and remnants of city walls, and then spreads out with modern shiny patches. It’s definitely a change of pace from Bangkok, I didn’t hear a single car horn in the short ride to the hotel. I’m staying at the same place I did last time, but I don’t think my room is as good, it feels a bit bare. It’s definitely not a boutique hotel, just a three-star establishment in a convenient location equidistant to two drag shows and within tripping distance of several food markets.

Based on last visit, I planned to get to hotel a little after 1pm, get told it was too early to check in, then go and take my laundry to a local place and get an hour foot massage and be back in time to check in. As the flight was delayed a little, I got to the hotel at 1.50pm, that uncomfortable time where I wondered if the staff, sitting behind the big sign saying check-in from 2pm, will let me in early. Fortunately they did. Up in the room, I remembered the aircon was a little annoying last visit, so I held off unpacking until I got that going. I got it pointing not directly at the bed, but it was certainly making a racket, so I went downstairs and let them know. Told they’d get a technician to look at it, I grabbed my laundry and took a bit of a walk around the neighbourhood. It hasn’t changed greatly in the last 15 months. I found a little place selling khao soi and mango smoothies (honestly, not a hugely difficult task in Chiang Mai) and had a late lunch of the delicious slightly spicy turmeric soup, two types of noodles, and chicken that was thigh meat cooked just right and off the bone. And I’m very much going to miss the cheap and plentiful mangoes when I have to go home.

Back at the hotel I spoke to a different person on reception, who didn’t know if the technician had looked at my air-con, so I went up in hope. Soon after the “technician”, aka hotel handy dude, arrived. Of course by then the box had been running a while so it was only occasionally noisy, not the racket that it had been. His suggestion was to keep it on auto, rather than cooling, and it should run quieter and do the same job. As it was cooler in the room and quieter, I’ll let it go for now and see.

Took a stroll around the various close night markets for dinner, where there are both many choices and also a lot of the same thing. Gyoza seems to be a popular choice, at least for people wanting to open a stall, as there are many around, though they didn’t have big queues. To be honest, Chiang Mai feels a little quieter this time, so few places had any queues. But certainly a lot of gyoza and other Japanese options around. Instead I went to a Thai street food place. The customer ahead of me seemed to take a while getting the order right, and was told “10 minutes”. I then stepped up and said “pad see-ieuw” and the server’s face lit up like I was the only person she’d seen tonight use the Thai name for something other than pad Thai (when I was pretty much guessing the flat noodles with soy sauce was pad see-ieuw and not some other name), and I was given “5 minutes”. Time for me to get a small beer (the bar here had 620mL and 330mL bottles) and some deep fried chicken skin garnished with crispy fried kaffir lime leaves. All the food was so good, tasty, from the salty crunch of the chicken skin to the deep flavours of the noodles and sauce, plus some extra chilli.

Dessert had to be sticky mango rice, and it’s so good everywhere here. It delivers what it says on the tin, plus the bonus of coconut cream. I’m pretty sure that if left unsupervised too long, I could develop a serious coconut cream habit.

The icing on the cake was heading back to 6ixcret club for the show. The first time L and I went, at no point was the audience greater than 4, yet they still did the full show for us. Every time since the crowds have been bigger, which is a good thing, even if it means I squeeze into a table down the back. 6ixcret (which they just say “secret”) advertises a 930pm show start, and to be fair drag queen time here makes that about 945pm. The crowd was probably about 90% tourists, and 70% heterosexual females, but at least no hen’s groups. I settled into a little table and ordered a mojito so I could get some more fruit in the diet.

It was also about 1% clueless. I’d noticed a lovely border collie tied up in front of the venue, at least with a water bowl, when I arrived. My table meant I could see it during the show, mostly just sleeping but occasionally getting attention from passers by. During the first interval, some venue staff were checking on the dog, but other than that I hadn’t seen any customers checking. As the second set started, and folks came back in, the dog was definitely restless, and agitated, so I went out to check on it. Sure I’m not a trained animal handler, but I’ve been around dogs long enough to know that if they are panting, shaking, and giving wide-eyed stares while their chest is going like a rocket, they aren’t content. I managed to get the dog to lick some water off my hand from a dish of iced water that had been left, and when a club staff came out to ask if I was coming back in, I asked her if she knew who the dog’s owner was, and if she could bring some room temperature water as the dog clearly wasn’t having a great time. She told me it was a customer who’d brought their dog, and she’d have a word. When the customer came out, thanks to google translate I was able to hopefully communicate all the signs of distress the dog was showing. Her response was she’d leave in 5 minutes, and went back inside. There were a couple of us doing our bit to keep the dog calm, but having seen its owner it was clearly wanting to just be with her. Fortunately she did come back in a few minutes, and the dog seemed eager to be away from the place. In hindsight I wonder if the dog needed to go to the toilet as well, and wasn’t going to mess where it had been left. I’m grateful that the owner seemed to at least decide to care about their companion animal, but really, who brings a medium haired dog out on a tropical night, leaves it chained up outside a loud venue, and doesn’t constantly come out to check on it and provide reassurance.

The dog episode just put a bit of a dampener on the whole evening. I think I did the right thing, at least as much as I could, but it still bugs me a little as I write this over 15 hours later.

Aside from that, the performances were amazing, there was the surreality of watching Thai queens balanced precariously on chairs performing “Mein Herr” from Cabaret (doing a brilliant job I should add), other amazing group numbers with showgirl outfits, it’s amazing how many feathers you can fit on a small stage, plus some light up costumes. There were performances to Lady Gaga, Lana del Rey (“Young and Beautiful” seems to be big in Thai drag, as Amora also performed this at Stranger bar), Beyonce (I need to correct my previous reference to Whitney’s “I will always love you” at Stranger bar, I thought this was Whitney remixed with Beyonce, but it’s Beyonce live doing a medley of “I will always love you” and “Halo”), and other songs I recognised but as they were released in the last 20 years I have no idea who the artist is. All had great performances. Probably the only thing toned down this time was the bar on fire bit, it was definitely shorter, I don’t know if that was the preference of the queen performing, or if OSH got involved. It was still amazing.

My ears ringing, my heart full of joy, I stopped off for some supplies before having a comparatively early night.