Five flavours: Day 14 Chiang Mai

Soundtrack: “It’s Raining Men”, The Pointer Sisters

One of the inconvenient things about going to the tropics during the rainy season is that, well, it will almost certainly rain. Totally inconvenient, who would have known that would happen. So, believe it or not, today it rained. In Thai food heat levels, it rained a little bit. It wasn’t tropical monsoonal downpour heavy, mostly just a drizzle or slightly above — I don’t know how to describe it in meteorological terms, it was less than the rain in a hard boiled detective novel, but more than a fine mist rolling over the moors.

I managed to book the hotel breakfast, and as this part of town doesn’t have a lot of other early morning options, I went for it. A noodle dish, some mystery meat sausages, and a couple of eggs, simple but tasty. The plan was to head into the old walled city, eat whatever looked good, and generally not walk tens of thousands of steps. To stay hydrated, and check out anything interesting. The rain held off for a while, keeping things nice and cool, but then became persistent enough that the best solution would be to sit out front of a juice shop sipping on a dragon fruit smoothie until it passed, which is exactly what I did. Pink/red dragon fruit is so good, refreshing, there’s something to the flavour that says pink but in a whisper, not a shout.

With the rain easing, I headed around the corner for a foot massage, at the Women’s Massage Centre by Ex-Prisoners. I know almost absolutely nothing about the justice/correctional system in Thailand, other than they can lock you up for saying bad things about the royal family, and they also have the death penalty for some things. I will however assume that like pretty much every other country in the world, women, especially women from lower socio-economic backgrounds, tend to get a bit of a dud deal. Which makes endeavours such as this massage centre, by giving previously incarcerated women an opportunity to undertake meaningful work, gain valuable skills, and earn a hopefully livable income, incredibly worthwhile. I don’t know the reason why my masseuse did time, I feel it would have been rude and uncomfortable to ask even if we both had a language in common. Maybe she stole a loaf of bread to feed her family (they don’t ship folks to Australia for than anymore), maybe she fell in with a bad crowd stealing hearts, maybe she was the boss of a crime family running illegal casinos, or maybe she shot a man in Phuket just to watch him die. We’ll never know. I do know that she gave my feet a wonderful working over, both with hands and the little wooden tool they use here to prod and scrape. At the end of the hour my feet felt amazing.

Not too far away was the Blue Noodle Shop, which is apparently quite famous. There was a queue when I arrived, but they conveniently place stools for the waiting hungry masses. The noodles aren’t blue, but the serving bowls are; I don’t know if they got the name because they used the bowls, or came up with the name first. They basically do two dishes, with variants of each, either noodles with beef, or noodles with pork. It’s a great bit of maths, making a full menu from a simple place: then it’s either dry noodle or with soup, and different combinations of beef or pork balls, well cooked or slightly cooked beef, well cooked or minced pork. I went for the beef soup and it was a treat, well cooked beef almost falling apart, a salty broth I added some extra chilli to, thin wheat noodles, and some random bits of green. I also had a little bag of dried pork crackling, so good and salty, and a sweet roselle juice, which seems to be a popular drink, basically a hibiscus flower extract with lots of extra sugar. Roselle definitely says pink louder than dragon fruit.

From the Blue Noodle Shop I spied a shop called Red Tea, so figured I had to keep the colour theme going. I am a sucker for iced red Thai milky tea, in the heat it’s the perfect combination of tea, sugar, and milk, the slightly floral flavour of the tea, it managed to deliver a strong tea taste that is so different to just making a cup of normal black tea with milk and letting it go cold. I guess having a lot of sugar helps.

After a hotel break to blog and dry off, I headed out to pick up my laundry. Ironically, as I type this, a day later, I was reminded that I needed to drop off some more laundry, and as I got up and looked out the window noticed the heavens have again opened up over Chiang Mai, and quite heavily, so I won’t be going out and dropping off any more laundry for a while.

I grabbed dinner from various stalls in the night market, first was a Chiang Mai sausage, a collection of mystery meat and lemongrass, with a little bit of chilli. Then while I waited for some grilled octopus, I got a stick of some other mystery meatballs, which were okay. The grilled octopus was delicious, a generous serve of tender tasty seafood. Just so you don’t worry about the balance of my diet, I got some fruit and vegetables through an avocado smoothie, and some mango sticky rice.

Tonight’s entertainment was the Chiang Mai Cabaret, a fabulous drag show held in a corner of the night market. Before the show the performers circulate through the market handing out flyers in full costume, and a couple recognised me from my last visit. I figured that would either make the show a great one for me, or put a target on me. That’s just how it goes. I needn’t have worried, as the crowd included a large tour group who had booked the prime tables, and the queens targeted several of the middle-aged gents in the group as it guaranteed a bigger response from the crowd. I guess that’s a downside of being a solo traveller, queens tend to pick people in groups to get the best reaction, as attendees will cheer more for the folks they know. And I’m okay with that, let the tours get the full experience, memories, and stories they’ll tell for a long time: I’m happy to show up, spend some cash, and to be in a place where shows like this are possible.

Real time interruption: and just like that, the rain pauses and a rainbow appears over Chiang Mai. I also get to wear clean clothes and won’t be packing a suitcase entirely full of dirty washing.

The show was fabulous, lots of sparkly costumes and ensemble numbers, amazing headwear, laser lights, and one of the queens did some spectacular aerial work suspended above the crowd. The soundtrack was a mix of old and new, I might be the last person on the planet to get a little buzz seeing queens lip-sync to “Fame” but I’m going to own it. Last time I saw the show they performed “It’s Raining Men” at close to 1030pm, which I will forever smile about, though this time it was earlier, just before 10pm. Oh well. The queens worked the crowd, and the crowd responded, it was a happy place. The owner, Miss Lily performed and had a great time with the audience. While there was a fair amount of cross-over between the music for the Stranger Bar and 6ixcret Show (I believe the two are sister-bars), there were a lot of different songs at the Cabaret, and Beyonce was not in the house tonight. It’s interesting that both the Cabaret and 6ixcret finish their shows with an ABBA medley.

After the show there was time to give some tips and take some pics (remember, always tip your queens), then head back to my hotel. I promptly realised I’d left my over the shoulder day satchel on a chair at the cabaret, so I dashed headlong back in the hope the venue was still open. It was, they were ushering the last stragglers out, and had been keeping an eye on my bag. Big sigh of relief.

Back at the hotel the adrenaline wore off, and my body had no problem with going to bed before midnight. I’ve booked an archery session at The Arrow Rest tomorrow morning, so figure a decent amount of sleep ahead of handling dangerous pointy things is recommended.