Five flavours: Day 16 Chiang Mai

Soundtrack: “Hit me with your best shot”, Pat Benatar

Last full day in Chiang Mai, last full day anywhere on this trip, so it’s go hard and then go home.

Woke up with plenty of time to do the same hotel breakfast, then get a rideshare to The Arrow Rest. Even the traffic was running early, so I wandered a couple of minutes up the road to a little cafe and bakery. I was hoping for a little pastry or something, but they only had cake. I went for a slice of a double layer mango cheese cake, and a cup of a coffee crime.

I’ll be honest, it took a while for me to get on board with ca phe sua da, but now am a full fan. While it’s not a coffee I could have all the time, it definitely fulfils a need. I’m even on board with all the Vietnamese variants, egg coffee, coconut, even the salted coffee.

I doubt that a shot of coffee poured over a cup of orange juice and ice is ever going to fulfil any need. It’s just how you imagine it, like taking fast alternate sips of cold black coffee and orange juice. It makes the orange juice taste coffee flavoured, and the coffee taste of orange juice. I like coffee, and I like orange juice, but even if I’m in a hurry to get through breakfast I’m never going to put them both in the same cup. As The Offspring say, gotta keep ’em separated.

The cake was delicious, a mango mousse layer on a baked mango cheesecake, with more fresh mango on top. Smooth, creamy and unsurprisingly tasting of mango.

Spent a wonderful hour at The Arrow Rest, avenging all of the papercuts inflicted on humanity. By the end I was shooting at (and hitting) the target from a decent distance, maybe 15 metres or more. And aside from a few stray tired shots into the black and white rings, I was mostly hitting the inner rings. I’d definitely improved from yesterday.

I headed a little further down the road for post archery brunch today, a slightly larger place that had at least 4 tables, no English menu, but with a bit of pointing and a pet nit noi I was soon enjoying a wonderfully fresh and delicious ka prao, with just enough spice to keep me sweating. Again, it’s places like this away from the tourist centric areas that make me love travel, places where good food can be found cheaply: give me a fan occasionally blowing in my direction, a plastic chair, and the sound of a wok frying.

From The Arrow Rest is was back to Womens Massage Centre by ex-prisoners to get pummelled all over. I thought I was heading back to the same place as yesterday, but grab took me to a different one, as it turns out that Chiang Mai has several of these. A bit sad really, both that there are enough formerly incarcerated women to staff multiple establishments, and the thought that while these are a good thing, hopefully former inmates are given opportunities and training for new careers other than massage. As I said, I’m very ignorant in this stuff, but I’d like to live in a world where former inmates get a second chance in a variety of industries. And maybe they do, just without the tagline, maybe Butchery by ex-prisoners or Accountants by ex-prisoners just doesn’t fly with marketing.

Today I went for a full Thai massage, as I figured after the archery my shoulders and back would appreciate it. It’s been a while since I’ve had this massage style, and I’d kinda forgotten all that it entails. Two metaphors come to mind. The first is that they sell toy blocks of butter here, that appear to have the same composition as stress balls, all squeezy (as I write this I’m beginning to think I should have got a few, because who doesn’t love a butter stress ball); part of the massage was like being that stress ball, squished and poked and stretched and contorted. The other is of a human rowing machine, limbs being yanked in all directions, the masseuse sitting on my legs, pulling my arms back, and digging her feet into my back. As with yesterday’s masseuse, I don’t know what she was in for, but she wouldn’t have had to shoot that guy in Phuket, she could have strangled him with her bare hands. It felt good afterwards, but I’m not sure how much of that was the adrenaline wearing off.

I found an interesting looking second hand book shop on the walk back to the hotel. The front room had shelves piled high, with enticing labels like “more mystery upstairs”. Part of the mystery may well have been where upstairs actually was, as we’re talking a labyrinth of a store. I eventually found my way through to the back and a set of stairs, however as these were guarded by a comfortable looking cat that I didn’t want to disturb, I’ll never solve the mystery.

Sunday is Chiang Mai’s Walking Street Night Market. What this means is that the main streets in the old city are narrowed and filled with stalls selling all manner of souvenirs and art and stuff, and every tourist in town that day is compelled to walk slowly through these in a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare. Having walked past numerous tuk tuks every day and declining their offers to take me places for a chunk of change, this time I relented and saved my feet a bunch of steps. Sure they are probably the most expensive means of road travel here, they do offer the extra exhilaration of zooming through the streets in a tricycle fitted with the loudest engine known to humankind. If even half of the noise energy these create could be converted to propulsion, they could fly.

I guess there’s no escaping it, urban Thailand is noisy. Whether it’s tuk tuks, other vehicles, air conditioners, fans, tourists, locals, sound systems, trains, there’s always a decent baseline of decibels going on. I think if you took a Thai who’d only known the urban life, and put them in a soundproof room, they’d likely freak out. “Everything louder than everything else” descibes the place perfectly.

I think I talked about the Sunday market last time I was here, the heaving throng of humanity, etc. If not then just imagine trying to leave a stadium after a concert, but the exits are lined with fan merch. And it goes for kilometres, while at the same time the folks are arriving and trying to enter the stadium, but some are also checking out the merch, while others are trying to find their seat. I don’t know where all these folks have come from, given Chiang Mai hasn’t seemed that busy the last few days, but here they are.
I first found refuge down a narrow laneway lined with food stalls, including one grilling all manner of good things. I was grabbed by the enoki mushrooms wrapped in pork belly, which appears to be synonymous with bacon here. Add to that a skewer of sausage wrapped in more pork belly, and one of grilled squid, and I felt up to braving the crowds a little further.

A little further involved another eating laneway. I was intrigued by the vegetarian options, nutty skewers wrapped in betel leaves or mustard leaves. Peanut and coconut, what’s not to like? There were prawn doughnuts, deep fried prawn fritters served with a semi-sweet syrup that surprisingly didn’t ruin everything. I like my prawns savory, though I do see the appeal of honey prawns. While seated at the world’s lowest table eating these, I got talking with a Dutch family recently arrived in town, and I asked if they’d tried durian. The dad hadn’t yet, but the mum had, coming from a Dutch-Indonesian background. I mentioned the repeating, and she replied that everyone burps durian for hours after eating it.

Onwards through the rabble and I saw a sign promising to make all my dreams come true: durian sticky rice. Even with the prospect of the durian repeating on me, I couldn’t pass it up. The restaurant was busy, so it took an unusually long time for the food to get to me. When it finally came out, I was looking at a decent sized piece of durian, a mound of coconut sticky rice, and instead of the usual pot of coconut milk, the durian was served with a warm durian and coconut syrup. I don’t know what variety of durian it was, probably not the most famous, Musang King, as it was a little more fibrous, less creamy, and definitely less pungent.
Durian fix fulfilled, I dived back into the river of humanity. It was now time to shop for souvenirs for the folks back home, of which there were many choices. These included numerous apparently “hand made” items that all looked very similar, wooden carved frogs that made a croaking sound when the back spine was played with a drum stick — these were everywhere so it sounded like the market had been struck by a plague of frogs, clothes (spoiler alert: I did not buy any elephant print pants), wood carvings (I’m sure Australian customs would love to check those out, same with the nuts, spices, seeds etc). Some places were selling things I couldn’t ever imagine anyone buying, like 7-eleven bootleg branded socks.

Armed with a bag of loot, I started heading back to the Tha Phae Gate and freedom. This was slow going, obviously, so I needed to stop at a stall selling deep fried milk. I’m not entirely sure what they were, just crunchy cubes of something that tasted of dairy. I was invited to add my own condensed milk to the cup, and to avoid a potential international incident I was very restrained. Ahead the gate beckoned, I just needed to keep my head above the teeming sea of people (including the clown who decided they had to wheel a bicycle through it all).

Souvenir duties done, it was time to drop the swag at the hotel and head out one last time to 6ixcret show. As a precaution I checked back over my pics from a few nights ago, and confirmed I was wearing the same shirt, so a costume change was necessary.

They mix it up each night at 6ixcret show, so there were some numbers I’d seen before, but a bunch of new ones too. The crowd was smaller, so I got a good seat close to the action. For a while it looked like I’d be the only caucasian in the house, but some stragglers wandered in right on show time. There were some big ensemble numbers, solos, a dazzling display of laster light costumes (I really should work out how to get or make those laser gloves), fire, Beyonce (though this time it was the Whitney version of “I will always love you”), Lady Gaga, athletics, audience participation, tipping, and a great time was had by all. There weren’t any aerial stunts, but for one number the queen was lifted until she could touch the roof. For dietary reasons I chose to drink a couple of mojitos, as I’m sure the mint would help soothe any stomach grumbles the durian might cause.

Sadly, just like that night back in ’63, the evening ended too soon and I said my last goodbyes for this trip. Some final selfies, and then I was strolling back to the hotel. I packed what I could, leaving out my sweaty shirts to dry in the overnight aircon, and it was goodnight from me.