Back in my home away from home. Great to be in the sun among the friendly smiles, the laughter, the warmth of Thailand. Left Ireland in a downpour and had a hurried departure from Kenmare. Was racing around doing all the last minute chores like turning off water, gas, unplugging etc when a saw this big face at the window - the first of a herd of cows merrily sinking their hooves in to the soggy ground creating huge holes. Needless to say trying to chase them with a stick resulted in their scattering all over the place so you can picture me sinking too in the lashing rain. Anyway that was the start of this adventure so I was relieved to arrive here having made the connections in time.I'm back in my old room in my old "faulty towers" hotel with the very nice staff. It is situated inside the walls of the old city here so I stay just inside the surrounding moat. Lovely to see the daily quiet little ceremony in the early morning when a member of staff solemnly bows before the spirit house outside the hotel,joins hands in a wai, meditates a few minutes and scurries back and forth putting flowers, coconuts, whiskey, water, all kinds of fruits and incense and candles before the spirits and ancestors each time kicking on and off his/her shoes before presenting each gift. There's none of the hurry of our world here.
My bike had been pumped up by nice friends and I could take off through these lanes immediately although the bike is seeing the worst of wear and getting rusty having been outside all these months. Lovely to see that my favourite tiny Thai outdoor eating place was open so had my favourite Khow Soi the northern specialty noodle soup made with both soft and crispy noodles. Since the downturn has also hit Thailand of course the welcome everywhere was even more than usual - being greeted as an old friend even on the second visit to a new eating or drinking place. The Thais are masters of hospitality and making one feel popular. Still it is not just on the surface, so many times they're really guessing needs and being helpful like last night when having a beer in a music bar the waitress could see that I wanted something to eat but they didn't have much in the food line so she said she'd go around the corner and bring back some food. When they sent it back with plastic fork and spoon (which was fine with me) she gave me the real thing with a napkin. Just little things like that make life so easy.
When I forgot my camera at a fair last Sunday the lady who found it returned it to my hotel today (Tuesday) going out of her way to do so. Wonderful people. There is laughter every where that Thai people collect together. They knock fun out of almost every situation.
Cycling in the city in the early morning (early for me, but late for them) lets me see all those market people already packing up their goods. Mostly they squat along the streets and spread out their wares on bamboo or cloth although there's also indoor markets in most areas with stalls. Many of them just sell one thing like eggs or cooked corn on the cob. Many people have mobile shops either in baskets suspended on each end of a rod carried on the shoulders or in a cart, while vendors of fruit, brooms and food often pile them in to a side cage on a motorbike and bring them up and down these lanes so one doesn't have to go to a shop. One of the pictures below shows the woman just leaving our hotel with her fruit. She comes daily. In the evenings big carts are wheeled in to place along the streets, often by tiny women who have all their supplies arranged in the small space and they're ready to cook in just a few minutes. They plug in to electricity black cords taped along the pavements (no idea how they pay for that)get out their gas bottle, the wok or grill, the buckets of water that will be poured in to a plastic large basin for washing the dishes in between customers, they start chopping with huge cleavers, meat, veg, fresh herbs and all the dishes you can imagine come out of that little cart and it is rare to find poor food in Thailand. That's where most Thais regularly eat and they seem to eat about every 2 hours especially rice or noodle dishes.
Have started returning to all those little music spots at night, going to the colourful hilltribe market, and I also arrived in time for the second week of the EU film festival here. It's great to be able to see such art films from almost every European country so some days went to several films Entry costs a little more than a euro.
I had better stop rambling on. I thought that I would try a blog instead of travel letters and just write a little bit now and again that might be of interest. I'll put in the names of places and restaurants that those of you who come to Thailand may want to visit and include pictures sometimes. Those of you who have received my letters for many years will have read so much about this area that there's not much that I can write but the blog about my planned trips to Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal should be new and interesting.
For anyone who needs more information just send me an email.
There's a real need to study in between. This is just such a hard language to learn and my old grey head doesn't cooperate as quickly as it used to. There's 44 consonants, 32 vowels, tone marks and various symbols for punctuation as they don't have any commas or full stops. I am not planning to get as far as reading but do want to understand notices, names of places etc. Our teachers all look like teenagers with long black hair, they dress in little children's dresses and wear backless heeled shoes that go clack clack up and down the stairs. Three of the teachers are on the right.
toilets these signs are considered necessary in many western loos.
