Oh Brave New World. With Fingerprints.

I blame.it all on Hong Kong. It is the tablet center of the world and everyone, regardless of economic level, was chatting, snapping, and cavorting with their iPads, Galaxies, and other toys. Bangkok was almost as bad; I was lucky. It wasn't until I reached Korat that I needed to buy a new battery for my Nokia (circa 2008).

In the Northeast people are less affluent and more frugal. Nobody laughed or jeered at the sight of my  Stone Age mobile and I was grateful. But the weight of the bag I carried throughout my journey became a chore. In it was my netbook, my camera, a notebook, a newspaper, books, and magazines. It weighed a lot.

To make things worse, the battery case on my netbook was cracked and broken. Its battery life was short so I also carried its power cord for electric outlets. When I asked where I might find a replacement, that was when I faced public ridicule. Tablets had replaced my netbook, and Microsoft was retiring XP.

On my flight back to the states, I made a rapid dash through Incheon to catch my connecting flight, carrying my satchel of everything I needed for a trans-Pacific flight. As soon as I was functional at the end of my trip home, I took a baby step into the 21st century. I bought an iPad mini.

It is far from love at first sight. There's a learning curve involved and I'm slow at these things. It is however disgustingly convenient. I use it for my initial email check over morning coffee and I just caught up with the Bangkok Post. I was told I can edit PDFs on it and photos look marvelous on its screen. I know full well it's a gateway drug; I'm entertaining thoughts of making my next computer a Mac. And I'm writing this on my mini, thinking how much easier it might be to use a real iPad.

Now if Apple would only do something about the way the screen attracts fingerprints...

Death Buses: Extreme Travel in Thailand

I didn't want to leave Nakhon Phanom for Bangkok, but decided since I had to do it, I'd take a VIP bus back to the capitol, with a window seat and a daytime departure so I could see the area that I love right up until I entered the central plains. The cost was almost as much as a budget air ticket but the weight of my bag, bulging with small presents and dirty clothes, would change that equation--plus my trip in general was cramming me into far too many economy plane seats.

At the bus station, I learned that the VIP buses left only at night. "But," the clerk told me, "there is an ordinary bus to Bangkok that leaves in the morning."

I've done inter-city travel on ordinary buses before, but never a long-distance trip. "Is there air conditioning?"

"Oh, yes," the clerk assured me, "but no bathroom."

"So I'm going to be on a bus for twelve hours with no bathroom?"

"Yes, but it makes many stops along the way."

On the morning of my departure, I looked for the small orange bus that I thought would take me through northeastern Thailand but was directed to a large double-decker where I was on the upper level. There had been many highway tragedies on double-decker buses but I consoled myself with the memory that my bus trips from neighboring Mukdahan to Bangkok had gone through terrain that was unmenacingly flat. As long as the driver was well rested, we should have a fighting chance for a placid, uneventful ride.

Which we did, until we passed Udon Thani--then the bus began to negotiate dramatic curves that snaked unmistakably upward. The road was a simple and narrow country lane and when we passed slower vehicles, speeding into the area for oncoming traffic, the process was a diverting one. The curves became more frequent as the climb went higher and through the roadside greenery I had a spectacular view onto the countryside below. This wasn't what I'd bargained for and as we passed temples, I swiftly asked every Buddha I could see to ensure that our brakes didn't fail and that no curves were taken in a precipitous manner. The national park on a small mountain that we traveled through was an attractive one but all that I paid attention to were the Buddhas.

The trip was actually more comfortable than many VIP buses had given me in the past. There was no inedible "free" food handed out by an attendant, the TV screens remained miraculously silent for the entire journey, and the stops provided the necessary bathroom breaks with a chance to buy water and snacks. Best of all, our driver erred on the side of caution, for which I was profoundly grateful. There was no time that  the bus tilted ominously as it rounded a corner. I'd experienced that on other trips and never wanted to repeat that sensation again.

In the week before I left Bangkok, there was a horrific bus tragedy that killed children on a school trip from the northeast to the coast. Since I returned to the States, there have been at least two more. I'm willing to bet that these accidents all involved double-decker buses.

I'll travel in Thailand again but never on one of those buses. They're designed for within-city stop and go travel, not long journeys overland on country roads and certainly not for mountain roadtrips. Trains are slow and dirty but their safety record is far better than the more comfortable buses. I'll take that...I hope you will too.

Small Familiar Pleasures

After being away for ten weeks, coming home to my apartment in Chinatown has its charms.

I'd forgotten the dazzling light that comes from having big windows at either end of my living room. When I first arrived on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, I felt like a mole who emerged into full sunshine. The brightness almost hurt my eyes.

For almost 70 mornings, I drank my first cups of coffee either sitting on my bed or on a straight chair. Although I propped myself against a pillow or two, it still lacked the luxurious comfort of drinking it while nestled into a couch. (Thank you, Ikea.)

Showers are invigorating and I was lucky to have hot water in every room I inhabited. However nothing matches the luxury and joy of a hot bath before bed. Beyond bliss, I tell you.

And when I leave my apartment, it's not unusual to run into friends on the street and stop for a quick chat. Seattle is still the sort of city where this happens often; in Hong Kong or Bangkok it's a minor miracle. After weeks of depending on Facebook for random encounters, the delight of real-time chats is nourishing.

I love to travel and hope to do much more of it, but in the end, the best part is coming home.

Stepping In, Stepping Out

I've lived a lot of my life on Soi Chokchai Ruammit. I've made good friends here, most of whom are now gone from this place. I fell in love here, I worked here, ate here, and at one point starved here when the baht plunged and the economy dissolved.

It's a place I lived in, thoroughly and wholeheartedly; it is not a place that is easy for me to visit. Bumping into memories at every little shophouse corner, it doesn't take long for me to think of getting an apartment or even a house and settling back into the newest version of this small world.

There are people I remember and who still remember me. Like any small town, the inhabitants have become interknit and I am a tiny, idiosyncratic thread in that fabric.

Tonight the friendliest songtao driver pulled over and invited me to sit with him in the cab of his pickup for the short jaunt to the other end of the road. We passed a little dark shop where I used to buy my drinking water in huge bottles; a man who is the thinnest guy in the world and has lived across from my latest dwelling place for years was inflicting Thai boxing kicks on a man who works in a repair shop. They both looked deadly serious.

The sun was setting bright red at the end of the soi when I picked up my newly repaired handbag that had lost its stitching in a crucial place two weeks after I'd bought it. "No charge," the shop owner said, even though he had to rush the repair much more quickly than he wanted to. He's new to Chokchai Ruammit. His shop has huge glass windows filled with leather handbags in brilliant colors. It's the only pretty storefront in the neighborhood.

I stopped at the Tesco Lotus opposite the small street where I've lived off and on for years--Maew Daeng--Red Cat soi. On my last two trips I refused to walk down that lane--it's a minefield of memory. But I forgot how dangerous revisiting a small supermarket can be. This is where I bought catfood for Smeegle, where I picked up tonic water for cocktail hour on the roof with my brother Rod, where I spent a lot of time since it first opened during my last Thai incarnation. As I grabbed a beer and some corn chips, my life folded in on itself and I was ready to walk down Maew Daeng to the house where Smeegle and Rod and I used to live.

I got in another songtao instead and saw familiar faces--the grandfather who owns a little hardware store whose grandson is school age by now, the man whose wife has always been so sweet when I've gone to her store for necessities of life like brooms and coffee cups, the stern soup sister who stopped frowning at me oh...ten years ago?

I made it back to my apartment before I began to cry, missing people I have loved, missing the kinder person I am when I live here, missing my life on a soi that just doesn't change. I really can't live here and there are things about it that make me scream silently when I come to visit, but it is the part of this country that has claimed me and I will always love it.

The Point of No Return

I haven't reached it yet but I'm very close, which is why I'm leaving this beautiful little city the day after tomorrow. I've been here almost two weeks. The mother at Good Morning Vietnam and Coffee is beginning to explain the political news on TV. I am well acquainted with the Golden Labrador who shamelessly frequents restaurants in his vicinity, hoping that diners will be generous. I've met the local fashionisto, a handsome devil with an exquisite girlfriend and a dazzling collection of women's shoes that fills two walls in the back of his shop. The ladies who sell me the Bangkok Post invited me to join them for lunch today. And of course there is the marvelous, wonderful, kind family that my friend Beau belongs to--more than anybody else they have given me a toehold and a place to feel connected in Nakhon Phanom. I have been extraordinarily fortunate and I am extremely grateful.

From the very beginning, when I saw this, tendrils of longing began to sprout somewhere in my heart and mind. And every time I see it, "Just one more day," is what I mutter to myself. I'm a sucker for sweeping landscapes--it's the one part of me that is truly Alaskan.

Over a period of fourteen months in the last couple of years, two people I love very much died. I didn't realize how unhappy and depressed I'd been recently until that feeling went away. I knew it had when I felt eager to get up in the morning--and it wasn't just because I'd found a place where there was good espresso. It was more to the point that I could walk to it, on a sidewalk, and then sit at a corner table of an honest-to-god sidewalk cafe and listen to birds singing. Top that Bangkok, or even Seattle. Nakhon Phanom doesn't claim to be "inter" or "world class" but in many ways it has much larger places beat.

It's a place that's not afraid of color and uses paint with riotous and delightful abandon, all over town. I'm going to go into withdrawal when I return to Bangkok, where buildings are either glass and steel or unadorned cement.

There are places here that serve Western food and a spot called Little Tokyo (inland sushi, anyone?); with a large Vietnamese population there's a generous representation of that cuisine too. (The best fried spring rolls I've ever had I ate here last night.) But it's the Thai food that I wanted and ate and was delighted with--there are people in this town who still know how to use a wok. And the desserts at Ali Blah Blah Bistro--crepes, pies, creme brulee--are marvelous indulgences that I will miss badly when I leave.

Yesterday I wandered through Ho Chi Minh's garden and the tiny house he lived in. I looked longingly at his desk and the open window above it that framed leaves and blossoms. A hopeless romantic, I knew I could be happy in this place. Of course I always leave out minor details like mosquitoes and outdoor privies in the middle of the night.

There is so much beauty in this river town and I've tried to catch it and keep it and share it. These temples, this sky, these idiosyncratic buildings--I love them all.

But of all the memories I've caught in a snapshot, this is the one that will bring me back, the bend in the road that promises new discoveries, new stories.

Thank you, Nakhon Phanom--see you soon, I hope. Until then I hope to keep with me the sense of delight and the love of life I've felt since I came to stay with you.

Pretending I Live Here

I celebrated the end of my first week in Nakhon Phanom by living in it--no sightseeing, no picturetaking, just moving through a day as I would if I were lucky enough to be a resident.

It would be so restful, because everything can be achieved by walking. Going to get coffee, buying a battery charger for my new battery, the one that went on strike after two days and 157 snapshots, buying garlands of jasmine and marigolds at the market, taking them to the gigantic bodhi tree in thanks for letting me snap it several times, buying a paper, reading it at a bright and comfortable little cafe, eating khao mun gai, buying a few things at the local supermarket which has aisles like deep, dark canyons, and all on foot.

It's a great day for walking here because there's a slight windchill, enough to tangle my hair and almost blow away my shawl. It clattered the dry leaves of the tree that I gave thanks to, loud enough that I wondered what a real storm would sound like under its branches. It blew away the smoke of the past few days and made Laos' mountains visible again.

There's more to do, I know there is. Perhaps I might pay a visit to the brother of people I know in Seattle, who lives in an abandoned hotel overlooking the river. Or I could see if I can persuade a tuktuk (Skylabs here) driver to take me to Ho Chi Minh's house and then bring me back--no success with that yet. Or I could sit in my bright little room and watch my battery charger--it flashes in different colors like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind--blueredgreen in staccato bursts. As I watch, I can be grateful that I live, although temporarily, in a town with no need for a Skytrain.

Today is Wednesday and I just paid enough to ensure that I will be here for four more days. My friend Beau told me long before I came that if I ever visited her town, I wasn't going to want to leave. She was right; I feel as though for the first time in my life, I'm living in Thailand. Last night I walked through the lovely temple grounds that are near my hotel and was stopped still by the sound of monks, praying. If I were ever to come back to live in this country, this is how I would want to live my life.

Long Ago, Far Away

Today I crossed a river and a border to get more Thai time. I planned to stay a few hours in Laos, at least long enough to have lunch in the town I've looked at from the other side of the Mekong for almost a week. But the minute I got off the bus, I was hit by the smell of dried squid, which seemed odd, since Laos is a landlocked nation.

Following my nose, I found this

which up close looks like this. Strips of fish? Pig? Buffalo? I say it's ugly and I said the hell with it. I bought a ticket to return on the same bus I came in on, for a grand total of thirty minutes in Laos. Go ahead, take away my traveler's status. I'm not going to care.

I like my morning coffee and my silent wanderings in Nakhon Phanom, staring at buildings and looking for my next meal. I was ravenous after my rapid foray into unknown territory and found this

where I had a remarkable lunch of fish lahb and mango salad, which had everything from squid to nuts. It's right next to a joint called Classic that has photos of hamburgers and pizza. I ask you--where would you eat? Yeah, me too.

The clouds are gathering and I think another riverboat ride would be a very good way to begin (and probably end) my evening. I did that last night and avoided spider bites by sitting on the upper deck. The light was different from the one that I saw on my first trip and it probably will be again tonight. It's my Nakhon Phanom Happy Hour, complete with a can of Beerlao.

It's hard to think of a reason to leave, especially since I have yet to go to the National Library, or Ho Chi Minh's house (in a Vietnamese village five kilometers away), or to the Blue House Cafe to hear Isaan music, or to give a floral offering to the giant bodhi tree that I took snapshots of when I first got here. Besides, Bangkok is so far away from this place that I'm not sure I'll ever find my way back.

Loving Inertia

This morning I sat outside on a quiet corner, sipped coffee, listened to birdsong, and watched this small town wake up. Nakhon Phanom is the first place I've ever been in Thailand to give me this and this is why I keep extending my stay by two more days.

I'm not really a traveler; I'm a voyeur. I like to go somewhere I've never been and watch it. This is my fourth day in Nakhon Phanom and there are still places I haven't been because I wander slowly, on foot. But I know that the best coffee in my part of town is at Good Morning Vietnam and Coffee and the best pastry is at Ali Blah Blah farther down the road. I've spent a lot of time in both places, watching and enjoying the world around me.

There's a boat trip on the Mekong in the evening (for less than two dollars) ; spider bites are free, but in addition they also serve Beerlao in cans--a first for me. And the riverside is walkable for miles. I know. I've done it and plan to do it again soon.

There's more to see here. I've yet to see the center of town and how people do business there. But so far I'm happy in my 65-year-old Chinese hotel, with its big windows, checkerboard floor tiles, and profusions of wood, and in my riverside neighborhood. I can understand why Uncle Ho lived here. It's a fine place to write and wander and perhaps plot social change. So far I'm still wandering.....

Fresh Off the Bus

The trouble with being new in town is you have to find where everything is, and when you're tired and hungry that's a challenge. Last night I took a wrong turn in looking for food and ended up in what's probably the business district. Kind ladies directed me to the Night Market because there were no foodstalls, they assured me. I ended up buying beer, peanuts, and water at a 7/11, where the only bottle opener in the shop wasn't for sale.

On my way back I found a store where everything was 20 baht, including my (made in China) church key. When I finally reached my hotel, I discovered that they sold both beer and water in the lobby.

But a hike before dinner is good for an aging broad, although I felt apprehensive this morning when I went out in search of coffee. I had seen a place called Vietnamese Coffee near the Windsor but would it be open? Would the coffee be drinkable? And most important, would I ever find food in this town?

It was open. My espresso was good (and I never use that word loosely when it comes to coffee). They had something that I didn't understand for breakfast. I ordered it, along with a latte.

And this is what I was given. I never take pictures of food but this I consider a miracle right up there with the Loaves and Fishes. I rarely will touch an egg, especially a fried one, but this was too good to ignore.

And then I walked down the street in the opposite direction from my Death March of the night before and there were many, many food shops--and a 7/11, only a couple of blocks from the Windsor. I won't starve, or go into caffeine withdrawal, in Nakhon Phanom. And since I slept well lat night with no insect invasions, I may stay here for a few days. I think I really like this place.

The 250 Baht Difference

First of all, 250 baht is less than $8.00. And that's the difference (financially speaking) between my hotel room at Thai Inter in Korat (under $23) and my room at Submukda Grand in Mukdahan (just above $15). But the gulf between the two can't be measured in dollars or baht.

Thai Inter and Submukda Grand have the same appurtenances--hot water, air con, fridge, TV, and glass bottles of water waiting in the room. The rooms in both places are immaculate and each has a tiny private view of the world outside (veranda in Korat, balcony here.)

Thai Inter also had room service, a breakfast room, and a small bar that was almost a sidewalk cafe. Submukda has none of those things. Thai Inter had comfortable pillows and soft sheets. Submukda has scratchy polyester bedding that feels as though it's been starched and pillows that may have been chiseled from laterite. The room at Thai Inter was bright and pretty; Submukda is dark and serviceable.

But it is in the middle of a bustling commercial district, down the street from a Chinese noodle shop that has good coffee and outside seating, and steps away from the Mekong that keeps the city from being part of Laos. And that's why I always stay in this institutional hostelry for business travelers.

This morning I had breakfast at the Chinese place on the corner and watched Mukdahan wake up--children going to school, monks on their morning rounds, people filing off to work, some wearing wool hats and wrapped in towels to ward off the distinct chill. As I watched, I realized everything I've ever learned about this area, I've observed from this corner. And that just might be worth  a bad night's sleep that is pervaded with vague hints of sewer gas.