Paradise Found

We are fortunate to have dear friends living a couple hours drive outside of Chiang Mai in the town of Chiang Dao.  Around seven years ago after a long search Pla and Ricardo bought 4 acres of land well out in the countryside.  They drove to Chiang Mai and spent one night here with us before taking us back to their property. We went for a wonderful lunch in a classic antique filled restaurant, one of our favorites. Pla ordered many dishes so we could sample the more unique Thai flavors. There was a really colorful crafts fair and we continued eating there. The best fresh coconut water, deep fried chicken with sweet chili dipping sauce, homemade ice cream and incredibly, a complete coconut ball of just the white “meat” as the outer hard shell had been filed away. Placed in a carry away plastic bag,  given a straw to drink the water and eating the soft young coconut with my fingers.  Very unusual according to Pla. Sadly I forgot to take a photo so your imagination will have to suffice.  Later we set out on the drive north, to their property, the “Healing Gardens”. As we arrived after driving the final couple miles down a rutted private dirt road I was completely in awe!  There wasn’t a tree or plant on the land when they started landscaping. Now it was lush with large trees, flowering scrubs, rose gardens, a running stream with homemade bamboo bridges, a large rice paddy, an even larger pond and the prolific vegetable garden that Pla tends. Their helper Ivan has created whimsical primitive animal sculptures out of the chunks of wood he digs out of the dirt.  Deer, goose, a bull, birds… they are delightful.  Their house is an amazing!. Unlike most houses here, theirs is made with rammed earth and cement. The floors, doors, and windows are dark hard woods. A staircase of thick teak steps floats up to the main living area.  The walls are warmly colored a soft glowing terra cotta with vanilla layers running through them.  What an astounding achievement so far out in the countryside! Very quiet and peaceful!  I could have just wandering around the garden and sat under the “king” tree on the teak benches for hours. All this is encircled by the surrounding mountains.  They made a heroic effort to take us to all their favorite places in the five days we spent there.  Several small cafes, a friends studio where she masters in the art of Shibori. Another friends cleverly built guesthouses and wine bar.  We went to a simple restaurant and sat by a small pond while the local woman made us pad Thai encased in the thinnest omelet with fresh chives just picked from the garden.  This is a very old style presentation.  One early morning we reserved a private circular pool with fresh hot spring sulfur water. There was a bamboo ladder if you wished to climb down to the very cold running stream. No thanks!  It was really cold up there and I loved soaking in the warm waters.  My favorite thing was cooking with Pla in her kitchen.  All the wonderful vegetables and fruits from her garden combined with the rice they grew and the bread she baked kept us very content and full!  It’s remarkable what they have achieved.  I am so honored to have had this opportunity to explore another way of life here in Thailand outside the city.  Always the best when your friends take you on a magical journey that isn’t available to most tourists.  

Chiang Mai

I haven’t posted since December 11th!   We’ve been having way too much fun. Our morning begins with birdsong, and pigeons gathering on the roof above our third story room.  Ron found a sweet young woman just up the Soi (little street) who has a tiny stall with a very sophisticated coffee set up. She grinds fresh beans for each cup and steams the milk and make us two “take away” cuppacchino in her Italian machine. Cost 25 Baht - 72 cents.  It’s so nice to sit on our balcony early every morning before the noise begins and sip our hot brew.  There are a number of very charming cafes for breakfast. We like Nice Cafe.  The owner has a very gentle manner and makes the best fruit bowl of ten different fruits with fresh yogurt, granola and chia seeds. It’s too much for one person so we share. I usually can’t restrain from buying an extra container of fresh yogurt as well. Then we walk, and walk.  Getting to see newer areas and street art, wandering down the small Soi rather than the main noisy streets.  Street markets selling colorful fruits and veggies.  Mango,papaya, jackfruit, pealed and packaged palmelo segments, pineapple, dramatic magenta dragon fruit, and about six kinds of bananas.  Always another small cool coffee place. Ironic to remember how all you could get here up until about a dozen years ago was Nescafé… now there’s an amazing coffee culture.  And now there are almost as many tattoo shops and Marijuana Dispensaries.  It’s legal now!  Wonderful glass jars line the counter of these colorful shops with great names for the bud: Wedding Party, Gemini, Durban Poison, Purple Haze, Dragon's Blood.  So many!  You are invited to open the jar and smell the product. If you buy some they will grind it up and make you an absolutely beautifully rolled joint with a filter for free. In a few years Chiang Mai will be the new Amsterdam, or so I read in a recent article. The afternoon temperature is around 83 now with evenings balmy and comfortable.  Eating in gardens mostly, enjoying ice cold beer, such delicious Thai food…I won’t wax on about the food.  Maybe a few more photos…

New digs - BB Mantra

Temples

Street art

Riding the Tuk Tuk

Coffee "take away"

Flower Market

 

Breakfast, lunch and dinner

 

Tamarind Village

 

Healing…

We have recovered!  Slowly, within our peaceful healing sanctuary in Chiang Mai, Tamarind Village Resort.  It was a very big step up from our usual places to stay. A treat!  There was no way we weren’t getting on that plane. Looking back the week seems like a blurry dream. We slept, we sat on our balcony listening to the birds sing. We ate a healthful and color breakfast every morning mostly after most of the other travelers had left. We tried to be as circumspect as possible, wearing our masks when near people, and NEVER coughing aloud.  We lingered in our peaceful rather dark room.  Took a daily walk to get the chi moving.  Tumbled back in a pathetic lethargic sweaty state.  Laid around the pool, drank tons of water and took anti contestants.  I went in to a pharmacy and asked for some Sudifed.  The pharmacist told me that was a “controlled” substance in Thailand and you needed a prescription. I asked if I could buy some Xanax, and she said yes and sold me a punch sheet of about twenty! Go figure!  We were so grateful for such a quiet sojourn to heal and recover our strength.  Good thing this didn’t happen six months ago when we would have had to test and would probably have been sent to a Gulag Covid hotel.  Boy were we lucky on that one! It was difficult to leave. But all good things must come to an end.  We hopped in a taxi, bargained the price and moved on to our next stop along the trip. About a mile away to be exact. The BB Mantra Guesthouse. No frills. But clean, a nice pool (very big priority for us) and it’s in a cool mellow edge of town.  We can walk about two streets in any direction and kind of ambulate around the hood. There are at least half a dozen restaurants that we love, and another half dozen we are discovering nearby.  Incredibly fresh rice noodles stir fried with veggies and your choice of protein called Pad See Ew.  It is so delicious. The chewy yet soft noodles here are almost an inch wide, very thin ribbons. They are made fresh in Chiang Mai and that is why they don’t taste like this anywhere else in the world.  Certainly our appetites weren’t diminished, that’s for sure. Now we have more energy.  All is beautiful!  We walked five miles yesterday during several walks, and today we walked to the flower market, around 3 miles. Colorful huge buckets of orchids, roses, and hand made offerings for the devoted to buy and place in the temples.  Fragrant tiny jasmine flowers strung like pearls with other colorful flowers added to make them unique and special to each vender.  I purchased a small bag with five fresh barely opened gardenias and it cost 20 Baht- which is around 65 cents! I bought a bouquet of a dozen fat stems of large violet and purple orchids unlike ones we can buy in the states. An adorable young man did the talking in English and then his girlfriend came to collect the money, 60 Baht- not even $2.  I have the flowers in both our drinking glasses and a maraschino cherry quart glass jar with the label attached that the girl from the desk scrounged up from the kitchen. As I said this is a no frills place, but we feel at home. Our third floor room is nice and bright with a wide sliding glass door. Outside we have a small but comfortable deck with views of a temples’ rooftop and the hills just out of town.  A palm tree beside the deck has a large heavy seed pod filled with orange golf ball sized pods. Below is is the pool and small garden with the most beautiful line of Travelers Palms fanned out along the border of the property, softening the wall of the building next door. There aren’t many people in town yet.  So, in a state of gratitude the worst is over, we are finding our mojo once again.

Thai Greetings

 

LAX~ BANGKOK

Like a pair of whirling dervish spinning spinning spinning for weeks and months planning this trip, preparing the houses and gardens, saying farewells, tiding up lose ends and leaving Cardiff behind, Ron and I headed to LAX in our rental BMW sedan the day after Thanksgiving.  It was a long journey!  From home to BKK took thirty hours.  The 16 hour flight to Hong Kong was moderately turbulent most of the flight. No time to enjoy the business class lounge in HK as we rushed through another round of security on our way to the next flight.  Three hours to Bangkok and we had arrived.  Changed money, got our bags, arranged for a taxi and off we went. I always like that first taxi ride with Buddhist amulets dangling from the rear view mirror and the driver sitting on the right hand side.  We arrived at the New Siam Riverside Hotel and were greeted warmly.  While our room was being prepared we went outside into the garden restaurant and had our first lunch, cold Chang beer and the most wonderful plate of stir fried rice noodles, Pad See Ew.  We had arrived!   Later we had a swim, took a walk and tried to stay awake until 8 pm and it wasn’t easy. Fifteen hours time change can do that to you regardless of the day and a half it took to get to our hotel.  But we were so happy to finally be here and all looked very promising.  Until it didn’t!  The next day Ron started feeling bad.  Headache.  Stuffy nasal passages.  Sore throat.  Clammy.  Feverish.  Uh oh… I chocked it up to jet lag.  The next day he felt worse.  Weak.  Fatigued.  Congested.  We didn’t do much except lay around the pool, take short walks, eat.  That last night in BKK we watched the party boats cruise up and down the river lit up with bright neon lights and music blaring. We just focused all our energy into getting ourselves packed and off to our flight to Chiang Mai the next morning.  That was all we wanted.  We had a beautiful week planned at the most serene resort in the heart of town and we knew if we could get there we would be OK.  We got a nice taxi driver to the airport, made the hour flight, and got another taxi to the hotel.  After greetings, a welcoming drink and a cold fresh scented towel we were shown our room.  It was magical.  So quiet. It was only 3 in the afternoon but we were spent.  We crawled into the soft cozy bed with soft fat pillows and we slept until the next morning to the sounds of thunder and torrential rain.  The next day we tested.  We had Covid.  

Three Years, Ten Months and Nine Days…since our last trip

Finally! Ron and I are hitting the road… the gardens and temples of our beloved Southeast Asia are calling. Departure Friday.  Hope you might like to join us on our journey.