Story Jar - Chaing Dao by Bus

Chiang Dao by Bus
Story Jar published June 20, 2007 copyright Elaine Hardman
I don't have many photos of this adventure.

There are lots of ways to travel in Thailand – rent some kind of cart pulled by a motorcycle or a car or van
but we found our way to Chiang Dao on a public bus. It was a huge, tall thing. The floor, sides and ceiling were shiny metal. Above our John-Deer-green seats were luggage racks with a variety of bags and backpacks. Under many seats pairs of sandals waited empty while owner-feet rested in lotus pose, bare toes cooling in the breeze from six overhead fans.
Green curtains covered most of the windows blocking the blazing sun to create squares of precious shade but some windows were opened to catch the wind – dry, sun-hot, and smelling of roasted asphalt and concrete.
We came to this bus by Tuk Tuk, a Thai cart/motorcycle. We asked our Tuk Tuk driver where to get a ticket for the Chaing Dao bus and he pointed us toward the wrong ticket window but other drivers waved us onward to the correct window.
Thai is a difficult language but English is rare outside of tourist areas so we used a few hand signals and asked for 2 tickets to Chiang Dao. Seeing that I had a bit of paper in my hand (Chiang Puak station was scribbled on it for the Tuk Tuk driver), the ticket vendor took it to write 40 underscore 80 so Rick handed a 100 Baht note for our tickets.
She gave change and handed us the tickets after writing 11:30, 31/32 on the back of one. Okay, that was the departure time and our seat numbers. She pointed to a bus and we climbed on and found that the back of each seat actually had 3 numbers stenciled on suggesting a future coziness that would scarce allow room for sweat to drip.
The ticket seller became our conductor, closing her window and joining us just before the bus left. At the rear door another staff member had the lively job of putting a wood block behind the back wheel every time the bus stopped. He pulled out the block and we took off.
Rick and I were oddities on this bus. Western oddities. Most tourists take taxis to Chiang Dao or they rent air conditioned vans.
Taxis are actually small pick up trucks with 2 rows of seats in the bed. In Cambodia they are yellow and have a roof against the rain or sun. In Thailand they are often red and more enclosed but both of these slightly-less-than-limo services require one to ride sideways engulfed in the dust and fumes of the road at a price ten times that of a bus ticket.
Had we rented an air conditioned van, the trip would have been a pleasant journey but getting to Chaing Dao would have cost more, each way, than three nights at our "Nature Lover's Bungalow". The guide book suggested that taking the bus was an easy and reasonable choice so that’s what we did and -as a bonus - it was interesting.
People boarded the bus at several locations so that, while we were the only two in our seat, some people were crunched three to a seat. The conductor asked two skinny men next to us to stand while she lifted their seat and pulled it away from the side of the bus so that it protruded into the aisle a bit giving enough space for a new passenger to perch her size zero jeans on the edge where she listened to her Ipod for the rest of the 90 minute trip.
It gave a bit of a sense of insecurity to know that our bus seats not only lacked seat belts, they weren’t even attached to anything.
We drove past rice paddies, houses on silts, stores, laundry on lines, construction sites, at least a thousand restaurants and half a dozen working elephants in our soft, free-floating seats, under ceiling fans on a non-smoking bus.
At Chiang Dao we got a tap on the shoulder and a nod to the rear. The wood-block man jumped off and placed his block behind the tire while we jumped off behind him. He called out as a monk in dark yellow clambered up the steps and in a blur he picked up his block and gracefully flew onto the rumbling bus to take everyone else toward Fang, the end of the line.

Story Jar - Crispy Fried What?

The Story Jar is a bi-weekly column published in the Patriot, Cuba, NY
copyright 2007 Elaine Hardman
It couldn’t have been what I thought. When we walked through the night market in Sukothai, Thailand, the light was poor - everything in shadows. A florescent lamp hung above the stand below a lamp post sprouting a spaghetti-tangle of wires that would have made an American electrician run screaming.
I was moving quickly in the crowd and didn’t look closely. My eyes flew over something fried golden brown and crispy –maybe some kind of noodles – but they looked like…never mind.
I could have stopped or gone back to look and erase the image from my mind. It would be good, maybe, to know that they were cookies or cheesy squiggles but I didn’t stop. We hurried on that night but today we are at the Antique House Restaurant in Chaing Mai and the image returned to me in living color while reading the menu.
The Antique House is an upscale restaurant. Meals cost about $10 instead of $3 as in other restaurants. There are many attentive waiters and the tablecloths are silk. There is always live music and the menu - in 2 languages -is 20 pages long.
It offered fried vegetables with pork served in a taro cup and that sound great. My choice was settled so I just whiled away the time browsing the menu and waiting for Rick to choose and that’s when I found fried fish stomach with oyster sauce. Well, if I had grown up here I would think that was dandy but given my background fish stomach was out.
Reading on, I found crispy fried worms. It seems that the light at the market had been adequate that night. The inadequate was my knowledge of Thai cuisine. Those little bumps weren’t wavy designs or fancy slicing but the remains of many appendages.

I ordered the fried vegetables and hoped that most of were yellow or green or orange and and that little would be brown, or wavy, or crispy. I didn’t think until now that everything was probably fried in the same oil. Well, that’s why travel is so interesting.

The next day we went to a huge outdoor market and found aisles and aisles of snack foods – dried fruits, cakes, donuts, cookies, banana chips and cashews. The cashews were wonderful - tasting of sweetness and coconut milk. We munched and walked past piles and piles of crispy, fried you-know-what.

Story Jar - Yellow Shirts in Thailand

Published in the Patriot, copyright 2007 - Elaine Hardman



November 2006 was yellow shirts time in Thailand. We first noticed them at the Bangkok airport and thought the people were part of a tour but then I saw a man in a yellow shirt carrying a ladder. He wasn’t part of a tour group nor was the woman who was sweeping. Hey, there were yellow shirts everywhere - yellow shirts like you wouldn’t believe.
We missed our plane in Bangkok. Someone in a yellow shirt might have told us that they changed the gate after printing our boarding passes. A yellow shirt might have let us out of the security area so we could look for help or might have agreed to make a call for us but no yellow shirts came to our rescue.
The airlines changed our booking to the next morning and sent us to a hotel. The taxi driver should have gotten us there in 20 minutes but he drove around for an hour asking people in yellow and other shirts for the location of the Ibis Hotel. Finally he took us to a slick, western hotel probably thinking that getting rid of us was in his best interest but we could tell from the portico that we’d have to leave a stack of money at the desk to stay there while the Ibis would welcome us for $25. We couldn’t explain all of that since his understanding of English was limited to hotel names and the cost of a ride.
Luckily workers at this hotel knew where the Ibis was and drew a map for the driver and we celebrated - for a little while. We had to ask for directions two more times. Through the ordeal we saw people in yellow shirts and even saw shops selling nothing but yellow shirts.
Finally we found the Ibis Hotel where the manager, another gorgeous Thai woman in a country full of beautiful women, explained that the king was celebrating his 60th year on the throne so people wore yellow shirts with his crest every Monday.
Thailand is a country of uniforms. Every factory, restaurant and hotel has its own uniform so it’s reasonable that Thais would jump into yet another uniform for their king.


These shirts were flexible uniforms – uniform in color. Well-dressed ladies wore yellow silk jackets. Men and women wore camp shirts with the king’s crest on a pocket and bunnies prancing around the hem. Workers wore yellow polo shirts with pink or white collars and golden embroidered crests. Participation in this yellow shirt gig was accepted with wild exuberance.

I wore my own not-yellow shirts while snapping photos of people in yellow shirts in stores, on sidewalks and in the mall. Rick sat waiting (hiding) while I rode up the escalator 4 times trying for a clear shot of a store full of perfect, yellow shirts - shoppers and workers – while feeling happy that we had missed that plane.

Emilie created this blog and then created one for herself. Emilie's blog is dedicated to cooking and other matters of life in Boston.

Story Jar - One Night in Bangkok

Story Jar - a biweekly column in the Patriot and Free Press, Cuba, NY
copyright 2007, Elaine Hardman

One night in Bangkok

We are now in a hotel in Bangkok. We hadn’t planned to visit Bangkok outside the airport. We left Cambodia this morning at 7 and flew to Bangkok. We found our bags and checked them on a domestic flight to Sukhothai. Then, boarding passes in hand, we spent 4 hours wandering this gorgeous new airport. Eventually we went to our departure gate. Lots of other people were there so we figured that was good but then our boarding approached and our flight wasn’t called and that was bad.
We had passed through security and our boarding passes said we belonged where we were so the guards wouldn’t let us out and that was bad. There were no Bangkok Air people in the area and that was also bad but finally the boarding time passed and a security guard understood that something was amiss so she took us out and that was good.
We discovered that the boarding gate had been changed so we rushed to the new gate but our plane had taken off without us and that was bad. The airlines found our bags and that was very good and they booked us on a flight scheduled for the next morning and that was also good and they offered us an inexpensive hotel room so we said, “Well, that’s good.”
The taxi driver, however, neither knew where the hotel was or how to find it or how to ask. You might think that the dispatcher on his radio could help. We thought so. She couldn’t. All that was bad.
He took us to a hotel and thought we should be happy but it was a $$$$$ fancy-pants hotel and we were wearing pants suitable for climbing over temple ruins. That is to say, it was not our kind of hotel so that was bad. But, the people there spoke English and Thai and knew where the target hotel was and talked with the driver so we thought that was good but he still didn’t find it and that was bad again.
He asked directions three or four times more and drove 80 minutes for a 20 minute ride and then we found it. Good. We didn’t pay him all that was charged on the meter but he accepted our offer and that was also good.
We put our things in the hotel and called the guest house in Sukothai and the owners said that the new airport opened just one month ago and was a constant mess. We shouldn’t worry. Our rooms would be held for us and that was excellent.
We went out of the hotel and there was a grocery store right there. Great – well, almost great. We found many things that we could not identify. Soy milk looked familiar but there was a note on the box - cow milk protein added for enrichment. I often take soy milk while traveling because it’s a great snack but milk protein is worse than bad for me so the English warning was very good.
We found food for our 5 a.m. breakfast. Rick would have sweet cashews - tasting of coconut milk, an apple, yogurt and peanuts. I would skip the yogurt and substitute a carrot and we could share a chocolate chip cookie and water. When we get to the airport we will hold tight to our departure passes and will check the board 95 times.
It was dark and late so we went in search of dinner. We went to a mall food court thinking that it would be easier than trying to find a food stall in the streets where, if the Taxi driver could get lost, we’d be in trouble. Our good idea went bad when we found that, as with the grocery store, nearly all the signs were in Thai.
We found one stall with a sign in beautiful English letters and ordered. With a mixture of Thai and demonstrations we were instructed to buy a coupon to pay for our food. The mall, the hotel and we were considerably away from the tourist areas of Bangkok and therefore without Western conventions or language. We managed to buy the appropriate coupon, get the food, eat and find our way back to the hotel. Small tasks become large accomplishments sometimes. Amazingly, I have no photos of this place. How unlike me.
Now it is really late. Jet lag is keeping me up but Rick is sleeping. Good for him. Outside the hotel, the city bristles with noise from people, trucks, cars and something constantly bangs all seeming as awake as I am but probably not wondering as much about how things will go tomorrow.