Chiang Mai

The fat man with the shaved head is lying in the red ceramic tiles when I enter the temple, snoring lightly in a fitful sleep. His head is propped on a bunch of the seat coverings the old women rent to tourists wanting to sit on the broad red wooden seats that line the inner walls. Beautifully rendered scenes of the life of the Buddha cover the walls, and the rear of the main shrine is closed by a door upon which is painted a demon outlined in gold.
Wat Chiang Man sits at the the north-eastern end of the old city in Chiang Mai, close by the rippling city walls that emerge from the still waters of the moat like stone waves frozen in time. I am doing exactly what I love to do - getting lost in a foreign city, dumbfounding the natives with my slow, aimless footfalls and trying to find the cracks in the cityscape, the way to its inner core, the sweat from my brow evaporating on the broken pavement.
I had arrived at a good time, Sunday night, when the street that runs into the eastern city portal of Tae Phae Gate becomes Walking Street, a cobbled lane packed with merchants and round-eyed tourists sampling the wares of the North. The taxi driver, likely in a gesture of kindness, had dropped me off at Rux Thai, a guest house one very dark, windy and short walk from the Street of Dreams, the local massage parlor and whore hangout street.
The door to my room does not latch or lock from the outside, and there is a bloody stain in the center of my bedsheet that has faded in the wash. I stash my valuables and passport in the ceiling tiles above the sink before heading over to Tae Phae Gate, and check out very early the next morning.
"A city can only be learned through the feet," my personal traveling motto goes, and so after padding quietly past the still slumbering monk, I wade out into the blast furnace heat of the late summer sun, stopping to pay a toothless old woman 100 Bhat ($3) so I can release a few starlings - for good luck, she says - that will most likely return to their cages as soon as I clear the temple gates.
A few blind turns later and I am across the moat, walking down a street without a sidewalk, inches  from traffic, passing businesses selling home appliances and scooters, paint and furnishings, not a FamilyMart in sight, the only person, foreign or local, actually walking on that street at that time, drawing incredulous stares from the wise Thai sweating in the shade.
The trick to getting lost and finding your way back out again hale and hearty is to never stop moving. Never stop moving and update your internal map with as much data as possible so that you can eventually orient yourself by landmarks alone, in the dark, in the rain, with total confidence and zero fear.
Head up, back straight, once more into the breach, my brothers - this dark alley looks fine, only a few nice gents lounging at the far end, staring at you as you approach, watching you silently as you pass.  They probably just want to invite you over for a sit and a smoke, so do not cross to the other side of the street, or show any sort of hesitation, but march at them head on, your face a mask of benevolent indifference.
A seven year-old in a blue and green school uniform approaches me while I am buying Gatorade at the 7-11, sticks out his hand and says, ten Bhat. I shake my head and say "no" in street-Thai, but high-five him on the way out, which seems to make his day and elicits a cheer from the cluster of his classmates who have been watching from the aisle.
As I am walking down the Street of Dreams on the evening of my second night, I pass a couple of white Mennonite women standing in the shade in front of a massage/internet parlor, their bonnets and long dresses so senseless in the muggy heat, and I clamp my hand over my mouth to hide my laughter at their looks of pure and utter disappointment and disgust.
Now, here in Chaing Mai, I am seeing the real Thailand, not some fleabag tourist pit like Phuket/Patong or the big city stew that is Bangkok. It will be hard to leave.
A Honda - my kingdom for a Honda.

from Siam,
JP out