Couchsurfing in Chiang Mai

Photos: Thailand: Chiang Mai's Inner City

As I think I may have mentioned, my plan for Chiang Mai was to couchsurf for most of my time there. In Bangkok, I requested the couches of two women; one told me that she was currently traveling and so could no host me. The other, named Lucy, said I was welcome to stay with her, although she had also agreed to host a couple at the same time, so I would get floor space instead of the guest bedroom. I agreed and met her on Wednesday, with the plan to stay with her until Saturday.

For those who haven’t heard of couchsurfing before, or have heard of it but don’t know much about it, here’s a brief explanation: it’s an organization made up of and for people who love travel and travelers. There is a free website, www.couchsurfing.org, on which you can sign up and make a profile, for free, sort of like Facebook but geared for travelers. Anyway, you can be a couchsurfer and host people, which can mean meeting with them and showing them around your neck of the woods, or giving them a place to sleep in your home. There are no rules, insofar as who can host, or who can surf, or how long you have to host for, etc. It’s all about your comfort zone. For example, I’ve met people who give their couchsurfers a spare key and give them free reign on everything in their home. I, on the other hand, wasn’t comfortable with that, so I told surfers that they needed to be out of the apartment when I left, and gave them a time when I would be back. Also, this a free setup; no one charges people for staying at their place, unless it’s arranged privately (which I’ve never heard of happening unless it was for a really extended amount of time).

Anyway, Lucy, my first host in Chiang Mai, had a rules list printed up. She’s older – 72, in fact – and has hosted hundreds of people. She’s a bit of a curmudgeon but overall quite motherly. Her rules weren’t actually strict; they were more along the lines of common sense and cleaning, and listing what she’d like to do (help find Chiang Mai things to do, recommend places to eat, etc) and thinks she wouldn’t (eating out with you, etc). She also asked that people not cook in her kitchen without discussing it with her. My bed consisted of a soft pad, then a New Zealand sheep mattress pad, sheets and a blanket and a pillow. It was actually fairly comfortable, if hard overall.

On Thursday evening, I went to bed feeling just fine, but on Friday morning, I woke up feeling sick: sore throat, stuffy head, achy muscles. I put on my eye mask and rolled over, trying to stay asleep for as long as possible and drifting in and out of a light doze, feeling worse each time. Finally, the noises of the house seemed unbearable to my overly sensitive ears and I got up. I felt like a zombie and John commented cheerfully that I looked pretty tired. I let them all know that I felt like I was getting sick, that I was achy and sore and my throat hurt. They all became “motherly”, slicing up some garlic for my toast and giving me vitamin C tablets and offering me an egg.

After a shower I felt no better, but I wasn’t about to hang around the house, so I packed up, took a DayQuil and headed into Chiang Mai city center. Before I caught a seongtow, though, I dropped off most of my clothing at a laundry just around the corner from Lucy. They said it would be clean and ready by 5pm the next day.

Chiang Mai’s city center is pretty cool: perfectly square, there’s a moat-like canal on every side, and the old city wall, which dates back to the 1200s, still exists in some form. There are “gates,” or openings where roads go in and out, along each side. These make great landmarks (like, “let’s meet at the Tha Phae gate”). My plan for the day was to meet Stan and Jason, the Australians that Jeff and I met in Bangkok at the Blue Elephant, at a vegetarian restaurant where they were taking a cooking class. I was to show up around 12:30pm to eat the dishes they’d prepared with them for lunch.

It was only around 10:30am or so by the time the seongtow dropped me off at the Tha Phae gate, so I just wandered into the city, looking around. I ended up buying a used Lonely Planet guide for Vietnam, Cambodia and the Greater Mekong Region, then finding a little restaurant and sitting down to relax for awhile. I ordered orange juice, but they were out, so I got pineapple juice instead, plus a bowl of vegetable soup. It was just what I needed, almost comfort food! I ready my book and watched the foot traffic go buy and ate my soup. After that I wandered around the area, just looking at the architecture and the stores. I realized at one point that I’d left my camera back at Lucy’s, but there was no way I was going back for it.

I had two chores to complete that day: sign up for a cooking class and buy a train ticket. The bus was just a bit too hard for me and so I’d decided to suck up the price increase and take the train back to Bangkok. First, I went to the address of a cooking school from a brochure I’d seen, but I didn’t get a good vibe there: an old lady sat at an information booth which was behind a locked gate, and when I said hello, she said, “Call. Is better.” That was about all she’d say, so I walked away. Lucy had recommended a travel agent with whom she was close friends, and so I went and found her office, which was in the same quarter of the old city as the vegetarian restaurant. I figured she might be able to recommend a good cooking school to me.

Sure enough, Pom, the travel agent, gave me six pamphlets for cooking schools, going over the differences: number of dishes I could make, locations of the school and whether or not they had market visits for ingredients. I finally picked a full-day, out of the city center, seven-dish class, scheduled it for Sunday, arranged a pickup location (near where I hoped to be staying that night, with a different couchsurfer), and paid 900 baht ($30USD). Then we discussed train times and tickets, and I settled on a daytime train ride. It leaves from Chiang Mai at 8:45am and arrives in Bangkok at 8:30pm. Since it’s during the day, I didn’t get a sleeper, opting for an air conditioned second class car instead. Even if the seats aren’t the most comfortable, I can get up and walk around, which I couldn’t do on a bus. The train ticket cost 611 baht, plus a 50 baht commission for Pom.

My chores done, I wandered around a bit. Finally, at around 12:30pm, I found the restaurant and sat downstairs. Not ten minutes later, Jason came in and invited me out back and up the stairs to a balcony, where he and Stan were working on their seventh dish. They were the only ones in the class and they had two women cooks working with them. Their food looked and smelled divine. I was allowed to just sit and watch and chat with them as they cooked three more dishes, including phad thai, and then we all trooped down into the air conditioned restaurant and sat down for a huge meal. We waited for a friend of Jason’s to show up before digging in, but then there was just complete silence as we made our way through all the dishes, which tasted as wonderful as they smelled.

We spent maybe an hour or a little more eating and chatting, and then went our separate ways. Jason and Stan invited me out for drinks later, if I was still in the area. I agreed and said I’d call them if I were still there in a few hours. Then I wandered off, finding an internet cafe and putzing around on the computer for about forty-five minutes. At this point I was feeling a little better, if tired. I decided to check out a couple of the Wats I’d  seen, including the one in the city center called Wat Chedi Luang. The first one I found was Wat Phantao, which was a beautiful teakwood hall with a lovely, huge Buddha inside. I sat and contemplated for awhile, just gazing at the serene face and beautiful carving all around me. Then I wandered out and headed for Wat Chedi Luang, which was just next door. I noticed a large sign saying, “Monk Chat: Don’t Stand There Watching, Come and Talk.”

Intrigued, I headed in, first visiting the magnificent main hall, which is long, has many wooden pillars leading to the front, and has three huge, towering Buddhas at the end, which are quite imposing in their size. I went inside, sat down on the floor and just stared, taking in the details, facial expressions, and people around me, praying. I’m not sure how long I sat there, taking it all in, but eventually I wandered out and looked for the “monk chat” area. I found it and sat down, meeting a monk whose name I cannot remember. He was twenty-seven years old and had been a monk (or an initiate) since he was sixteen. His robe was bright orange, like all the monks, and he was quite adamant when we talked about the basic principles of Buddhism. It was really interesting and he was a talkative fellow. I was tired, though, so after about thirty minutes, we parted ways. There were about ten other monks in the area, talking to a variety of people and tourists. What a great program!

I wandered to the back of the Wat, where the ancient chedi, crumbled and mostly ruined, stands. A chedi is a structure built around a relic of the original Buddha – maybe some hair, or a piece of bone or tooth. This one was pretty magnificent, with the setting sun’s light hitting it. There was a row of large bells in front of it, and I watched as some Thai people came by and rang them, one by one, setting the local mutts howling.

About the time I started to get hungry again, I went back to the internet cafe I’d gone to before and used up my last fifteen minutes. A couchsurfer I’d requested a couch from had responded, so I had a placed lined up for Saturday and Sunday night! Better yet, she said she was going to be out of town and so I could have her apartment and bed all to myself! This was a pleasant surprise, since I expected from reading her profile to be sleeping on the floor again. I then called Jason, who said to meet them at their hotel.

As it turned out, we just all hung out in Jason’s hotel room, which was more like a furnished apartment. They reheated the leftovers from lunch, popped open some beers, mixed me a vodka and sprite, turned on music from their iPods, and put the tv on mute, showing a channel with music videos. It was a really chill evening. By the way, both Jason and Stan are gay, and the ‘friend’ at lunch was a Thai guy Jason had met online. So it was a perfectly comfortable atmosphere with lots of silly dancing, mocking of accents and general good humor. At one point we ran out of sprite so Sun (the Thai guy) used a vegetable juice to mix the vodka with. It didn’t taste as bad as I’d feared, although it certainly wouldn’t be my first choice.

Around 9pm, they all decided to go out to a place Sun (the Thai guy) recommended, but I decided to head home. I already knew that having a few drinks was probably not the best of decisions, likely to make me suffer getting sick more quickly, and I figured going out would make a poor decision worse. So I caught a seongtow and headed back to Lucy’s. Everyone was abed when I got there, so I changed, got ready for bed, and read my book for a little bit before dozing off. In the middle of the night I had to get up several times for an upset stomach. Every time I even pictured the orange vegetable juice I wanted to throw up. It wasn’t the kind of nausea I’ve gotten in the past from drinking too much, so I think that maybe some of the food had turned. Anyway, I finally fell asleep again around 4am and slept until almost 8am, as dead to the world as could be.

This morning, then, I got up, showered, and greeted the day feeling amazingly better! I ate breakfast with Lucy, John and Janet and expressed my plan of cleaning the bathroom, stripping my “bed,” packing my stuff, and leaving my stuff there while I went into the city and wandered about. I figured I’d come back out to Lucy’s in the evening, pick up my laundry and pack it, then head to the new couchsurfer’s place. Lucy invited me to go to the market with her, so I went. She wasn’t feeling too well, unfortunately. We made it to the market, which was just like a US supermarket but with Thai stuff, and I bought a dragonfruit, an orange and some grape-like things that aren’t anything like grapes.

On the way back to Lucy’s house, she remembered that she was supposed to meet her next couchsurfer (replacing me) at 10am at the same Wat where I met her. We drove there, picked up Christy, and headed to Lucy’s house. I checked at the laundry and they said they could have my stuff done by 12pm, so I hung out at Lucy’s until then, chatting with Christy and Lucy. Lucy eventually had to go to bed and rest, still not feeling well, and so Christy and I got to know each other and decided to go to lunch together to a vegetarian place she’d looked up on the internet.

Christy is a twenty-eight year old vegetarian chef from LA, California. She’s got some odd (to me) views, which seemed to jive with some of Lucy’s. For example, that it was too bad that the more intelligent and educated people of the world, who of course don’t eat meat or harm animals, also didn’t believe in overpopulation, and so didn’t have children, because who would want to bring a child into this terrible world anyway… that it was sort of ironic that the more educated and intelligent folk didn’t have progeny to pass on and teach their beliefs to, and so the ignorant masses would keep procreating, creating a cycle of world extinction.

Oy.

In any case, we headed out at 12pm, me with all my stuff with me, and picked up my laundry. Then we caught a seongtow to another Wat, in back of which was the vegetarian place Christy had found. It turned out to be completely wonderful and cheap food and we spent almost three hours there. The length of time was also due to the incredibly slow service, but it was absolutely worth it. Christy invited a guy she had met some time earlier, and he showed up about an hour into our lunch. Steward was a thirty-something Australian playboy, whom Christy evidently was crushing on quite hard. We all had a good time, chatting about travel and food and that kind of stuff. Finally, we split up, me and Christy heading to my next couchsurfer’s place and Stew, who threw me the occasional deep, flirty and charged over-sexed look, headed off on his newly rented motorbike to… well, to do whatever it is that Stew does.

Christy and I made it to Annika’s, my host new hosts, but she wasn’t in. It turned out that she had decided not to leave for the weekend, but she’d left me a note with the key at the front desk of her apartment building. I quickly dropped of my stuff and removed the pant legs from my pants, and then we were off. I left Annika a note telling her our plans and left the key at the front desk, as she had requested in her note to me.

We wandered around, visiting the Wats that I’d been to the day before, but this time armed with a camera. At 5pm, we met yet another couchsurfer who Christy had lunched with the day before, at the southern gate of the city center. From there we walked through the Saturday market, a well-known street lined with food and goods. We spent about two hours wandering through, admiring the woodwork and clothing and foods and purses and everything else there was to see. The market crowd was populated by tourists and locals alike, which was nice. I ended up finally buying a white Thai cotton shirt, which I’ve been wanting ever since Jeff bought one and looked so cool in it. It cost me 140 baht, or just under $5USD.

Finally, I headed back to Annika’s on my own, having made plans with Christy to meet at the vegetarian place for lunch on Monday. And here I am, sitting and typing and relaxing on my floor-bed. Annika is out for the evening but assures me I can do whatever I want, which as it turns out is not much at all. It’s been a good day, but I’m tired. I hope I can sleep well tonight on the floor. Annika said I could choose where I want to sleep, the bed or the floor, but I feel kinda bad taking the bed. We’ll see what wins out, though: manners or comfort.

PS – In case you’re curious about the picture I put in at the very beginning of this blog, well, here’s my non-explanation: Stew and Christy had both gone to the bathroom at the Wat after lunch, so I was left holding Stew’s helmet. I couldn’t help it, I just put it on and put on a weird face for when they came out. It surprised both of them to the point of giggles. Guess I was just feeling silly!

--Z