Benny's Car Chop and Cock Fightery

8:30 am marks the latest I've left my apartment since I rented it. The usual routine, get up. First thing, into a shower, it's hot enough by five a.m. to sweat straight through your sheets. By seven-thirty you know rather it's a sweltering "Why did I leave the mountains" kind of day, or one of the much more manageable "Hide in the shade when the sun comes out" varieties. Seven-thirty is like ground hog day for me, today will be a fun kind of day. The air will move quickly from a marginally uncomfortable degree to ungodly hot by ten a.m. This is when the aging of the dense smog comes to its full flavor, by noon it will be the only flavor on your tongue. One-thirty p.m. comes and the atmosphere will be veritable soup, like the deep end of a swimming pool neglected for several seasons, only filled with car exhaust. It's fuck off days like these that lead to magical nights... really. These are my thoughts as Gong Ju and I round the corner into the side alley leading to her school. Just as we do five days a week, we pass what I have deemed "Benny's Car Chop and Cock Fightery". Sporting ten or more steal cages, each with a rather proud rooster, and a line up of ever changing cars it seems business at Benny's is booming. (Forgive me for the photos. I took them while driving by on my motorbike and don't have the best lens for the job) This further points to Thailand's split














(Notice the lack of license plates)



personalities. Even the criminals need two jobs. Benny's is a half block away from the best Thai Massage school in all of Thailand. But then, where else is Benny's suppose to be? The difference between neighborhood and just plain hood can be as little as ten feet. I love this about Chiang Mai. You can find anything if you walk for twenty minutes in any direction. Hop on a motor bike and in twenty minutes your in a temple on mountain tops. Possibly stop in at the jade factory on the way up the steps. Even when the sun booms like death there is always somewhere to hide here. It is in these places I have met people from every corner of the world. I would never have thought the first place I would stay here would be with a crazy German who constantly mixes up the three languages he speaks. Or that the first Tuk Tuk driver I meet would not only find the exact apartment I was looking for, but would negotiate the rent down by a thousand baht. There is many a crook in Thailand, believe me. But I don't think this experience is exclusive to me. This is what it's all about here. For me to pay forty baht for a large beer, some asshole Falang has to pay eighty, this is the balance of Chiang Mai and everywhere else for that matter. I've been the guy getting ripped and the guy catching the deal many times over here. And to think, I've only been here just over two weeks. I've been running down every dark corner and bright vista this city has to offer and I'm still far from the whole experience. From ten year old contortionists in front of temples, or boxing Muay Thai to the teaming streets of famous night markets held every evening all over the city. The pants I'm wearing cost just over one USD and they probably saw me coming, but who cares when it's the difference of ten cents to me. All and all it is easy to forget about the heat and cut with a knife kinda smog when you just sit back and let the city take you. Maybe a cock fight or a boxing match, an electronics market or roof top reggae bar, a chicken from the backyard or a five dollar Thai massage. Go anywhere, do anything, see everything. Chiang Mai is as happy to show as you're willing to look. Toss in a few extra baht and you might just have the night of your life...

Connecting Sacrament

In my experience, the Thais are a clean people. They'll have a market two square miles wide, so packed you can barely shimmy through the flow, let alone look at anything. Two hours later, You'd have no idea it was ever there. Rarely have I caught a whiff of body odour in this country, and when I have, it's almost certainly coming from the Falang down the way. This place is hot, and humid. Perhaps too hot and humid. So much so that you find yourself showering as often as new couples fuck. This general hygiene is however lost when gazing upon the Chao Phraya River. As I stand on a bridge overlooking this magnificent body of water I come to a startling realisation. I could be in Sacramento, CA... right now. Like I stepped through some fucked up wrinkle in space time and ended up at a crossroads between Juarez, Detroit and the town of Walker. You can almost feel Bangkok trying to sleaze its way up stream. "Water seeks out it's own level". Something my father always says makes me wonder as to the strategic placement of "Chinatown". Neatly backed up, right against the filthiest place in Chiang Mai. Did the Chinese here simply identify with the passing muck of the Chao Phraya? Or did the Thais humorously plan to cordon them off next to it. I imagine it was a bit of both. From this vista it is hard to believe that a few short meters away sit some of the most architecturally pleasing religious monuments of the past thousand years. But this is the duality of Thailand. Just behind the paint on the walls and the handy craft light strings are the true components. From the three hundred pound Falang hiding in the back, designing your meal to the liquor on the breath of your Tuk Tuk driver. The things that make this place tic are usually not the stuff of bed time stories. Fuck if it doesn't make for a good night of Muay Thai however. A hundred Falangs will sit and talk the awfulness of child labour. Then march around the block and lay down a few hundred baht on the seven year old standing in the red corner. They foam at the mouth, smashing down Chang after Chang screaming as he postures up to send a knee straight through his tiny opponent and on to oblivion. If he wins, maybe tonight he eats better, if not... Well, maybe we don't talk about that. I walk to the bathroom and the teenager from two bouts prior is still being propped up in the sink, trainer splashing water in his face. No win = no money and a beautiful night of porcelain god prayer for this gentleman to my right. I slide my hands in next to his face, catching a splash of water and I'm back on my way. Into the night, open to whatever may find me.

The Surface

Chiang Mai has a foot work all its own. If you should choose not to study, most of it will dance right by. You'd never even know it. This is the surface. A comfortable enough place to live. After all it's prepared for just this reason, in just this way, so that you will stay on it and ask no questions. If you walk the Night Baazaar you are sure to find whatever materials please you and at a price you will feel is fair. But a few more blocks to Chinatown and you'll feel every bit like chum in a shark tank, doing the stuffed wallet saunter through the valley of money wolves, all dressed neatly in their varying gimmics. Pants, three dollars, shirts often one and a little of the special spice just under a twentieth of the state side price. Meal's at three quarters, beer's at the same and women not much more then a steak dinner and thirty USD, this is reality in Lanna. If this is not your speed, you can walk a hundred Wats and pick up antique Buddhas from one inch to six feet all day long. Jade beads, crystal, silver and gold all slung on the market. It's easy to find yourself full on relics, no hands left to carry and ghost towns for pockets. Want a blessing, drop twenty baht in the bucket and this no problem. Good luck is plentiful at small prices in Thailand.

But there is more to Chiang Mai then gimmics and relics. More than the tourist hungry trecks, rock climbing and soaring over jungles. Look down and there are depths little imaginable, and above are dizzying heights. There are good men and bad, both controlling and partaking in the underbelly landscape making up the meet of this northern palace. I have come across both. It's been all to easy to lay back and forget that I am barely more than handfuls of red bills to the people I have met. They like me. But then, why wouldn't they... I pay them a fair price. Often much more then fair. Buy a few rounds and you'll be called friends, come back with friends for dinner and a few more, they'll call you family. Rather to believe them or not depends on what you came here to feel. It feels good when people are welcoming. When they are just as welcoming to the fat, half bald, greasy, pony-tailed chester negotiating sex at the other end of the bar, you may feel differently about your affections. But this attitude may not be so negative. If you treat them well, they will do the same almost without question. Where in the US, my mother wont watch a movie starring Tom Cruise because she doesn't like the way is in the tabloids. Here, you pay your bill and act like a good Falang, nobody cares what you do. You go to the right bar and you will safely find what ever you are looking for. But, it must be the right bar, taking care of the right people, taking care of you. It pays to observe here, if you watch close you will find the real price on everything. The truth here, is not far from the surface, should you choose to scratch. But, be careful, you may really enjoy what you find...

Somwhere in Time

It's morning. Sweet fuck all its come on me quick. After pounding as many beer Chang's as possible in pursuit of some form of sleep my stomach is left bent, and my head nearly broken. There is a special kind of dirt caked in every corner of this of this train car named uncomfortable. Perhapse the morning meal will help to settle this dispute between my body and the now rotten lager infecting my system. On a positive note, one day in Thailand and I haven't caught the travelers "Shit your pants". This fact is enough to perk me up a bit, along with constant shit can swaggery-jig our boxcar is doing. Our train and its tracks, like confused tango partners on the second days lesson, just can't seem to figure it out. I stand up in an attempt to hit the bathroom, a lovely squatter toilet between somewhere and forever. A place I can never seem to find when my brain has packed all it's shit and leaves in search of something better. At every stop, street vendors board the train hustleing everything from sun dried stink to deep fried whatever. With every inch we creep away from Bangkok I grow fonder of Thailand. We have now been on this train for nearly ten hours and there is no end in site. Passing village after unnamed village, nothing on the map to help us catch our bearings. Fires burn up and down the tracks so close that my hand catches a quick singe. I whip it back screaming out, everyone on the train turning to see what the Falang is on about now. Shack after rickety shack drifts by my open window until peices of something brilliant begin creeping out of the jungleSeveral hours pass and we roll into Lampoon Lampong. The first place resembling real civilization as well as the first city on our map. With any luck, we'll be in Chiang Mai sometime between never and now, give or take an hour...

Border town fuck around

Bangkok... A mad jumble of bright lights, slick fashion and dim futures. This place thrives only on the hustle, the worlds greatest college for con men. Six minutes in this city takes six hours to wash off and I feel as though just being here has changed my core. Brings me back to dark days and bare knuckles in Carson City, as this is the only place that compares to the brute trickery of Thailand's evil empire. Lucky enough, I'll only remain in hell for a few long hours... or as it turns out, a few more then anticipated. Not one hour into Thailand and we've fallen victim to our first scheming fuck off. Two first class sleeper car tickets on one late night train to the northern Kingdom of Chaing Mai. Simple enough. It is explained to us we must show up at twenty minutes to nine o'clock, once again, simple enough. "Now is very popular time Chaing Mai, all hotel sold out. This ok, I get you nice room, come me." Barks the 4' 9" teenage hustler selling us these tickets, I can taste the fuck around in the air. "No thanks" otherwise translated, Fuck you. With this we're off screaming into the Siam night like two fat Falang
(Literal translation "French", but they call everyone this and somehow don't think we can tell they are talking about us) wallets just waiting to be plucked, fried and stuffed in the mouth of this leering hungry metropolis. Weather its the Bang or the Kok I don't know. We return a half hour early, just in case, only to find our tickets were for the seven o'clock train. We are kindly informed that we will recieve no refund and the only available seats for the nine o'clock train are third class. I puke in my mouth and come just shy of spitting it in this assholes smug fuck face I'm so angry. First thoughts, Fuck Thailand, get me to Cambodia... So we wait, and board a rickity shack on wheels headed for something better. A hard jolt begins our fifteen hour journey in filthy seats and hanging stink. Leaving behind the mad meth fueled banter of what must be the border town on the lake of fire. What lies ahead in Chaing Mai? If only I could have imagined...