Friday, 11 November 2016 to Thursday, 17 November 2016
After the news of a Trump presidency I put myself on voluntary exile from the news world for 24 hours, it lasted for 44, it was bliss. This morning I took my first tentative clicks in the news world out there and the very first click I took was an article about the first meeting between Obama and Trump that reported “Trump calls Obama ‘a very good man’” and that Trump further offered that “he would seek his counsel in future”. Is there another Trump out there? One can only hope.

The second click I took was an article that asked the question “How did Trump win?”  It suggested that there were 24 theories, it makes for interesting reading.

On my third click I read “Protesters target Trump buildings in massive street rallies”. Why, and more importantly, why now?  It’s kinda late for that won’t you say? A wise old man once told me that every country deserve the leader they have, good or bad, they elected him after all. I really do believe though that the American people should now settle down, accept what they have done and start supporting their new president to help him make a success of the presidency, which would be to the benefit of all.

On my fourth and final click I received the saddest news of all; Leonard Cohen had passed away at 82. Just a week or two ago I commented on his new album that was at number 4 on the charts. A truly great man with a truly great mind is gone forever, but his music will live on, forever. His music was a friend to me in times of laughter and in times of less laughter, a friend with whom I shared countless bottles of red wine with through the years… rest easy old friend.

After absconding from all news for two days meant that I spent more time today ingesting such, so had a late start to get this week’s post ready for publication. I finally published at 19:30 and supper was next on the to-do list with my mouth salivating at the thought of a steak, a beef steak that is. I remembered seeing a Thai style steakhouse just down the road so we opted to walk rather than get the bike angry at us for waking it up for a paltry two hundred metres worth of exercise today.

We ordered our steaks, Adri the rib eye, me the sirloin. Now I’ve had a steak previously in a similar joint in Bangkok a few months back and it was okay, sort of. Now tonight’s steaks were not okay, not even sort of. Firstly it did not resemble the cuts they purported to be and secondly, they were tough, really tough and tasteless. The veggies and the chips that accompanied these steaks non grata

were truly great, but the main event was a nonevent. I must admit that it was not totally unexpected.

After our disappointing supper we watched a miniseries of two episodes called Bag Of Bones which is based on a novel by Stephen King with Pierce Brosnan in the lead. It was rather okay but I noticed that Adri fell asleep somewhere along the way, so maybe it was not that okay.

I only got to bed to 03:00 for some or other reason and finally got up at 09:00, it was Saturday and there was no time to waste. We lazed about after breakfast but soon enough we were on our way to Soon. Adri had remembered that she wanted to exchange her helmet for one that has a visor. We arrived at Soon’s Motorbike Rental and met Soon who has two rental shops in Chiang Rai with a total of 60 bikes. He had no problem in exchanging both our helmets and even went one step further, he fitted each helmet with a brand new visor, 100% scratch free, for now I guess. Soon requested that we bring the bike back on Monday for a service, great customer service I’d say, and I did.

Our next stop was the Hilltribe Museum in centre Chiang Rai. Now most of the hill tribes migrated into the regions of Thailand, Burma, Laos and Vietnam during the past 100 years from the Asian interior and they apparently prefer to live higher that 1000m above sea level and normally shy away from the outside world. There are essentially seven hill tribe groupings in Thailand which are the Lahu, Hmong, Lisu, Akha, Mien, Padaung and Karen. The Karen is also referred to as the Long Neck Karen Tribe due to the neck rings the ladies wear, much like the Southern Ndebele tribe in Southern Africa. Each hill tribe has its own culture, religion, language, art and dress, and their dress are quite magnificent and colourful. It is said that one such traditional dress can take up to a year to create with its intricate embroidery and all.

These people survive mostly on subsistence farming. Opium cultivation used to be a major source of income for many of the hill tribes but the government worked hard to eradicate this cultivation by successfully substituting it with other cash crops such as cabbages and fruits. Typically the hilltribe people are still treated as outsiders and hundreds of thousands of them are still refused citizenship although many are natives to the land. The museum was rather interesting and we will be sure to visit some of these villages while we are in Chiang Rai.

We were going to go to Tops for braai ingredients but the museum kept us captivated far longer than what we anticipated, so it was nearing dusk when we exited. Outside the stall owners had already started assembling their stalls for the Saturday night street market and super smells were already hanging thick in the air. The decision to cancel the braai was an unfortunate one but not a hard one to take. We browsed about and started with a chicken wrap. We were just looking for a complimentary dish when the rain came crashing down and we had to scramble for shelter. We found such outside the 7/11, as did so many others, and that’s where we wrapped up our wraps.

The rain eased and we started out strolling again and found our further courses of samoosas, porkies, a banana pancake as well as a chocolate and banana waffle. The latter we had later at home, topped with vanilla ice cream, great! Oh, and we got some dates as well, you know, the edible ones.

I settled in for the SA versus England rugby test with a big Chang safely held in my greedy clutches. But soon after the starting whistle I could not believe the abysmal crap that played out in front of my eyes, the Chang was pleased to be spared looking at this atrocity as it was consumed at an ever increasing speed. And that was just the first half. The second half started pretty shitty and then it got even worse, after the first maul England made a break with no one in front of them, there was absolutely no defense on the fringes of that maul. Nothing, nada, zippo. The word hapless came to mind. Before the try from this resultant break was scored I switched off… I just could not bear to watch such drivel.

The part of the game that I watched was a very bland affair, the SA defense was a shambles, the kicking pathetic, losing the ball in the tackle and at the breakdowns, no competing in the line outs, no structure to their play, the list goes on and on… it was rather embarrassing to watch. The body language of the players seemed to scream “I’d rather be watching this drivel from home rather than driving it”. There’s something terribly wrong with SA Rugby, and this team, and this coach, and… Lately I have failed to get excited about SA games as I expect that it’s going to end in failure, or worse, embarrassment. The final score was apparently 37/21, ending England’s winning drought against South Africa which lasted for 12 meetings over 10 years. The worst part of it was that England also had a crappy game today. I’m afraid this Springbok team is going only one way and I’ll leave you to decide the direction.

I turned to the news and found an article on the Huffington Post detailing why America deserves Donald Trump as its president, good article, pretty enlightening… And then I read with dismay that Clinton had won the popular vote by about 2 million votes which means that if the Electoral College Voting system was not in place, she would have been the president-elect. Now there have been calls for the US to abolish the Electoral College Voting system for many years, even Trump agreed that it should be abolished during his campaign, but now these voices are getting louder with the former Attorney General Eric Holder calling for an end to it as well.

On one of his shows Bill Maher commented on lessons Democrats learnt from the election. The funniest “lesson” was never to tell Americans “You can’t be that stupid” because Americans will say “Don’t tell me how stupid I can be”. Watch it below, quite funny.

It was Sunday and a good day to have a nervous breakdown, and today I had that nervous breakdown. But I’m running ahead of myself…

The day started out like so many other days. It was Sunday so we slept in, had a cup of coffee in bed and then one out on the patio after which breakfast was served, an ordinary start to an ordinary day.

We decided to explore the area north of Chiang Rai today and our itinerary contained five places of interest which would culminate with an afternoon tea at a tea plantation about 50km out. It was late morning when we headed out, crossed over the Kok River aka Mae Kok at the Phahonyothon Bridge, heading north. Past the Art Bridge Gallery, past Makro, past the turnoff to the airport and from here on it was unknown territory for us.

We were cruising along at 70km per hour into this unknown territory, and that’s where I had my nervous breakdown… the bike slowed down despite my furiously throttling the throttle to within an inch of its life. I veered off the road to come to a complete standstill in front of a shop that was closed for the day; it too had come to a complete standstill. My first bike breakdown in Thailand, and I was nervous. How the hell was I going to get us home and even worse, how the hell was I going to get the bike back home.

I had to call Soon, and by that I mean Soon from the motorbike rental place, but did we even have any airtime left on the phone? Nervously I checked online and luckily there were still a few baht hanging around in there. I called Soon but it was a very difficult conversation, him not understanding farang and me not understanding Thai. Even though his English is quite good it’s always much more difficult to have a conversation via phone as you cannot see the person, maybe lip-read a little. On his instruction of “Find Thai person” I left the relative safety of the parking garage where I took refuge from the noise on the busy street and entered the place attached to that parking garage. It turned out to be a small family run hotel with 15 rooms, rather a neat little place.

A Thai lady greeted me and before I could get myself to greet back I found that I had pushed the phone to her ear, motioning her to speak. It must have seemed rather odd, even coming from a farang. The lady soon enough was up to speed and advised Soon of our current address. We had to give him 30 minutes, he will sort something out.

So with a farang on their stoep, and concern in their hearts for that stoep-sitting farang, they delegated their daughter to keep us company probably to ensure that we stayed sane. We were even offered water to keep us hydrated, it was a hot sunny day, it was 13:00. On that stoep there was also a cat that was attached to a leash. Now that may sound odd and inhumane but if you saw the amount of traffic the road in front of us carried, you’d want a leash as well. I suspect that without the leash there that cat would have really been dead by now having used up its allotted nine lives over time. I was waiting for my leash but they were probably trying to get rid of me.

True to his word, 30 minutes later Soon’s wife and son arrived, her by car, him by bike. They left by car, we left by bike to continue our journey. And no wonder the bike broke down when it did; it was its way of telling us that we had gone past our first itinerary stop for the day. We had to backtrack about 1km to get back to the Black House Art Museum.

The Black House Art Museum (admission is free ) was created by Chiang Rai born artist Thawan Duchanee who has developed a style of work representing the darkness in humanity, apparently. The large grounds include a number of black houses made of wood, glass, concrete, bricks, and/or terracotta in various unique styles and designs scattered around the grounds. The cluster of houses accommodates Thawan’s collections of paintings, sculptures, animal bones, skins, horns, and various other animal parts. There sure are a lot of dead around; dead alligators, dead snake (a huge one at 10 metres plus at a guess), dead elephant, dead brown bear and much more dead. It makes for eerie artwork… rather sombre, rather macabre, but a definite must-see.

After our lengthy walk around the grounds we headed for a little restaurant filled with Thai tourists, farang tourists were outnumbered 374-1. I ordered a small Chang, finished it in small time and proceeded to stare lovingly at its dead and empty carcass. Adri had had enough of dead for one day so bought me another live one while she had an ice-cold soy milk. The expression on my face said “urgh!” but my voice managed something more appropriate. We must have whiled away close to two hours there, just people watching and relaxing.

There was this one Thai guy that kept counting all the people in the restaurant, over and over and over again, before he took a seat at one of the tables where he was met by his minder. I told Adri that I thought the man over there was autistic, it turns out he was the tour leader trying to keep his flock together.

And then Adri wanted to take a picture of me saying, “Let me take selfie of you”. Okay, that somehow came out wrong, not sure how wrong. She never did manage to take that selfie of me.

It was far too late to continue with our itinerary so we turned south and on the way home we stopped off at Makro, essentially for Douwe Egbert coffee. All of a sudden stuff started jumping at me and I had to be quick to catch them before they splattered to the ground. What would the staff say? There were those lovely Portuguese custards tarts (pastéis de nata), Maoji Star Cup Chocolate Biscuits as well as a host of other goodies, but when that bag of doughnuts jumped, Adri’s eyes rolled heavenward, and with that we were out of there.

And of course that eye-rolling thing did not deter Adri from reaching out for a doughnut with our tea when we got home. And those chocolate biscuit cups were just dandy. It comes in a small plastic cup and is filled with soft brown and white chocolate that contains little pieces of seemingly honeycomb-like biscuits about the size of a peanut, man, those were great, and there was still one kilo left.

We made an arrangement with Soon to pick our salvaged bike up at around 11:00 on Monday morning which we dutifully did at 11:30. They had picked the bike up from where it was stored at the family hotel, replaced the offending snapped chain – or rather belt – of the bike, serviced it, cleaned it and checked the tyre pressure. Wow, what service. We also took this opportunity to extend our contract by a few weeks, paid the baht and we were out of there in 10 minutes.

We walked across the road to the Wat Ming Muang temple where they are busy adding two buildings on either side of the existing temple. It will be rather impressive when it is finished. Just one block further up we stopped off at the Darul Aman Mosque looking very impressive indeed but we could unfortunately not enter, it was Friday afternoon so they were probably busy with their prayers.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing, reading and working at home and after supper it was time to join in the Loi Krathong celebrations which started today and ends tomorrow. Now Loi means “to float” while krathong has many meanings but essentially refers to “a small container made of leaves and flowers” to be floated on a river, canal or a pond during the Loi Krathong festival, while making a wish as you do so. The krathong, which you buy from stalls that are situated close to water during Loi Krathong, also come with a few sticks of incense and a candle, which all get lit before you launch it.

Last year we celebrated Loi Krathong with David and Jenny back on Koh Samui and what a great evening it was, we sure do miss those two. This year, with the passing of King Bhiumibol, the celebrations were muted, in fact tonight there were no celebrations at all, but everybody did still of course float their krathong.

 

 

We first went to the Leelawadee Restaurant on the Kok River which was positively packed but a very restrained atmosphere prevailed. Maybe it had something to do with the very restrained and sad live Thai music that was played by two men and a lady. We shared a Heineken but decided not to launch our krathong form there, we spotted another place where people seemed to be steaming to just further upstream.

Arriving upstream we each bought a krathong, moseyed on down a darkened pathway to the edge of the river where many people were doing their floating. On floating mine I nearly stepped through a rotten wooden step but fortunately caught myself before I reached the bottom. After our two successful launches we headed home.

We watched a movie called Eat Pray Love starring Julia Roberts and it is about a woman who realizes her marriage is unhappy and that she needs to change her life. She divorces and goes on a round-the-world journey to “find herself”. She starts off in Italy, then goes to India and thereafter she landed up in Bali. There are some stunning scenery scenes but the storyline itself was really just okay. The fact that I fell asleep only once was probably due to the stunning scenery.

Yesterday we did a 45 minute yoga session and today being Tuesday we planned for a full hour one but sadly it was not to be. We decided that maybe, just maybe, the muscles needed a break, else it might just break.

This morning Adri baked scones which went down so well, laden with thick butter with toppings of either cheddar cheese or strawberry jam.

We worked the rest of the day, me blogging and Adri starting up her Microsoft Office online course which had been neglected since our Nong Song Hong days.

And speaking about Nong Song Hong, we caught up with some of our adopted kids that were there at the time. Jay was now happily teaching at a school in Chonburi which is on the coast not far from Bangkok, lucky him.  Patrick, who had been teaching fulltime in Nong Song Hong for a number of years, resigned and found another teaching job in Rayong which is also on the coast, lucky him.  He is only about 100km from Jay in Chonburi so I suspect these two will be meeting up regularly. I really do hope we see the both of them before we leave Thailand, and I am sure we will.

Today was the second and last day of the Loi Krathong festival and we set out to find a place with more festivities than last night. Last night turned out to be a bit of a wet fish.

And speaking about wet fish, it brought a smile to my mind as I thought back to my mathematics teacher in high school – come to think of it, he looked a bit like Bryan Ferry from Roxy Music – who used to say when he was pleasantly surprised, “Slaan my met ‘n nat vis! (Hit me with a wet fish!)” He would utter this saying, for example, on the rare occasion that I got the answer right, which would have been pleasantly surprising.

Tonight we opted to go to a different part of the Kok River at the bridge furthest west, and this place was crazy busy and getting crazier by the minute. There was a street market next to the river that was in full swing with all the normal trappings, but also stalls upon stalls selling krathongs.

We waded through the crowd and decided to have supper first before doing our krathong floating thing. We found an open area with tables and chairs – where we had supper – where a live band was performing, a guy on guitar and vocals, a girl on vocals and another guy on drums and vocals. Only Thai pop songs were played so nothing we recognized, but all was great. This was our first live music experience since King Bhumibol passed away, so things seemed to be getting back to normal, but not quite yet. At the other end of the street market was a huge stage awaiting a heavy rock band to start performing at 21:00. We deiced to give that a miss.

Supper consisted of spring rolls, porkies, a frankfurter with chips and a bag of deep fried pieces of pork with garlic, a true feast. My Chang beers came in tins tonight; you know what they say about beggars…

Once we had our fill of music, food and drink we selected our krathongs, a difficult choice as they are all so beautiful. Some of the krathong stalls sold little wet fish as well as little wet snakes, all alive and well and living in a plastic bag all of their own.  I did not have the guts to ask but I assumed that one could buy these live creatures and free them into the river in lieu of a krathong. I made a mental note to watch out for slimy slivery characters when floating my good luck.  After selecting our krathongs we walked down the by now very muddy way to the bank of the river, lit up the incense and the candle, made our wishes and floated our krathongs, sending them off to nowhere in particular, lighting their own way as they drifted downstream.

We got up slightly late on Wednesday morning and decided to continue in that vein by reading and relaxing most of the day. The relaxing part also consisted of fine-tuning our itinerary for the next month or two. So we were searching for flights and accommodation, made a couple of enquiries, and will make our final decision once we receive feedback.

Supper tonight was cordon bleu which we have not had at home in a while. You may recall that we had this at John’s Place in Chiang Mai not too long ago, but the home variety we have not had in months. There was no ham in the house but there was pork in a different form, bacon, which was duly inserted into that chicken steak with copious amounts of Cheddar cheese oozing out of there. Of course it would not have been complete without the last batch of frozen French fries. There was also mashed up sweet potato but I was not having any of the healthy stuff tonight.

It was just before 20:00 when we parked at the Central Festival Shopping Centre for movies. Inferno with Tom Hanks in the lead was what we came to see, and it was rather okay. If I know what I know now I would probably still have gone to see the movie. But if you miss it when it starts in SA on 9 December 2016 , don’t stress, you can always catch it later on video, it’s not a must-see movie.

Again we got to bed only at around 01:30; last night it was later… we must stop doing this. On Apple’s Clock app in IOS 10 there is a new feature called Bedtime which allows you to specify when to be alerted to go to bed and by when you wish to wake up. So I entered the extremes of being notified at 22:30 in order for me to try and go to bed at 23:00 and then to wake up with a gentle First Light alarm to ease me into the day, should I still be asleep at that time. Clearly this is not working, although I must confirm that there is nothing wrong with the Bedtime functionality.

Thursday after breakfast I told Adri, as I opened my laptop, that I will be doing admin today. I then proceeded to sign on, typed my password and was presented with an error message of “Incorrect Password”. I typed it again with the same result. As I started typing the password for a third time I realized I was typing “admin”, which is of course not my password. Dof (dim)!

Having spent a long hard day on admin you would think that I would be done, but you would be wrong.

I was still attacking the keys with gusto when Adri announced that she was taking a stroll to the market three blocks up to see what was for supper. An hour later she came back beaming; she had procured all the necessary accompaniments for the pork steak that was lying in wait. She offered “I really do like Chiang Rai, everything is so easy here”. And it is.

I read that a judge ordered Brendan Dassey, from the Netflix documentary series Making A Murderer, to be released from prison by Friday but subsequently I believe there was an appeal against that decision yet again. We watched this series last year while in Koh Samui and were gripped by the police’s highhandedness, skulduggery and corruption that went on behind the scenes to get Brendan and his uncle Steven Avery convicted of murder. If you can, watch this series, you won’t be disappointed. I am wondering whether President Obama, on his departure from the White House, will pardon Steven and Brendon, I really do believe they are innocent.

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