CHIANG MAI - Wednesday, June 24
Written June 25, 2009 9:30 AM

Ahhh, Chiang Mai! The air is cooler here, the pace slower, and the food, to my taste, even more delicious. Best of all, this, the city where Boosaba and I met and where Benyapa was born, feels more like home and a lot more like Inside Thailand.

After a not-too-uncomfortable night on the bus, we arrived here in a gentle rain at 6:30 Wednesday morning. Of course the irony is that the train strike ended up resolved by 6:00 PM Tuesday, which meant that we could have used our original itinerary, but it was important that we be here on time so we stuck with the bus as a sure thing.

While Boosaba and Benyapa joined the group for breakfast, I took off to fine-tune some recent truck repairs. Complications began when the mechanic who took our Isuzu for a test drive got busted for what the police claimed was a smog violation. They took his license and issued our Isuzu a citation.

To begin with, there is nothing wrong with our truck which would easily pass a smog test in California, but the police here are unregulated and greedy. The usual way of dealing with them is to pay a bribe rather than a fine, but the bribe price for farang is way higher than for Thais, so Boosaba went to deal with that while I returned to the Galare Guest House to look after the kids.

Boosaba insisted upon — and actually received — a receipt for her 500 baht (US$15) bribe, and then gave the police a stern talking to for having hassled our mechanic with such a bogus citation. By noon everything was settled and we were off to meet with Phramaha Boonchuay, a remarkably progressive Buddhist monk who is also Vice Chancellor of the Buddhist University in Chiang Mai, a friend of Tich Naht Han, and an acquaintance of the Dalai Lama.

Our talk with him deserves much more attention than I have time to give right now, so I will come back to that later. For now, I will leave off by saying that all enjoyed yesterday evening at the Night Bazaar, and are looking forward to lunch today, Thursday, with our journalist and historian friends.

Friday morning we will meet the elephants in Lampang, and then drive home to our village in Uttaradit. You may look forward to some less hurried and better illustrated posts from there.

BANGKOK
June 23, 2009 11:25 AM

The bus it is. Boosaba went straight to the bus station this morning
and returned a couple of hours later with ten tickets on a VIP bus
that has essentially the same departure and arrival times as our now
stranded train, so we're back on schedule with just the one mode of
transportation change.

-- Mac

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 8:05 AM, Mac Bakewell wrote:
> Here's an unexpected challenge... We're set to leave for Chiang Mai
> tonight but it's hard to imagine 450 miles on a bus. We're definitely
> Bangkoked-out and not sure what we will do. Stay tuned...
>
> -- Mac
>
> Nationwide strike halts all trains
> Many passengers left stranded
> Full story