Day 14
So glad we canceled the second day of that scammy tour. Instead, we got to go climbing! We booked an excursion through our hotel and were picked up in the morning with two other travelers, given gear, and driven an hour outside Chiang mai to crazy horse buttress (fig. 1). Our guides were Mario and Jun, two Thai thirty-somethings, and our fellow travelers Sebastian, a comp sci student from Holland and Kana, a nurse from Japan.
Tldr: I got my climbing fix and Ilana got a bit tired out and discouraged, but it was overall a great day. This next paragraph is full of climbing jargon so skip if you like. But then keep reading!
They used the French system to rate the routes so who knows how hard I really climbed, but I started with a 6a chimney. Maybe like 5.10b ish? But it was hard after not having climbed for three weeks! On real rock. In shitty shoes. And 90 degree humid weather. I was basically dripping sweat the whole day. I sped up all of the 5as and bs, then led (clean!) a 5c (fig. 2). Deeericious. Jun was super encouraging the entire time and seemed impressed. Ilana made it up a few 5as and bs but struggle with the c and refused to try the 6s except the 6a chimney that I did first. And she made it up that one! And didn't even whine as much as Kana!
The most adorable dog came to visit us as we were climbing. Brown and super soft, she just couldn't get enough love (fig. 3). And then she stole our guide's lunch. Oops!
Ilana and I rode back to Chiang mai in the back of the pickup truck until it started to rain and Jun offered to swap out for one of us. I found the rain very refreshing :) chatting with Jun was also fun; he was very friendly (though his English wasn't great) and we talked about deep water soloing and Thailand in general.
We got back to the hotel and cleaned up to go to dinner. Sebastian had told us about some street food along the moat of old Chiang Mai and that there was a good are for going out called zoes garden nearby so we tuktuked our way there. We wandered around the street food to see what there was to see and settled for some delicious pad Thai and pad see ew. Om nom nom. Authentic. Some chang beers from the convenience store two doors down and we were set.
After dinner I was ready to ptfo. We wandered over to Zoes garden but it was still pretty empty. This was probably around 9:15. I whined but Ilana convinced me to stay out, suggesting some sugar might get my energy up. Queue the greasy banana roti. Om nom again and I was ready to party.
We sat down at a table at zoes and ordered a couple beers. A few sips and we had the courage to join the table of reasonable-enough-looking guys a few rows over. Looking maybe, sounding...not so much. David, Ryan, and Kevin were from Toronto and had just graduated with a degree in business and just sold their flower company. (My parents and I actually likely encountered their stands at Penn's graduation in may.) They had settled on doing one exciting thing a day...because they were consistently too hung over to so any more. I think I prefer our m.o. Ryan's head sweatband should have been warning enough.
Eventually we spotted Sebastian and joined him and a few friend from his hostel. Much more pleasant company.
Then came drum and bass. Fuck yes. Danced hard for a bit, with Shaggy and Azaelia. If only I'd worn shorts. Unfortunately the dance floor was soon too crowded and hot so I sat back down. It was also now too loud to talk so I was pretty ready to peace. But Ilana wanted to keep going.
After some more dancing at a less crowded, less poppy, electronic club, Ilana and I split up. She kept dancing while I wandered back to the hostel with the boys to sample some greenery via Germany. Sebastian and I had a great time talking about cyber security/identities and quantum computing. Fabu and Deepin, his hostel mates, seemed a little lost so they went to sleep and Sebastian followed shortly.
I walked back to the club, past the cafe with the toads in heat that Ilana and I had mistaken for recordings of cows. I bumped into Ilana on the street and we tuktuked it back to the hotel.
- Amelia
Day 14
Our flight was at 6 30 on our last day in Chiang Mai, so we could have a lazy morning and afternoon. Amelia had wanted to get her haircut so we envisioned a spa day because Thailand is famous for its pampering. There was a wide choice for massage, but finding a place for a haircut was a little more difficult. We asked for a recommendation from the hotel but the place was closed. We asked for another recommendation from the money changer and he suggested a place across the street.
The proprietor of the barber shop was eating lunch so Amelia and I went to wonder around the mall. I was pretty hungry for lunch while Amelia wasn't because she had eaten half my breakfast while waiting for hers. Equating street food to mall food, I got Pad Thai at the food court. This operation included a confusing system of buying coupons in one place and ordering food in another. The Pad Thai was even better than last night and we wandered back to the barber shop.
The only person working the shop was a fairly convincing transvestite. I opted for a manicure instead of a massage but Amelia and I couldn't be served at the same time. The hair dresser struggled to understand what Amelia wanted for a haircut and did a hack kind of job. Not seeing this as an indication of her/his lack of prowess in the personal care industry I still opted for a manicure and pedicure (not something I've done since high school but it was cheap and we were going to Japan the next day). Wrought with fears about hygiene and feeling the onset of the 3rd world traveler's inevitable intestinal discomfort, I was not a happy camper. Torn between my reluctance to brave the squat style commode with my freshly done toes and the peristalsis of my lower digestive tract, eventually the latter won out and I walked in bare foot to a cesspool of who knows what. Without getting into details, I'll just say Amelia's reaction on seeing me led from the backroom with the shorts pantsuit wearing ladyman was that I had unwilling been giving a happy ending to my manicure that was neither happy nor at the end of my manicure. Yes, with no sink or disinfectant I sat back down for the end of my manicure. By the end we were antsy to get out. All in all my Thailand spa experience was shitty.
Chiang Mai airport was the easiest and most pleasant airport so far. Clear signage, pleasant gate agents and comfortable places to sit. Not to mention it was small and empty, so it was pretty hard to get lost.
We settled into our seats on the plane and suddenly "Haaa!" The head and arms of a toddler (whose existence was literally surprising to us) popped over the seats in front of us. Ilana jumped and cowered instinctively and then we all, the boy's parents included started laughing uncontrollably. It looked like a tricky matter to ask the boy to apologize to us when his mom could barely stop giggling.
Our travel from south east Asia to Japan was otherwise uneventful and unfortunately not that restful. We had a red eye of two less than 4 hr flights and a 3 hr layover in Hong Kong. We descended into Hong Kong through a thunderstorm. It was a spectacular sight, looking down on all the colored lights of the city, illuminated building-lined streets twisting around mountains and bays, massive clouds flashing electric light at different altitudes.
- Ilana
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