Hannukah Haircare Miracles

My voice has gone deeper in Chiang Mai, I’ve noticed. It isn’t because I’m particularly relaxed; I’m still a neurotic, and have a ways to go before true calm. It’s because I’m alone. My conversations are mostly internal, and when I do get to speak to someone, it comes from within, down deep below the diaphragm, the words measured and unhurried. Of course, once I get on a roll, the motormouth version of me which you know and love takes over, and my voice assumes its accustomed comical pitch.

But by and large, throughout the day, it’s just me. Unlike people traveling in pairs and over, I have no one sitting across the café table, nothing to punctuate the meal. I gobble up my food and then, if I am in the mood, sit and muse. It makes for an odd display: a lone foreigner staring catatonically into the middle distance. But internal or shared, I need conversation. Yesterday I sat in a random café to try and finish Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens (thanks, Galiti!) and/or to think. Like most cute little joints in Chiang Mai, it had a gimmick, this one being Coca Cola memorabilia and other Americana. The manager was dressed in an American flag pajama-looking set. My table was a fish tank, and from the rafter above me Mickey Mice hanged executed convicts. (see picture.) I tried focusing as best I could, but the music in the place was boy band treacle. You try meditating to the heavy-breathing strains of “see you once agaaaain, my loooove.” So meditation wasn’t perfect. I took a few pictures, including of a poster I see plastered all around Chiang Mai: Self Hypnosis for Self Improvement. The moment I began breaking that down in my mind, I ran into the immediate need to have my friend next to me to talk about it. She is the exact person with whom I would have shared that specific discussion. I experienced her absence from that fish-tank table in the form of a physical pain.

That said, I am careful not to over-familiarize myself just because I’m lonely, but rather to choose prudently whom to open to. For one, I maintain a safe operating distance from the locals who serve my traveling needs. In the past I tended to ingratiate them, probably due to their own hardened businesslike aloofness. It was, as ever anywhere, a subtle battle of wills – and I waved the white flag. This would often grant them excessive liberty with my personal affairs, and I’d end up making concessions to their omnipresent gaze so as not to embarrass myself. In other words, I became known where I should have enjoyed anonymity. I’ve learned my lesson, and am more guarded now – for example, I have not told my guest house owner that I stayed in her place before, for a long time. Better that she think of me as a new customer, perhaps one that’s a bit hard to please, a man you can’t quite get a handle on. Let me be the enigma and they the guessers, not the other way around. Besides, I am the one shelling out cash, so fuck it. I do seek the company of other travelers. I’ve met Danes, Germans, Chinese, Americans, and of course my local buddy, the Italian Robert Redford lookalike, Romano. (I’ve also noticed that French and Spanish people make very convincing Israelis; could fool me; like us, they shave less, iron less, and dress more like they’re going the beach.)

Not that there aren’t lots of Thais I enjoy meeting. Here in Chiang Mai, that is. This place might as well be another Thailand. After a person who sold me a banana shake wished me a wonderful day, and a money exchange man did the same, and a hotel hostess took three minutes out of her time to explain to me which other hotels might have a swimming pool for me, and two Thai girls at a food market gave me a ride home on their scooter (and let me drive!) – see picture – after all this, I realized that Chiang Mai’s people are simply more cultured. They make the south and Bangkok seem like low-bred animals. It’s not that they don’t need to make money; no one will give you a room just because you have a nice smile; it’s that they have a more beautiful and humane sense of business. Theirs appears to be a win/win approach, whereas in Bangkok it’s the win/get-fucked school. That said, at that food market where I got a ride home, I still got the farang price for dessert. Can’t win ‘em all.

And of course, there’s the prostitutes. Of all the Thai elements, this is the one closest in vibe to Bangkok (although, as I’ve mentioned before, milder here. And not all over the place.) You do see young brown women with old white men. You do see young brown women reenact fake jollity each night at the designated bars and hangouts. You do see the same young brown women everywhere, a cautious unsmiling look behind the expert welcoming smile. One night walking home by the canal, I passed such a couple of women, sandwiching a young white guy. “Where you go?” one of them asked me in a voice not unlike one of the Chipmunks. “Noodles,” I said, and indeed crossed the canal to get some. A few moments later, so did they. The guy and I exchanged a few words, and he invited me to go with them.

I thought a beat. “Nah, not my scene.”

They hung around for a cab, then changed their minds and decided to eat. I invited them to sit at my picnic table. The guy was American, Jewish (oddly, every single American I’ve met so far has told me they’re Jewish.) The girls were the cartoon voice one, who had a lovely sense of humor, and an Indian/Nepali looking one who acted very quiet and mysterious. She played her cards close to her chest, or, I believed, might be new to the bar girl game and is still in shock, the other one being her mentor. As the guy was young and handsome, I wasn’t sure if they’re bar girls or not, but it sure seemed that way, especially with the overstated coyness of the quiet Indian-looking one. She had gorgeous raven hair, a healthy young figure, and deep, black, surreptitious eyes.

“Where did you say you’re from?” the American guy asked her, trying to get the Thai word right. “Sip—Sipti—Sippitt— ”

She looked at him calmly and said, “Kanchanaburi.”

Dude wasn’t even close. I laughed hard, and the Mickey Mouse one said I have a great laugh. She had a true pleasantness about her, a something real, without the hard edge usually found in Thai girls working the tourist beat. Over the next few days, I ran into one or both of those girls no less than five times (!) at different places. I found them to be genuinely friendly and polite, but kept my distance. I kept wondering if they indeed are of the bar persuasion. Two days later I passed a girlie bar and saw the Indian-looking one chatting up a tourist. It’s always a relief to establish facts.

I have an inflamed hip from too much walking, and I’m in a bit of pain. But in things are good. I’m saving more money here and having a better time. The tiny bottle of shampoo I filched from the overexpensive hotel in Bangkok has lasted me forever. It’s like a Hanukkah miracle, only with haircare. My private toilet has a little drip in the back, but it’s okay. There are a couple of ants in my bathroom, but it’s okay. Actually, it shouldn’t bother me at all. It’s something I’ve just realized: at home, you don’t mind insects that much. A couple of ants here, a mosquito there, a cockroach putting in a guest appearance. No big deal. But when traveling, especially in tropical countries, every bug is an infestation. Got bit by a mosquito? Start planning for malaria. Unidentified brown flying thing landed on your shin for one moment? Three days later you discover a scratch on the back of the other shin and think, that’s how starts. Paranoia.

Okay, my banana shake is long gone, and the people whose café’s WiFi I am using have not bothered me to buy another for too long. Chiang Mai is nice. Here are some photos and a video.

Waitress chillin'

Mickey getting his just deserts

The two girls I met at the food market, who gave me a ride home.
They're 21, university students 

With Romano and Jade

Self Hypnosis for Self Improvement