10 reasons I love chiang mai

When I travel I often find that I do what I do at home, but in a different location. Some of my favourite activities are hanging around in coffee shops, bars and restaurants. And chiang mai has about a million. In case you're ever around here, these are my 10 favourite places to sit and do nothing in chiang mai.

1. iberry

I'm there right now and have been for the past four hours.

This cafe is owned by a famous Thai comedian and specialises in delicious but bizarrely flavoured ice creams like guava mix salted plum, pomelo sorbet and the dreaded durian. The decor could have been done by a graphic designer or a four year old let loose in a toyshop: giant yellow dog sculpture in the garden, baskets full of plastic wine goblets for lightshades, a life size model of chairman mao, lights that look like shooting stars and machine gun-shaped silver door handles. love.

2. the garden

Well, its real name is raan baan suan I think. You can get yummy Thai food for 50p. You may have to wade through a flood to get there but that only adds to the joy when you eventually eat. My favourites are the suki (fried glass noodles with meat, vegetables and chilli sauce on the side) and kaeng phet (spicy curry).

3. jerusalem felafel

You may think its crazy to come to thailand and go for felafel. But once you've been to jerusalem felafel, you'll understand why...

4. coffeezilla

It looks like the inside of an ipod and it makes an epic iced mocha. 'nuff said.

5. qbar

THAT bar on nimanhaemin. Don't get it confused with the other bar on nimanhaemin... Last night I had a cocktail that looked and tasted like mint choc chip ice cream. And you can sit on high stools and people watch in the centre of chiang mai's nightlife. Sights to look out for include hipsters in spray-on jeans despite 30 degree plus heat, high school kids trying to sneak into warm-up and drunk drivers.

6. warm up

It's hard to describe exactly why warm up is so awesome. Maybe it's the big bottles of sangsom for the same price as the 7-11. Maybe it's the fact that it also serves food, so you don't have to move when you get the drunk munchies. Or maybe it's just that you know it's where everyone in chiang mai will be on a friday night...

7. pun pun

It may take approximately a million years to get there, in which time you'll have been eaten alive by mosquitos, but it does make delicious vegetarian food and fruit shakes. My favourite is the indian curry with roti, but the veggie khao soy (northern style noodles with spicy soup) deserves an honourable mention.

8. monkey bar

I feel so much classier when I'm here: it's all low level white leather sofas and mood lighting. The elegant atmosphere doesn't stop me ordering a tower of Chang (thai beer that reportedly contains formaldehyde) though....

9. smoothie blues

even by western standards, the sandwiches here are epic. And right now it's avocado season - add avocado to your meal for 15 baht (30p).

10. the street

delicious food is everywhere in chiang mai. You can't avoid iced tea, roast pork, fresh pineapple, fried chicken, pad thai wrapped in a banana leaf and every conceivable kind of delicious thai meal being sold for virtually nothing on a street somewhere. Some of the best evenings I've had have involved strolling down to chiang mai university and grazing on street food until full. You can try the truly weird and wonderful - egg shell omelette, fried silkworms, chicken feet, and all the staples, and I've never spent more than a pound on a single dish. I think it's probably what I'm going to miss the most when I go home...

poverty in the midst of plenty

I spent this morning in a slum. Not everyone's ideal weekend, but yknow, I get bored easily.

I was filming a documentary with TYAP: Thai Youth Action Program, an HIV and AIDS and human rights charity based in Chiang Mai. Well, I say I was filming a documentary, my main task was taking photos of other people filming a democracy, and playing with the cute but dirty kids.

The location was a village that looked like it should be in rural Cambodia rather than central Chiang Mai, one of Thailand's richest cities. I was in that same area last night at Airport Plaza, Chiang Mai's shiniest, most western style mall, where you can get "emporer class" at the movies and buy an iphone case in every conceivable colour, shape and texture. This was about as far away from that as you can get, in style if not geographically.

The community live in a set of buildings made out of bamboo and corrugated iron on swampy land somewhere behind a backstreet, invisible to the rest of the world. Most of them are hill tribes who have given their traditional way of life, either through the impact of 'development' i.e. building on traditional lands, logging or sheer poverty. In Chiang Mai they're the kids you see selling flowers to tourists in the Old city, betting a sale on games of 'rock, paper, scissors' with backpackers. They wash windows on the highway, or hang around at the end of nimenhaemin (the trendiest street in Chiang Mai) selling strings of flowers used to make merit.

It's weird, but despite being here and being familiar with the major denial of rights to these people, I never really noticed them before. This week, I've been doing research on the issue of statelessness among hill tribes. Most of them never had their births registered, and so don't have Thai citizenship. This means they have no access to employment, state healthcare, education or pretty much any of life's essentials. Some hill tribe people, especially Karen, Lisu and Hmong, cross borders with neighbouring Laos and Burma regularly, despite the danger, because their ethnic groups live on both sides.

The ones from Burma are in the most trouble - constant fighting in Karen state means that many of them are now refugees in Thailand, where they are confined in camps along the border pretty much indefinitely. Some of them have been there over 20 years, and fatalism, depression and suicide are on the rise. The ones who break out of the camps end up in places like the slum I visited today - living in absolute poverty and still without any hope of getting the magic Thai ID card that would give them access to basic services.

Getting Thai citizenship is a nightmare in itself - you need birth registration to get citizenship, but to get registered you have to be born in a hospital, and to be entitled to state hospital care you need... you guessed it... Thai citizenship! There are ways round it but they're just as difficult to access - anyone got two witnesses to their birth and lack of registration thereof who both have Thai citizenship? Nope, thought not. And just try navigating the maze of bureaucracy and forms to be filled in when you're illiterate and can't speak Thai (most of the hill tribes speak their own languages).

To be fair, the Thai government and the King are working on getting more hill tribe peoples citizenship, and so are NGOs such as BABSEA (where I work) and IMPECT (Inter mountain peoples' education and culture in Thailand). I'm spending this week trying to get my own head round the citizenship rules and figure out a simple way to teach it to a group of hill tribe women at the refuge where we do our human rights seminars.

But despite the work of Chiang Mai's millions of NGOs, it's going to be a long time before anyone pays attention to the people in the slums behind Airport Plaza. It's just like when they try to sell you the flowers on nimanhaemin - you roll up your tinted windows and drive smoothly by.

i haz taken over

my name is Chester and i haz taken over this blog because Carla is shit and doesn't write anymore. Carla haz invaded my house so i haz invaded her blog. i read the Bangkok post every day and I like to eat frogs. I am watching you so you best be behaving...

Things I did in Pai on Trip no. 3 (in order)

'rufied' myself with 2 baht (4p) travel sickness pills
discovered blueberry and hazelnut flavour pringles
ate goat jerky
rode the "Pai eye" (think the London eye, but smaller, made of wood and liable to make you feel like you're about to die)
walked on the "Pai canyon" (think the Grand canyon, but smaller, made of er... sandy rock and liable to make you feel like you're about to die)
visited a place from a Thai movie, without knowing anything about said movie
swung through the trees on a zipwire (also liable to make you feel like you're about to die)
ate blood risotto rice cakes and congealed blood soup (i am the best vegetarian EVER)
drank free shots of Chinese rice wine and Burmese home-brew rice whisky
watched Xiaomei drink all of the above, plus many B52s, mojitos and "rabbits" and remain completely stone-cold sober
watched Olive suck his own sweat from his armpit in lieu of the salt for his tequila slammer
learned how to say "she is very drunk" and "i am tipsy" in Thai (thank you Ajaan Win)
heard Olive vomit into the flowerbeds
dragged Olive out of bed at 7am to go white-water rafting (He didn't make it, but I think it's for the best. He did pay 1000 baht for the non-trip though: straight Rossin')
learned the traditional thai hangover cure: drink more (you see why I love this country...)
got a mud facial
spent approximately 7 hours winding through the mountains in our VIP minibus
rufied myself with 2 baht travel sickness pills again
what a weekend.

Only in Pai...

chaa yen cures hangovers

It is a well-known fact that juice cures hangovers. However, I would like to inform you of a startling discovery: chaa yen (thai red iced tea) also cures hangovers.
You might be wondering, what exactly is this magical substance? So I'll tell you. Chaa yen is very sugary Thai Ceylon tea, distinguishable by its red colour, poured over a glass full of ice, topped up with condensed milk. The finished product looks something like this:

It is one of the most delicious concoctions on this planet.

So this morning I woke up with my usual hungover insomnia at about 8am, having spent last night at miguel's, warm-up, discovery and some club I don't even know the name of drinking another thai classic: sangsom and coke. Eventually, by 11am I could stand it no longer and desperately needed some chaa yen and possibly a 7-11 pizza bread. I went to a bakery (passing a crowing rooster, a flood and many hyperactive builders asking me where I was going) and got some kind of suspicious looking processed meat and sugary bread combination and then strolled back down thanon suan dok, ready for a trip to Mr. Willeam, my favourite iced tea stand.

However, when I get there Mr. Willeam himself was there, but not the tea stand. He offers me food, and I politely decline, asking instead for a chaa yen. He shows me a map and tries to explain something in Thai, at which point I look completely befuddled. So instead, he pulls out a motorbike and instructs me to go with him.

Now I know that in England only a crazy person would jump on a motorbike, without a helmet, with a virtual stranger, going to an unknown destination. But this is Thailand, so that's exactly what I do. Anyway, he drives me down the road, to his office/ shop, where his wife is waiting with the tea stand. She makes me my chaa yen, and then Mr. Willeam gives me a lift to my door (well, gate, I live on a compound now cos I'm posh like that). If that isn't good customer service, I don't know what is. I'm only halfway through the chaa yen now, but already the hangover is receding. Epic win all round.

Changes ch ch changes

I'm useless, I apologise, I haven't blogged in forever. And I have to get up at 4am tomorrow to go on a sponsored bike ride (for which I have sought no sponsorship), so I thought tonight would be a fun night to catch up.

At the weekend I went to Pai with Jane and Lauren, and awesome times were had all round. A slightly sad thing was that one of my favourite bars from when I went there two years ago had been shut down. I've also been hearing stories from the returned interns, and it seems like this part of the world has got worse, not better, in the past couple of years. A freeway has been built over the riverside area in Vientiane where I ate a plate of laap that was the spiciest meal I've had in my entire life. The lakeside hostels by Boeng Kak lake in Phnom Penh have been demolishes, and the local residents evicted, to make way for 'development' projects that benefit only rich Chinese, Korean and Japanese investors, not the Khmer people.

Beer at the riverside in Laos, last time around

And chilling out by the lake in Phnom Penh:

But, as one of the other interns said, maybe it's just that "poverty looks better". The lakeside in Phnom Penh was full of trash and rats, and Vientiane really could do with some decent roads. Traffic in Chiang Mai is a nightmare when it rains (which it has been doing with increasing frequency) because tough planning laws mean that you can't just knock down a wat and build a freeway, and now people drive cars, not motorbikes. And the flashy Chiang Mai coffee shops have moved in to Pai, but those are Thai companies employing lots of local people, not reggae bars staffed by backpackers working for free.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel conflicted: these places had a certain ramshackle charm last time around, but I don't want people to stay poor just because it looks prettier. And I also feel conflicted because I said "trash" and "freeway" not "rubbish" and "motorway", and I am trying to cling on to the last vestiges of my englishness, even if it means people give me dodgy looks when I say, "I'm going out for a fag"...