(Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of travel correspondence from Dan as he travels around southeast Asia. Click the “continued” link to read the full message.)

July 11, 2005

Greetings from Chiang Mai!

So far, I’ve lost a bottle of Purel and my ‘Oakey’ sunglasses. I’ve also been swindled three times for a total of $2. Life is very good here. We took the overnight train from Bangkok last night, and I’ve had a very active day including elephants and riverboats, so pardon me if I ramble a bit.

So the group assembled Saturday night, I think, well it was some night. Call it Day 1. That’s all we call it. Twelve travelers, 4 men and 8 women. Our leader, Nick, posted some authoritative yet friendly signs and met us in the lobby, where we learned that Nick is a wee British lass. Five-three. Perky at all hours. A good influence on me, as I’m not terribly good in the mornings. Former roommates and bosses are getting this email and simultaneously rolling their eyes at my antics.

Jet lag has been good to me, as I no longer care what time it is. Everything is relative. Last night, on the train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, I got tired and went to sleep. I think it was 10 pm. I woke up completely refreshed to hear Marcus (male, British, 23, normal) holding court with some ladies. I popped up for some breakfast conversation only to find that it was 1 am. Sleep is a scarce commodity, I returned to my bunk.

This was my third bunkbed experience in the last two weeks. The train gets the silver medal. I didn’t have Batman sheets (Wayne’s house), but neither did I smack my head into the ceiling (cousin’s house). Sleep would have been easier if they turned off the fluorescent lights in the car, but it’s my fault for losing my blindfold (which I found after we got off the train, so it did not make the list).

You’ll hear more about the cast of characters as time goes by. No need to memorize them now, but in short:

Nick (female, British, tour guide, perky)
Marcus (still normal)
Sam (male, Kiwi, 30’s, frighteningly intense and slightly bonkers)
David (male, Canadian, 40’s, art teacher, solitary, normal)
Ginny and Jo (British, 30, inseparable, insufferable)

This is getting boring. I’ll get to the other six women in time. Betsy, you have nothing to worry about. People on this trip have great personalities. In the Reality TV sort of way. At the least, these first few days have shown me just how hyper-sensitive Americans are to criticism and stereotyping. I’ve felt PC urges myself, but I generally don’t give a shit, so the urges pass. Mostly, citizens of former UK colonies needle each other in predictable patterns. When it’s my turn to be teased, I take it well. But I don’t dish it well at all. Years of softening my humor have left me with few barbs. We’ll see how long that lasts.

I’ve also learned that the Brits among us are far better at insults than anyone else. The Aussies are second, though clearly derivative. I’ve picked up a few britishisms, and I’m sure I’ll be quite annoying when I get home. More annoying, that is.

I’m proud to announce that we’re three hours into The Great Food Experiment, where I ate pork-on-a-stick and an beverage with ice at the same meal. So far so good. Nick is very clear that we should feel free to experiment, and that the guide books are very conservative about salad and ice when they don’t need to be. But she also said that she won’t hold back you hair or carry your bags if you’re wrecked. So I started my trip with simple fare, like chicken satay and banana fritters cooked in front of me. Today was crispy pork, crackling pork rinds, fried doughnuts with egg yolks in the middle, and a Lipitor. The bus driver tried to explain that there’s no cholesterol in crackling pork rinds, right after he took us, unrequested, to the second market of the day.

And the swindles. Most people here have been wonderful, both kind and patient, as I struggle with the pronunciation of “Hello” and “Thank you.” (now that I can almost say both, we are headed to Laos, where the s is silent. Help!) However, scams abound. I’ve only been overcharged or double-charged. It’s $2. I can live. And they need the money more than I do. Especially the ten year old boy who got me to buy a 25-cent piece of candy by thumb wrestling me. He tapped me on one shoulder, then walked to the other. Teased me. Pointed at my shirt, then flicked my nose. Teased me. He was as slick as the older kid on the playground on your first day of elementary school, but he was a third my size! During the (brief) thumbwrestle, he cried that I was beating him up, and taunted me for not being able to beat a ten year old. He has his patter down, and he was very successful as he walked around our area. Nick warned us that kids like that are more prevalent at popular sites, like Angkor Wat, where they are under-educated but not stupid. They can patter and hustle in 5 languages. There’s great potential out there, if it can just be tapped. Hopefully this kid can tap his.

Finally, an odd moment of international relations. Looking for comfort food in the train station after a particularly difficult incident with a bathroom tollbooth, I stopped at Dairy Queen. Yes, the Sage of Omaha reaches here. No, I didn’t go to the Dunkin Donuts next door (sorry to my readers from Allied Domecq). Waiting for my Blizzard, the family in front of me is puttering along in an accent I don’t recognize. The father hears me order and asks if I’m British. Really? No, American. He introduces himself as Persian, then starts to explain that he’s Iranian. Death to America much? So I’m ready to get out of line when he starts telling me that he is glad for what George Bush did in Iraq. No shit, I think, as GWB just weakened your two most powerful neighbors and adversaries. Then he says — I’m not kidding — that he hopes Iran is next. He hates the mullahs (that word took three repetitions for me to believe him) and believes that all the elections are rigged, and supports getting rid of the theocracy by any means. Check, please! I didn’t dig in on the Death to America crowds, but stepped away from the conversation with an odd feeling. Does he have a different perception of the state of Iraq? Or is his life so terrible that he’d take it? And if that’s the case, what’s he doing in the Bangkok train station with his family, heading to Phuket?

So that can’t be finally. Far too serious. So I’ll leave you with an image. My fellow travelers and I set out for some liquid refreshment after our encounter with the ten year old con candy salesman. After numerous vodka tonics and a lengthy relationship with a one-gallon pitcher of Heineken, we set out for food. Next to McDonalds — Ronald has pronouncedly round eyes here, very eerie — we found a 24-hour restaurant, catering to drunken Western travelers and local teenyboppers. And I found snake-head fish on the menu. Remember that controversy a few years back, how a snakehead fish was found in the Chesapeake, and how it would eat all the other fish and kill the ecosystem? I did. So at 3 am on my second night in Bangkok, I’m in a a diner with three people I just met, who I’m about to spend a month with, eating an entire snake-head fish fried in very spicy batter (memo: Northern Style means Burn Your Face Off) and washing it down with a milkshake. Yes, there’s more ice cream here than you can shake a stick at!

All the best,
Dan

p.s. Off to Chiang Khong (home of the 650 lb catfish, which I will eat or get swindled trying to eat) and then two days on the Mekong River. I probably won’t write again until my second day in Luang Prabang. What’s that date? I don’t know. Hit http://www.intrepidtravel.com/VSV and count it out. Day 1 was a Saturday.