Hi! I’m Snowman

October 29, 2025

Day one in Chiang Mai

Dear little friends,

Our first morning in Thailand and instead of the Song of the Koel we got the Song of the Pigeon instead. There were several outside our window talking to each other using vulgar language and so our first day started out with us laughing.

Not gonna lie. That 13 hour flight from San Francisco to Seoul was hideous. I tried hard to be stoic and patient and so on, but it was a long time in a very cramped space. The bibimbap was good though.

We trudged through the Chiang Mai airport after picking up our TSA-taped bike boxes and IKEA bags, wondering how we’d get to our guesthouse in the middle of a sultry Chiang Mai night. A nice lady and her van, that’s how. Bruce scraped up 400 baht to pay her and there was a cheerful dude at the guesthouse to greet us. Frangipani flowers showered down onto the paving stones of their garden. Things were looking up.

What a person looks like after 30 hours of travel.

One of our guesthouse cats. We were told this one was not friendly.

We had to do a little unpacking just to find what we would need for the night, hook up to the WiFi and let family know we had made it all right, take an awesome shower, and then try to sleep.

Nah, I really couldn’t sleep even though the trip exhaustion was nearly overwhelming. We were 14 hours off schedule and our brains weren’t cooperating. Once the pigeons had their say we got up and got dressed and looked out at where we were.

The view from our guest house to the west and Doi Suthep, a very sacred mountain with one of the most important temples in the country up there.

The soi (small street) we are at is beautiful. Trees and flowers and plants and little restaurants and this and that. The sky was clear blue. And we were hungry and didn’t have a single baht between us and the money changer didn’t open until 8:30 so we took a walk instead. Sunlight is a good first step for chasing off the jet lag. Our feet weren’t doing any chasing though, more like stumbling off the plane wooze and remembering that in Thailand, you need to keep an eye on your walking surface.

We entered a temple grounds that we’d never been in before. I sat on a bench surrounded by flowers and goofy cement figurines and listened to some of my favorite birds. Elderly women wearing all white were padding around. There was a little breeze. Yes. It’s hot and I’m sweating every minute and that will be the case for the next four months so maybe I can just get that out of the way, all the complaining.

The flower of the cannon ball tree. I'm not making this up.

Our money got changed and we felt like millionaires, ready to eat and drink and buy things from 7-11 our way through Chiang Mai. So we walked into one of our favorite coffee places, swatted at the mosquitos as we sipped our lattes, and then went on to the little market we knew of, trailing a group of aproned cooking school students.

A sweet faced woman whipped up our food in her tiny stall, and it was incredible. For $1.25 apiece we were eating some of the world’s best food in a very humble setting. The perky plastic tablecloth was brand new and was patterned with a droll wintry theme, a nearby radio was playing vintage Thai hits, the market ladies were having a gossip session in that lovely northern Thai dialect. A lot of happy sensory boxes were getting ticked.

Chicken and egg fried rice - $1.55. Squid with basil, chilies and rice - $1.86

After siestas we met up with Chris Wee and his wife Coleen Leong. This is the third improbably coincidental meetup we’ve had with these two Singaporeans, and it was time to celebrate with some khao soi and a catch-up. Just like the last time we all landed in the same place at the same time, which was ALSO our first evening in SE Asia, I was the party pooper needing to get to bed.

Our room is a crazy mess. The bikes are still in their boxes. We have no SIM cards yet so are tethered to our guesthouse WiFi. But all of that will straighten itself out after a shower and all the sleep we can scrape together.

Everywhere you look is something winsome.

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Kristen ArnimI love how you bring us into these places with descriptions of bird sounds and the people and plants around you. I can feel myself sweating! I wonder if you can upload an audio file. I’ll check with the webmaster.
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2 months ago

Ron SuchanekI'm woefully behind, but here we go!
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2 months ago