November 1, 2025
The Sacrilegious Escalator
Still in Chiang Mai
The Sacrilegious Escalator
Dear little friends,
A couple of mornings ago we were walking around and discovered a “tray food” restaurant. Bruce will screech to a halt for tray food, no matter what time of day or night, it’s his almighty favorite. The dishes on display, I think there were at least 25 of them, are mostly things you won’t find in a typical Thai restaurant, we never know the names of any of them, it’s point and hope (for me) that it’s not pure fire.
I’ll bet you’re wondering why we never talk about cycling on a cycling journal. Never fear, we’ll be leaving Chiang Mai on Tuesday, November 4 and that will be on 2 wheels. I should also tell you that Chris and Coleen, who we ate with our first evening here, went on a really badass bikepacking trip after we saw them and ended up mud-bound in the rainy dark in the middle of g.d. nowhere and had a Netflix-ready rescue. They are safe and sound and recuperating at a lovely looking mountain homestay. All’s well that ends well. They certainly make us look like wimpy slobs as we putter around Chiang Mai. But I digress.
The tray food place also has a little corner where a barista made us lovely, creamy lattes. We love the caphe bolan, the traditional Thai coffee, but Thailand has it going on with their righteous locally grown and roasted coffee and there are superb beans to be had everywhere.
Something else worth mentioning. It’s been raining. Not continuously, but kind of sneakily. We’ll be dallying around in the humid sunshine, me dabbing at my sweaty face with my yellow bandana, and in comes a little cloudiness, maybe a falling mist, nothing to trouble oneself with. Then… deluge. It’s very exciting. A normal rainy season generally is wrapped up by mid-November and we knew we might see some rain. There has been an absolute freight train of typhoons landing in Vietnam, perhaps you’ve seen the severe flooding in historic Hue and Hoi An. Just awful. So we’re getting the remnants of those here.
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2 months ago
2 months ago
Your observation is very funny. But, if I was shopping for a chainsaw I probably wouldn't buy a Chinese one brand name 'Chainsaw'. Brand name 'Raincoat' isn't as much of a gamble.
2 months ago
There is an old market in Chiang Mai near the river that we always have to go to called Warorot Market. Warorot had an escalator in the middle of it that has never worked. Not when I was there in 2002 or 2005 or 2008 or any time. It didn’t work when Bruce was here in 1974. Elderly women sold khao lam under the non-working escalator. It was part of the un-changing charm of Warorot, walking up the narrow, frozen escalator. But guess what? They put in a new, working one! What is the world coming to.
We rode the sacrilegious escalator and had iced coffees upstairs and watched the scene below. The same hair-netted lady and her calico cat served us with her usual cackle. Whew. Not everything has changed. Down near the entrance a cloudburst struck and everybody was running around or putting away their tabled wares or like us, standing there filming the torrent. It was very exciting.
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2 months ago
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On the way back we stopped in at Thapae Gate to see how the Loy Krathong decorations are coming along. The tourists feed huge flocks of pigeons and pose for selfies. One can rent traditional Thai clothing to pose in. The scene is kind of bizarre and suddenly there are scads of tourists in town that are here for the festival. There has been a moment or two when we felt regret we aren’t staying for it but that is fading very quickly as the crowds increase. Every single local has told us we are wise to head to Lamphun for Loy Krathong.
The quadrant of Old Town we’ve been staying in/near is new to us and we’ve been walking and walking hither and yon through numerous little lanes and alleys and sois, not always sure where we’d pop out at. So when we popped out near the South Gate we were stunned by the Saturday Walking Street set up near our hotel. Yikes! It was CRAZYYYYYY. We managed to get some pad thai at a crowded table and took a gander at some of the walking street wares, none of which we haven’t seen before in a hundred other Thai walking streets so that was only a brief reconnaissance.
From our hotel window we could look down at the walking street and around 7:30 or so another cloudburst happened, just pounding rain on all those hundreds of walkers and vendors. It didn’t really seem to faze anybody though. And when it was over all came out from under the awnings and tents and resumed their street walking and selling. We did buy something, though, actually two things. A small item for the fairy garden duo at home, and an enormous papaya from a guy that grew it in his backyard. Always the best papayas, the backyard ones. More on that tomorrow.
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