Dear Family and Friends,

The moment that I PDFed my contract signature page to NETKorea in Seoul, South Korea was also the moment when I turned from almost-resident foreigner in Thailand to mad tourist determined to view as much as possible. Hence Doi Suthep and the cooking class. Minutes after my Monday cooking class, I walked to my favorite Internet café to check the status of my job paperwork and decided that I’d better return to Bangkok. Hence on Tuesday morning, I stepped from the sidewalk to flag a real tuk tuk. The wrinkled, graying Thai driver from Chang Rai only suggested one stop (“Madame, a really nice, cheap tailor…” to which I replied “NO, no kar-poon-kah…”) and he drove me to the train station on the outskirts of town. Within an hour I had a sleeper car train ticket tucked in my wallet and was back at Paddy Fields with my map spread before me on the bed. Soon I hit the streets of Chang Mai with an agenda.

That Tuesday afternoon, I walked from destination to destination, mostly outside the walls of the moat which were jammed with traffic and car exhaust fumes. With 31 hours remaining, I had abandoned all pretenses of dignity and attempted to photograph a plethora of monks in their orange robes (those pics turned out blurry – I figured that Buddha wasn’t pleased), captured photos of the super tuk tuks and tried several angles of the brick walls surrounding the moat. I went over torn-up sidewalks, past hospital complexes, accidentally left my footprints in wet concrete (again!), and wondered at the tailor and his sidewalk sewing machine while occasionally drawing out my map to check my location versus my goal and dabbing my forehead regularly helpless to stop the sweat from wetting my shirt and trickling down my spine. I made two futile attempts at learning something about Lanna Hill Tribe culture. Yet no matter the many accolades on my map, I found that I couldn’t palate a tourist-oriented Northern Hill Tribe dinner and dance performance and instead walked to the other end of town to sell some books and savor a final dinner The Wok. As I returned to Paddy Fields, my head swung from side to side appreciating the final soft, warm, dry (!) Chang Mai darkness while I picked my way over familiar sidewalks, smiled at the cute French guy who hasn’t read Harry Potter serving dinner at his bar, silently greeted the showy police station spirit house, and resolved to visit the major Wat that I had passed almost every day upon the morrow. That night I opened my hotel window wide to the horrid live singing riding the cooling night air and packed/re-packed my suitcase, taking care to consolidate or dispose of whatever possible.

That final morning in Chang Mai, I was up in plenty of time to walk to UPS in order to send original copies of my contract + passport photos (lucky leftovers from Cambodia prep) to Seoul and then I caught a super tuk tuk driven by a woman and navigated by her passenger husband to the Northern Thai National Museum. I was forced to tuck my backpack and camera into a locker and missed out on photographing a large, aged brass Buddha head. I watched my time carefully even as I became deeply enmeshed reading up on Chang Mai history (fascinating, really), kings, warrior queens, rock paintings, wars, and naturally, Buddha and more Buddha. Finally, conscious of time, I smiled one last time at my favorite brass Buddha, grabbed my stuff from the locker, and visited the minuscule gift shop – which was out of postcards. On my way out, I noticed that I was going to miss an exhibition of the King of Thailand’s paintings (statesman, musician, engineer, and artist????) by a single day. I was very much intrigued and momentarily sad.

In order to escape the museum grounds, I walked out to the dusty, dry, fast super highway and awaited another super tuk tuk, which drove me to a very cool, old Wat called Chedi Luang. The huge, crumbling central brick Stupa had been an early city navigational point for me and I loved the 4 niches, each with a gold, cross-legged Buddha under a Banyon Tree, and surrounded by elephant carvings. I passed a long, gold reclining Buddha in an open air hut with pigeons in the hut rafters. The very moment that I began wondering if Chedi Luang had pigeon poop problems, a pigeon dropped a large one right next to the Buddha’s belly. Does that seem as inauspicious to you as it did to me???

I picked up my laundry and then walked one last time in the direction of Paddy Fields. I stopped for a plate of glass noodle salad (mediocre at best) and did manage to visit the major Wat located just around the corner called Wat Phra Singh – which was an amazing, well-decorated temple complex where I was in time to hear the monks called to prayer by a peal of a large, deep bell and to hear the resulting chants from the windows of a temple. Yet time was slipping away so I made my way back to the hotel but as I did, I didn’t want to miss a single miscellaneous detail: the Chinese funeral shops, advertisements re: babies/mosquitoes/malaria, T.I.T.S. radio (the only English radio station in Chang Mai) (shake head), the diligent street cleaners with straw hats and handkerchiefs protecting their faces, the Thai market where I had tried a green panadanus leaf cake (texture gelatin, taste really good), and gloated that I finally, finally had mastered how to get negotiate a ride and destination around the city.

Upon my return, naturally I showered and zipped my suitcase closed, said good-bye and thank you to Paddy Fields, hitched a ride to a tea place for a snack (chocolate waffles + mint/green tea), and was still in plenty of time for my train to Bangkok.

My assigned seat positioned me so that my back was to Chang Mai. And as the train slid away from Chang Mai, my mind acknowledged my departure while already racing ahead of the train to Bangkok and beyond.

Laura