From Treehouses to Palaces

Some who know me will say it isn’t a trip until I’ve woofed my cookies. Well, it’s officially now a trip! The grim thing about staying in the mountains is the drive up and down switchback roads. I made it up to the treehouses just fine, but down was another story completely. The good news is that I made it to a tidy bathroom in time for the deluge, popped a Dramamine and drowsed the rest of the way to the plains.

Our next stop was the White Temple just outside Chiang Rai. This place was bonkers on a whole new level! It’s the brain child of an artist who wanted to create a Thai temple like no other and he certainly did. It’s an elaborate disco wedding cake of a temple, all stark white and inset with glittering mirrors on the outside. The pinnacle of excessive elegance, until you look closer and see disturbing elements of twisted limbs and faces, and dystopian steampunk figures that feel distinctly out of place. You aren’t allowed to photograph inside the main temple chapel, which is a shame. As you walk in you see the expected Buddha figures and lotus murals before you and, as you turn around, you see a demon face painted on the back wall with George W. Bush in one eye and Osama bin Laden painted in the other. As you look closer, there are all sorts of historical and pop references. The twin towers burning, the Columbia exploding, Superman, Micheal Jackson, Captain Jack Sparrow, Neo from the Matrix, Batman, Ironman, Sailor Moon and many more are represented. The side walls are bizarre portraits, some disfigured, some not, one was a baby with the Buddha’s head point of enlightenment. The temple campus went on and on. There was a reclining Buddha, this time on a comfy looking divan, and in the same meringue style of the temple.

Still on the temple site was a “cave of art” we didn’t venture into, an elaborate gold Ganesha Exhibition Hall full of Ganesha artwork by the temple artist and, most hilariously, posh temple-like completely golden public toilets. We picked up a few things at the souvenir shop, but if they sold stickers or magnets of the golden toilets we would have snagged them.

I was looking for a comfy central hotel for our last night in Thailand before the trek across the border to Laos and minimal accommodations during our boat ride, so I booked us in a “princess” hotel in Chiang Rai. Princess was right! The entire thing inside and out is painted gold. The floor tiles are red and gold. It’s filled with velvet thrones with gold trim and everything in our room was fancy and painted gold. It made for a comfy night and served a yummy breakfast of veg pad thai and steeped tea. Perfect for the night before a big adventure.

Chiang Rai is very much a city for locals. We wandered the Saturday Night Walking Market and all the t-shirts were of western bands or brands being bought by locals. There wasn’t anything of Chiang Rai to buy as a souvenir. I didn’t even see the ubiquitous I ❤️ Ladyboys t-shirt. There was way more in the way of unusual foods and we snapped loads of photos. We followed our ears and came upon a large plaza full of people dancing to a live band. There were clearly different groups of people in matching t-shirts, old dudes in cowboy gear, women in fancy dress, there was a pride group lead by someone with fluffy blue chaps that matched their blue hair. When we arrived, the dancing was frenzied and moving in a large circle but spontaneously changed to line dancing at some clue I didn’t perceive. It reminded me of the Vietnamese ladies disco line dancing beside the lake in Hanoi, but on a larger scale.

We ate in a restaurant called Cabbages & Condoms listening to the Carpenters blast through the sound system trying to drown out the dance music from across the street. The motto of the restaurant was “our food will not get you pregnant.” Ironically, there wasn’t a woman near child bearing age in the place aside from our servers. And I am not so sure that if someone of child bearing age drank the magnum of unpasteurized beer they offered us that pregnancy would not result. True to their name they did have some condom decor, such as a Santa with a suit made of red condoms, and some condom paraphernalia. At the front cash they had a box of condoms marked Thai size and one marked international size. I grabbed one of each because you never know.

I managed to find some Otrivin spray to keep my ears from exploding and I couldn’t help noticing that in every store and market we have been in so far, there has been a sizeable section of herbal inhalers and a large section of pain medication. Apparently the little nasal inhaler tubes can help with a stuffy nose, give a kick of energy, help with nausea or headaches, cancel out the smell of pollution or help with the heat. They come in a wide variety of colours and brands and mainly smell like the old Vicks Vaporub inhalers. I do see people sniffing them in public fairly regularly and I hear using them is a status thing. The sheer ubiquity and range of pain meds is apparently due to Thais feeling that health care should be flexible and they have quite a thriving pharmaceutical sector with less gatekeeping. It’s really impressive what you can walk away with from a 7-Eleven or grocery store. Chiang Rai has some boss 7-Elevens. I’ll miss these in Laos.