And Now For Something Completely Different (Week 9, Chiang Mai)
The story of my travel to Chiang Mai is a story of shitting
The first encounter with my bowels happened before I had even laid eyes on the bus. My taxi dropped me off at the bus station, which was decently outside of downtown Bangkok. It would be wise, I figured, to use the restroom before departing on my bus ride.
This was not helped by the odd layout of the bus depot. I arrived on the top floor with all the tables from all the bus companies splayed in front of me. By the time I found mine and made it to the front of the line, I saw a paper sign that told people riding my bus, and only my bus, to find the alternate line downstairs. Downstairs meant two floors down, naturally - the intermediate floor was abandoned, gated off, and occupied by two security guards who stared at me as I worked my way all the way down. The bottom floor reminded me of the concessions area of an arena that hasn’t been updated since the late 80’s: all concrete, there are tons of food options but they’re all shuttered, and it seems like they forgot that people might need to use the restroom.
I had to walk almost all the way around the depot before finding a restroom, which had neon signage and fake plastic plants at the entrance. I stuck 10 Baht into a hip high turnstile, and went into a bathroom that was blindingly white. The tiling, paint trim, the doors, all were clearly brand new. I ran my eyes down the row of doors, all the stalls either said “OUT OF ORDER” or had a lock which showed that they were occupied. A Thai man sat on a wall indentation that doubled as a bench - in hindsight, this is the first time I’d ever seen a bench in a restroom - and I sat next to him. My large backpack was on my back while I slung my small backpack over my front, and I had to shove my body into the corner so I didn’t droop my luggage over onto this tiny Thai man.
After sixty seconds sitting there, I turned and asked him, “How long have you been waiting?”, motioning at my wrist in the universal “time” gesture”. He responded by holding up both hands with his fingers spread, as he gutted out a “ten.” The language barrier was real, but I didn’t need a translator to tell me that this guy was having a bad time waiting. The bead of sweat that rolled down his temple as he hunched over said everything.
The center could not hold. This man needed to shit. I needed to shit. I decided to embrace my role as a dumb, brash American and simply start trying to open doors, maybe even tell people to hurry it up. I mean, come on, me and my new friend are sitting here in pain and they’re probably scrolling through their short form video app of choice.
I stood up, taking care not to smack the man in the head with my big bag as I turned, and went to knock on the first locked stall. I rapped my knuckles on it only to find it swing open, completely unoccupied. I couldn’t believe it. I pushed on the next stall over, which also claimed to be locked. Again, the door swung open revealing a pristine toilet, probably unused in at least a day. I can only assume that the cleaning crew left the locks in the locked position while cleaning the head, closed the doors, and just didn’t think about what it would look like to anyone coming by next.
I let out a groan loud enough that the bathroom attendant outside jerked her head around to see the source of the sound. I leaned around the corner and said to my friend, “You’re not gonna believe this shit man, none of them are locked, come on,” and frantically beckoned him over. He smiled and nodded, but stayed seated - perhaps my profanity laced tirade wasn’t the best means of communicating with the man.
Well, I thought, he’s an adult in charge of his own bowels, he’ll figure it out. Sure enough, after I emerged from my shit, he was no longer on the bench. I hope that he cracked the code.
Due to my restroom mishap I just barely made my bus. Cutting it close on my rides has, disturbingly, become a trend. It may only disturb me because I was raised in a household that always arrives at the airport three hours early and the idea of missing a ride makes me break into hives.
ANYWAYS, this was the first long, overnight bus ride that I had taken in a regular reclining seat as opposed to the lay flat beds that I used to get around Vietnam. The seats were fine, but I knew that I needed something to ensure that I actually slept on that bus. Luckily, there was a dispensary right next to my hostel in Bangkok, which meant that I could take a quick edible right as the bus took off. And, in an act of genius that surprised even myself, I decided to download Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” to my phone.
The edibles hit sometime after the clocks stopped chiming on “Time”, and I sank back into my seat, listening to the lush soundscape of the remaster. A big smile crept over my face, and I brought the complimentary juicebox up to my lips, making sure to use both hands to ensure steadiness on the bumpy highway, and contemplated the nature of life as the high fructose corn syrup drink replenished my dry mouth.
You know the scene in The Last Airbender where Aang looks to his left and sees all the Avatar’s previous reincarnations? It was like that, but for dirtbag, stoner backpackers who kind of look like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo.
I drifted off in the night and when I opened my eyes it was the dawn. My bowels were, once again, disturbed. If you want to know how badly I had to go, just know that it was bad enough for me to try to go on a Thai bus at six thirty in the morning when we only had forty minutes left until we arrived at our destination. I threw off the synthetic blanket and walked down the aisle to the stairs down to the first floor of the double decker where our only toilet was, and I put forth a silent prayer that it would contain a western toilet and not a squat toilet.
As my foot touched the first floor, my thanks that I had gotten there without falling quickly gave way to disgust that my sock (you’re encouraged to take off your shoes everywhere in Southeast Asia, even on buses) touched a pool, a pool that traced back to the bathroom door. I tried not to think too hard about the origin of that water as I opened the door.
There was a lot of good news when I opened that door. My prayers had been answered - it was a western toilet, so I could actually sit down and not have to worry about squatting and aiming my feces on a bus going 40 miles an hour. Furthermore, I even found out that the origin of the mysterious liquid wasn’t bad. It was just slosh over from the flush bucket, which was only filled with regular sink water. I wouldn’t be wringing out my socks for a drink, but at least it wasn’t literally urine.
The bad news was how these two pieces of good news were arranged. The toilet sat on a little pedestal at the back of that little coffin sized bathroom, raised off the floor by a good foot. Then, in a cruel twist, the flush bucket was on the step that I needed to take right in front of that toilet. I stood there, trying to conjure back memories of rock climbing, thinking of a way that I could contort my body so that I could get to the toilet without plunging my foot right into the flush bucket. Nothing came. The only sounds were the snores of the first class passengers on the first floor and the splashes as the flush bucket spilled over as we rounded bends. I stared at the bucket some more. Maybe if I stepped around the bucket? No, there wasn’t enough room for my feet. Maybe if I tried to lift myself backwards onto the toilet? No, I’d just end up stepping in the flush bucket. Just accepting my fate and stepping in the flush bucket? No, I’m not an animal.
I admitted defeat. There was simply no way to fit my cornfed American frame into that tiny Thai bathroom. I hustled my way up the stairs, landing back in my seat and white knuckled it to Chiang Mai.
When I arrived at the Chiang Mai bus depot, I sprang out of my seat so fast that I left behind a cartoon dust cloud and my cap stayed stationary, floating to the ground. This is an exaggeration, but not by much - a very nice young woman chased after me to return my cap after it fell off my head during my mad dash to the restroom. I sped walked to the restroom sign, and saw a sign that read “20 BAHT” - of course, the restroom cost money to go into. I snatched a 20 baht note out of my wallet and began waving it in the face of the bathroom attendant, my voice involuntarily rising as the crisis became more pressing, “20 Baht! Here you go! Let me in please!” He looked around, confused, and I reiterated, “20 Baht! I need to go now, please let me in!” He began stumbling out some words
He stared at me and picked up three one baht coins from the table, and then placed them, swiftly but methodically, into the turnstile directly to my left. I had been so preoccupied with paying the man for the restroom that I hadn’t even noticed what was actually preventing me from using the restroom.
Like I said, pretending to be a dumb American is great while traveling. It works even better if you can actually be the real thing.
Since then, I have stayed put in Chiang Mai. Partially, this is the fault of FedEx. I had ordered a package to the first hotel that I stayed at and then simply did not deliver it. I kept waiting around Chiang Mai, waiting for that call until I finally gave up and went to the FedEx depot to get it myself. A fellow American stood outside the front door when my cab came up, and he was slapping the entrance pad and door, with these fat, open handed slaps. When we were finally allowed in, he let me go in front of him. I was very confused about how this man viewed the urgency of his situation. Regardless, I got my package and thanked the employees, as that man continued to huff and slap the table.
Chiang Mai is a Mecca for white people with dreadlocks who say “Namaste”. Ordinarily, backpackers have all sorts of looks, but this specific breed of hippie, the type that you always know will give you an annoying conversation they think is deep, is endemic here. This stands in contrast to the other type of person, someone who will give you a deep conversation that they think is annoying - this is the type of person you should surround yourself with. The backpackers here have a distinct look - for some odd reason, it’s only in Chiang Mai where they feel the need to don loose fitting elephant print pants. There’s something very odd about that - if you wore those pants in America and told your friend, “I got these in Thailand,” you would assume that these are pants that the locals wear, but they’re not. The locals in Chiang Mai wear normal pants, shorts, and jeans. Is there a term for this? Something that sells itself on the impression of being local even when it’s purely for the benefit of visitors?
Despite all that, I rather like Chiang Mai. It’s nice to be in a place where the main activity is “hanging out.” There’s no pressure to actually do anything here. I’ll wake up, take a nice stroll around the city, see some temples and the massive Buddha statues contained within, pet a local cat, and then grab some dinner. That’s a whole day’s work here.
Feeding elephants is a whole day’s work here too. As I write this, that’s my plan for tomorrow. From there, I’ll poke around the rest of the mountains in Thailand, but sooner rather than later, I’ll be headed out of Southeast Asia altogether.
This is the first time I’ve felt the enormity of Asia. My first month was in East Asia, then the next two have been through Southeast Asia, then I’ll be in South Asia until March. There is a massive difference in the felt sense of scale now that I’m actually here, moving through this continent, I’ll have spent my whole winter just in Asia, and I never stopped moving.