The Isaan Report
2006/01/28
One thing I love here is the pervasive anarchy, in some circles known otherwise as freedom. There is no apparent age limit on who can drive a scooter. I've seen a girl of about 9 zipping down the road with baby brother of about 5 on the back. I've seen 4 (four) school boys heading home on one scooter. (A fellow traveller swears he saw 5, but I remain skeptical.) Helmets, no helmets, in most places it's up to you. There appears to be no traffic enforcement. Speeds are whatever you want to do; the lane markings have marginal relevance at best, and if you want to drive your car up onto the sidewalk and park, that's no problem. The use of sidewalks is particularly anarchic. Shops will drag their merchandise out front and block the whole sidewalk forcing pedestrians on to the road. Food stalls will set out their tables and chairs wherever they like, wherever they can. And what of those places without sidewalks? I passed by one street food operation that simply set up in one lane of the two lane highway. They had big shade canopies strung up over tables, chairs and cooking rigs, from the shoulder to the center line. They did however scatter tree branches across the blocked lane each way out from the operation as a bit of a pre-warning for the speeding traffic that something was afoot ahead.
There is some common-sense here, the lack of which has sometimes bothered me back in Canada. Being a motorbike rider I'm baffled by why I'm restricted to the same speed limits as big trucks, being much more nimble and quicker to slow or stop. On the main highways here typical speed limits are 90 for bikes, 80 for cars, and 60 for trucks. This makes perfect sense to me. Of course, all 3 speed limits are universally ignored.
I've learnt three things so far.
1) You need sunscreen for the back of your wrists when riding here.
There is a gap between my fingerless gloves and buttoned down shirtsleeves that burns quite nicely
facing up to the sun on a long mid-day ride.
2) If you drink with people who refer to you as "mate",
you need to pace yourself - perhaps with a glass of water for every glass of beer being poured.
3) Clear plastic bags filled with water and suspended from the rafters keep flies away.
My bike's pretty good: a fairly new Honda CB400. However, on day one I looked down to see one of the main motor mount bolts hanging out from its allocated spot and threatening to make a break for it to the pavement. I got quite good at kicking it back in to its channel with a deft swing of my left foot while looking for something resembling a repair shop. Along the side of the highway I spotted this guy sitting in front of his shop/home with a pile of old bicycles and various machinery about. He's my man. A quick u-turn, point to the problem, and he says "ok ok" and invites me to join him at his table where I'm offered "whiskey". The whiskey was a home-made concoction with a whole bunch of various plant bits sitting at the bottom of the jar. I declined. I should have said yes just for the education. He enjoyed a couple more glasses and I drank his water while we waited for the bike to cool a bit. Turns out he was a great mechanic. With only seeing me point to the problem from a distance, he pulled out the right sized missing nut and washer, the right wrenches and slapped it together. He then went over every other exposed bolt to make sure there were no other difficulties. He asked for, and got, 20 baht - 60 cents. Ah, but then I remembered my mirror was loose and the headlight pointed to the stars. With a little sign language we got that fixed too and you could then see the light go on in his head. He already had 20 baht. Store bought whiskey was 40 baht. So he's back into me for another 20 "for whiskey". I gave him 15 plus the 5 baht worth of advice "you drink too much". Big smiles, big thank you, and down the road.
This is not the most photogenic country in the world. There's a layer of dust and dirt over nearly everything due to it being the dry season. Haze is everywhere, not just from from the tropical humid air, but the billion little piles of burning leaves in the ditches in front of half the rural houses of Asia and the extensive burn-offs of old rice paddies as well. In many areas, the scrub is kept clear from the highway edges by simply lighting it on fire. (Me, I prefer the aesthetic of the overgrowth over the black scars - but what do I know, I'm not from here.) Most of the buildings are drab and often a bit dilapidated. And litter is completely out of control here. It's no Switzerland, but I love it. There is a comfort, practicality and complete lack of pretence (pre tense, before tension?) that causes me to relax and feel at home.
Sometimes when riding along you hit a patch of slightly cool air in the forested areas. It's like bliss every time it happens, and I am always disproportionately cheered by the brief cooling.
Travelling on highways through farming areas you can encounter stretches of makeshift roadside stall after stall, each selling oranges or watermelon or the more common mystery produce from a great big pile for next to nothing. Each stall sells the same as the neighbouring one and it is rare to see someone stop and buy. I imagine some sellers spend the entire day by the side of the road without a single customer.
Sometimes you come across women on scooters guiding their bull herds down the road. Thai cowgirls: ya gotta love 'em.
There is no social safety net. Married blind men sometimes make their living with the wife leading the sightless husband through street food stalls asking for bits of money. Often they will have a portable battery operated karaoke machine suspended about the neck and will be crooning away into a microphone turned up to 11. If you give them 10 baht, they go away. Last night I was eating a delicious bowl of noodle and pork-ball soup at a sidewalk shop. On the far side of the street a blind woman, filthy and barefoot, wandered down the street. She would simply walk straight along until crashing into a parked scooter or whatever was in the way, working around it, and carrying on. No doubt she was headed to a food stall where a good hearted owner would feed her each evening. Where does such a person sleep? What does she think about in the long hours of completely dark days and nights? There's every chance she's somewhat deranged as well as blind, and there seems to be no-one who can help her find a bath or wash her clothes.
There's been a cool spell here in the north half of the country. It's been getting to merely the upper 20s in the heat of the afternoon and dropping to the mid teens at night. Many locals are bundled in coats and sweaters. But that is coming to an end now. We're moving back to the low 30s in the day time and 20 or so overnight. There's a slight breeze coming through, and that is enough to keep the edge off.
I've gotten lost only once. I'm going to have to try harder. Getting lost is the best of fun on an adventure such as this.
So far I've hung around Chiang Mai a bit, have been to Uttaradit (a fairly large city that is not even mentioned in Lonely Planet), Dan Sai (a small town with immensely friendly people), traveled the most broken, tiny, windy roads through hill country, I've slept in a teak room with large opening windows in an old wooden hotel right on the Mekhong waterfront in Chiang Khan looking across the river traffic to Laos, hung out in Udon-Thani (hard to put my finger on it, but there's just a really nice vibe in that town), visited Ban Chiang, the oldest bronze age archaeological site on the planet dating back to 3600 BC (one could consider this spot the cradle of civilization), and am now hanging out in Khon Kaen. It's Chinese New Year's eve this evening. Things could get noisy.
I'll decide later tonight which way to go tomorrow. I don't know if I'll delve deeper into the Northeast, or head over to the west side and up the sparsely populated western border with Burma. It's flat here, and hilly and forested there, so I'm leaning West, but hey - who knows.
Some may think I'm a little crazy for traveling about alone like this. It's not for everybody, but it suits me just fine. How can I not be content with a motorbike, a map, and a pocket of cash, making my way wherever I want as I like. I'm not even sure why I like this country so much. On analysis, it's a deeply flawed place. But I'm simply relaxed and cheerful here. That's good enough for me.