Bad and Good Farangs

Farang is the Thai word for Westerner. Unlike "ferenji," in Africa and the Middle East, it carries no overtone of contempt. Which doesn't mean that there aren't any contemptible farangs. There are---we've run into some. A Canadian woman named Patsy at our hotel in Hua Hin hadn't heard that in Thailand it's rude to converse by hollering. Across the hotel pool, beer bottle in hand, it was: "Hey, Joe, whaddaya know!" Some of Patsy's fellow countrymen on the overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai last night were even worse. In the compartment adjacent to ours and the one beyond that were six or so Canadian Hell's Angels (or so we supposed---we didn't check their IDs). That they were Canadian Hell's Angels doesn't mean they were nice Hell's Angels. They were not. When they loudly declared our car a "party car," before our 5:45 pm departure, we knew we were in for it. They had brought along alcohol, ice and a Thai floosie.
To the rescue was an unlikely figure. Around ten o'clock, our compartment mate, Candace, a caterer from Townsend, WA, traveling with her husband Ray, charged next door and demanded that the revelers "Stop it! Stop it now!" Amazingly, they did. Though not before hurling obscenities at her and warning they were going to find out which hotel she was staying at in Chiang Mai and they were going to "get" her. But this was a woman who had catered Seattle weddings---she and Joe had stories---and so for her Hell's Angels were a just another challenge in complex human relations.
Ray and Candace were good fun, and we plan to meet again here in Chiang Mai. It's one of the nice things that happens when you travel second class in remote places. You meet like-minded people who, if you were back home, might become friends. Ray was wary of us at first---Who are these two guys?---but we soon said something insulting about George Bush, and then he relaxed. He said he felt a little guilty about it, but he thought he could never like anybody who supported this man who had hijacked our country from us.
Ray and Candace, in their sixties---he looks like Fred Astaire, she like a bright-eyed Gloria Graham---come to Thailand yearly to enjoy its food, climate and personality, but also for its health-care system. Thailand has no universal system---the poor end up in public hospitals that sound as bad or worse than those in U.S. cities---but for the insured and the middle and upper classes, Thai medical care is superb. And, by US standards, it's cheap. Even with hotels and air fare, Ray and Candace save large sums by flying to Bangkok for annual physical exams and for the care and treatment they need. Ray had a knee replacement and new choppers. Candace had a Botex update.
Second-class travel has its uses, but we learned a lesson today about third class. From the Lonely Planet Guide, we'd picked a "budget" hotel in Chiang Mai---400 baht, about eleven dollars. After checking in, however, we decided "mid-range" better suited our shelter needs---some quiet, minimum sanitation---so tomorrow we'll move to a $23 hotel. It's a shameful betrayal of my world-travel roots---"We're the Peace Corps! We ride with the people!"---but there will opportunities to rough it in Cambodia. So for now the hell with that.
Chiang Mai was Thailand's eleventh century capital. Now it's a university and tourism center. From here, tourists arrange treks, visits to the Mon and other "hill tribes," and they take cooking classes. Joe plans on taking a Thai cooking class and maybe a multi-day trek while I write. We also plan on connecting with Sasha Alyson---of Alsyson Publications renown---who lives in Chiang Mai and is helping some Laotians set up the first Laotian publishing house over in Luang Prabang. Sasha gets back from Laos next week. Around the same time we'll meet Mo Tejani, a Peace Corps old boy who was sent here by the US Government in the late '70s and discovered that Thailand was where he belonged. We found Mo through John Coyne---the Peace Corps center of the universe---and I was charmed and moved by his memoir "A Chameleon Life," about Mo's Muslim Indian family's expulsion from Idi Amin's Uganda in the early 1970s and his search for a safe home in the world.
We are happy and well and pleasurably over-stimulated. Joe has taken wonderful photos, and he is trying to figure out a way to get some onto this blog. Your eyes will pop.
Dick