I've
heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a syndrome
suffered by people in colder climates who become
depressed during the winter months perhaps due to
lack of sunshine. My problem is the opposite: I
live in tropical Thailand and have a craving for
cold weather. A snow-capped mountain, a brisk chill
in the air, deep hibernation-like sleep under downy
bedcovers - these thoughts are almost orgasmic to
me.
Granted,
Northern Thailand is not exactly the Swiss Alps,
but it's about as damn near close as you're going
to get in Thailand.
Relaxing
in the hot spring
My
travel partner and I took the public bus from Chiangmai
Arcade station and that was a bit of a third-world
scene. Chickens on laps and military checkpoints
spiced up the long and winding ride that was punctuated
by curves, not just in the road but in my body as
I was forced to contort my six-foot frame into a
bus seat that was apparently designed for hobbits.
All in all, an excellent way to test the detachment
I have cultivated through years of meditation (On
the way back, we decided on the private van instead
of the bus and splurged an additional 100 baht per
head).
We
stayed at the Pai Mountain Lodge, the only resort
we have found in Thailand that has fireplaces. The
resort is actually about 7 kilometers from downtown
Pai, and thus requires some form of transportation.
The cottages are rustic and wooden and stone and
surround a pond filled with some sort of ornamental
duck. I considered how the creatures would taste
as a Peking duck or duck a la orange but I don't
think they were those kind of ducks, they looked
too colorful. And perhaps the owners would notice
a missing duck, who knows? Throwing bread from the
balcony, the ducks ran around like little puppies
jumping on one another. I noticed that the fattest
alpha duck was too slow to catch any bread crumbs
unless they were thrown directly under his nose
(or beak as the case may be). I consider this a
marvel of the adaptive system, those too fat get
starved and lose weight, those too thin, being quicker,
fatten up.
Relaxing
in the herbal sauna
Pai has been described as a Koh Phangan season grafted
onto a Northern mountain town. Well, I've been to
Koh Phangan and I disagree. Koh Phangan is more
like a cross between Ibiza and and Tel Aviv having
a non-stop rave party. Pai, on the other hand, is
very much Thailand, with family accommodation and
many Thai tourists. It's quite interesting seeing
the diverse mix of ethnicities that are somewhat
representative of Northern Thailand: Lisu and Shan,
Chinese and the local Muslim population.
