Chiang Mai: summer series installment I

As promised, I will be writing a number of blogs on my summer adventures in Burma/Myanmar (what you call the country depends largely on whether you recognise the military regime that’s led the country since a coup in 1962, as it was the military regime that replaced the country’s colonial name, Burma, with “Myanmar” in 1989). I quickly learnt that the surest way of avoiding offense when talking to Burmese people about their country is to wait for them to refer to their country by name … and then simply refer to it by the same name. That and the fact that it’s likely that anyone living outside the country in exile (self-imposed or otherwise) is opposed to the military regime and will therefore most probably call it “Burma”. But you need to be a careful chameleon about it.

However, this is a pre-Myanmar blog edition – I came across to South East Asia a week before my June 1 start date and spent some time in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. I caught the overnight sleeper train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai – I highly recommend the overnight train to anyone making that journey – you wake up in the morning to incredible views of rural Thailand… and it really is a journey that a plane trip cannot begin to capture:

View from the Bangkok – Chiang Mai train in the early morning

Chiang Mai itself is a lovely little city, divided into two distinct areas: the “New City”, where most of the entertainment areas are, and the “Old City”, which was built over 700 years ago in the shape of a big square (about two kilometres squared), surrounded by a high wall and moat. The four corners of the wall remain today, as does the moat and the main gates on each side, the most famous being the Tha Pae Gate on the south side of the Old City. [As an aside, I took these photos early in the morning when few other people were about… the streets are usually far more crowded than these photos show!]

The Tha Pae Gate, the main gate to the Old City (south side)

Part of the wall near the north-east corner of the Old City, with a songthaew driving by. Songthaews are Chiang Mai’s version of taxis/ETs/commuter omnibuses, etc

The moat on the south side of the Old City in the early morning – notice the monks walking in their bright orange robes

Chiang Mai’s Old City is made up of numerous winding roads, some regular sized …

… and some so narrow that cars cannot pass through them … which isn’t a problem since most people get around Chiang Mai on motorbikes (even school kids!)

And everywhere: colourful buildings and small buddhist shrines:

Another fascinating aspect of the Old City is how new and old exists side by side, with the Old City walls and wats (temples) interspersing coffee shops, restaurants and clothes stores.

The main road along the south side of the Old City, with the Tha Pae Gates on the left

One of the many wats in Chiang Mai’s Old City

One of the best things that I did in Chiang Mai was to go on a two-day “trek” into the jungle several hours to the north-west of Chiang Mai. I was promised that it was a non-touristy tour, that we would see no other tourists for the entire duration of the trip and that I would have a great time. It certainly delivered on every one of those promises. And, as a bonus, we were issued with a set of jungle-green “roughing-it” gear:

My favourite part of the gear? Why, the awesome machete of course! (The fact that I didn’t actually use it at any stage of the trek is totally beside the point… it totally added legitimacy to the jungle trek!)

There were 8 of us on the trek – 3 Finnish guys who were visiting Chiang Mai from Bangkok, where they are doing a year study exchange at a local university. When I asked them what they were studying, they replied, “In Finland  we were studying electronics, here we study nothing, we just have to spend a couple of hours in class 3 days a week and we pass. The classes don’t even have to have anything to do with electronics. It’s great.” Then there were 2 German girls on a gap year after finishing high school, our guide Den, his assistant (whose name I never got) and myself.

We began the tour by riding elephants in a village not far from Chiang Mai. The Thai government recently banned logging in the country (better late than never) and many people who owned elephants and used them to carry felled logs have been left both without livelihoods and with the big problem of what to do with their elephants. Many end up selling them to whoever will buy them as they simply cannot afford to look after them. The guys who run the tour company that I was with are related to a number of people in the particular village we went to, and they have an established agreement with the village: once a week or so, tourists ride the elephants, and in return the tour company contributes to the upkeep of the village’s elephants. Not ideal, but certainly more “sustainable” a situation than it could be. The elephant ride was a lot of fun, and we got to feed them copious amounts of lady-finger bananas in the process 🙂

And then we started walking… I can’t begin to estimate how far we walked during those two days, but there were certainly several fallow and dry paddies walked over and many hills climbed and descended (and much subsequent pain and stiffness!) We spent a few hours resting in a small Karen village [the Karen are a marginalised minority group in both Thailand and Burma] on the first afternoon. A view of the village as we approached it:

We spent the night in a traditional northern Thai house. Normally, they have only one room that is used for cooking, sleeping and everything in between, but some of the more “modern” ones have two rooms – one for cooking and the other for sleeping.

The floors are made from strips of the outer layer of bamboo, supported underneath by logs, which made walking on the floors feel a bit of like walking on a trampoline. We slept on traditional mats on the floor (which were not nearly as soft as the photo suggests!). Here you can also see the thin bamboo floors:

The view from our little house was amazing!

We had a great Thai cooking lesson that evening, whilst we all contributed to cooking dinner. And “dessert” was sticky rice pudding that was cooked in bamboo poles that were heated next to the fire, and were then cut length-wise for serving:

… “dessert” was also roasted frog, which we caught on the paddies at night by torch-light. Yes, I actually ate roasted frog … but it was so roasted that it (thankfully!) tasted of nothing but crispy smoke!

Den, our guide, took a bit of a shine to me and wanted to catch a flying squirrel (or a “squirrel fly” as he called them) for me to eat. Thank goodness he wasn’t able to catch one … it would have been thoroughly uncomfortable if he had. The next day he bought several dried ones at a local market – they look exactly like bats! The fact that Den spoke passable English made the tour that much more interesting as he was able to explain local Karen and Mon traditions to us and taught us about different plants and mushrooms in the jungle – those that we could eat and those that would kill us, and how we could tell the difference. We came across so many mushrooms: from small luminous yellow ones, to huge multicoloured ones. Den casually strung English words together with no punctuation or joining words (which was often very funny) but what he meant was generally pretty clear – for example “some dogs … careful … crazy!”

We came across a number of hillsides that had been totally stripped of all trees – making it clear why the Thai government had made logging illegal. What hadn’t been cut, had invariably been burnt (following the traditional slash and burn land preparation method), and on some hillsides villagers were beginning to plant upland rice ahead of the rains, which are due to start in the next few weeks. The contrast between the forested and deforested hillsides was shocking:

We ended off the tour by rafting down a river on rafts made of bamboo poles. Trying to keep standing on the rafts as the poles rumbled and bounced over rapids (and while the other people on the raft shifted their weight and tipped the raft) was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done! And when bamboo rafts hit a snag, they stop dead still, throwing everyone forward simultaneously! We were absolutely weak with laughter most of the time, while the local villagers who accompanied us down the river cackled hysterically (not entirely unlike Gollum). I’m not sure who had more fun – us or them laughing at us! The rafting was undoubtedly my favourite part of the entire tour. Here are the bamboo poles before they were tied together to form a raft:

All in all, Chiang Mai has been a wonderful experience! Tomorrow I catch another overnight train back to Bangkok, starting the trip to Yangon 🙂

“bed hoping”

Can someone tell me about the crazy fad going on in Bulawayo with women scrambling to buy baboon urine (which is reportedly “selling like hot cakes”)? Apparently, the urine is sold in plastic jars, mixed with soil, to give it a solid feel. Seriously? The recommended directions for baboon urine use are: “You grind the mixture before you sleep, but after bathing. You then have to apply the powder in your privates. When applying you do not have to overdose because once you become damp, the urine’s smell is pungent.”

And why would anyone do this you ask? (I’d wanted to say “anyone in their right mind”, but then realised that I was probably setting the standard a little too high). Well, the explanation seems to be women trying to curb their “husband’s bed hoping antics” (I’m sure they meant “bed hopping”, but I guess “bed hoping” works just as well in this context!) The aim is to “drive the man into adopting a baboon’s urinating habit.” Apparently, according to those who peddle the baboon urine, “a baboon by its nature urinates only on one spot. Even if it travels from Matopo to Bulawayo, when it gets pressed, it will travel all the way to Matopo before it relieves itself.” You don’t need to know anything about baboons to realise that there is absolutely no factual basis to these baboon urinating habit claims, so why people believe them is beyond me.

“When you apply the powder, the man will absorb the baboon’s urine and it will start regulating his bedding tendencies… Once you use this (baboon urine), just like the animal does, he will never release his seeds of manhood to any woman but to you only.” You can’t help but admire the entrepreneurial creativity at work here. I mean, who ever said that ridiculousness is an obstacle to business success?

For anyone interested, you can buy the baboon urine for $2 at the Bulawayo City Council-run toilets at Egodini commuter omnibus terminus. Am I the only one who finds it suspicious that the so-called “baboon urine” is being told out of public urinals? At least they should move a block or so away to, you know, make it a little less obvious that it’s not actually baboon urine.

On a sad note, one of Mr Ugly Harare’s top contenders, Charles Tizora, passed away recently. He died after “imbibing” (yes, this word is actually being used in its correct context, weird as it seems) “an illicit brew known in the streets as Zed or as some call it Zimbabwe Emergency Drink”, which is apparently a rather lethal brew of brandy. Only in Zim would a home brew have “emergency” in its name. (Remember those times when cough syrup was used as “emergency” liquor in Zim when beer production was temporarily stopped?) And it seems as though Tizora is not alone in falling victim to cheap brandy, as his eulogy ended with a warning: “Scores of reckless imbibers have fallen prey to abusing illicit brews” … so be careful of imbibing cheap brandy people. If it doesn’t kill you, can you even imagine the pain of that hangover?

I recently came across an article entitled “Man stabbed to death for annoying whistling” and my initial thought was “damn right!” After judging my own callousness, I read on to find that the title (as frequently happens with Zim tabloids) was misleading – the man who was stabbed to death was not in fact the whistler, but rather someone who kindly requested the whistler to stop whistling … and the whistler (somewhat overreacted) and killed him in response. Now the reason why I thought the whistler deserved to be stabbed was because I’m pretty sure I know the particular brand of whistling that he was doing – not the whistling-a-merry-tune whistle, but rather that incessant I’m-trying-to-get-your-attention whistle. There are few things in this world that grate my soul more than that attention-whistle.

For the last six months, I’ve been living in West Harlem (although there have been repeated arguments about whether it is actually West Harlem or some other suburb … but let’s call it West Harlem just to set the scene). Some guy who must have lived nearby spent a great deal of his time attention-whistling outside my window. I thought I was going to lose my mind and/or violently hurt him and/or any passerby who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What almost rivaled his whistling in terms of driving me into a blind rage was the local ice-cream van, which I learnt (after spending day-upon-day at home trying to study for my final exams) drives around the surrounding blocks almost continuously all day and well into the evening. The ice-cream van was hardly ever out of ear-shot, and the only relief of silence came when it was forced to a stop (due to traffic or customers). It turns out that it was somewhat like a cement mixer – it needed to keep moving to keep playing its same irritating tune (which was literally only 2 bars of 4 notes each) on repeat. I heard that tune so much that a point came when I didn’t know if it was actually playing outside my window… or just inside my head. I’m pretty sure that the ice-cream man must hear that tune in his dreams. I could almost pity him if I didn’t blame him for inflicting the same torture on everyone else too.

All I’m saying is that there are certain attention-whistlers and ice-cream van drivers in West Harlem that should be relieved that New York has one of the strictest gun control laws in the States… because no one would have found me guilty once they’d heard that whistling and/or ice-cream tune for themselves.

“protection orders” and the creepiness of Makombe passport office

Firstly, many apologies for my long silence on this blog – life’s been crazy for the last few months … but I’m now on my summer “break”, and by “break” I mean doing a 3-month internship in Burma (more on that later), so not a break per se, but certainly an opportunity to write more often. In fact, it’s a requirement of my internship that I write a blog at least once a week, so writing more frequently is guaranteed … but not always about gossipy Zim drama!

Unsurprisingly, Zim has not been quiet in my absence. As seems to be happening more and more, Zimbabweans are airing their (ridiculously) dirty laundry in the country’s courts. Every other day there’s some story of a spouse seeking a “protection order” against his/her husband/wife (or ex husband/ex wife) to the point where I’m convinced that the Zimbabwean legal system must have a far more lenient definition of what requires a protection order than is generally accepted … and we wonder why it takes so long for legitimate court cases to be heard?

The thing that makes me laugh about these protection order cases (although I realise there should be nothing funny about protection order cases) is that they bring out in public embarrassing issues that could have been (relatively easily) resolved in private – they seem to do far more harm than good to those involved. Perhaps we should consider granting protection orders to prevent spouses seeking protection orders … for the sake of forcibly encouraging adults to resolve their adult issues in an adult manner (and also for the sake of minimising our gross national embarrassment).

Recently, Lazarus Mashindi “bared it all at the Harare Civil Court where he was seeking a protection order” against Violet Mariba, his ex-wife, on the grounds that she humiliated him by coming to his church and pulling his penis during a church service. Apparently Violet (whose name, ironically, keeps being autocorrected to “Violent” by my computer) also beats him and his new girlfriend up whenever she sees them together and insults them using “vulgar” language. He said that although he divorced Violet a long time ago, it seems that she has issues with him. Seems? You think?!

Unsurprisingly, Lazarus’ relationship with his new girlfriend “has not been good” as a result. I can’t imagine why his new girlfriend wouldn’t be happy with Lazarus’ failure to stand up for himself (or for her). And by “stand up” I don’t mean “take things to civil court”. What makes it that much more difficult to take seriously are the references to Violet as “the alleged anaconda-puller” … and the fact that the Magistrate Vongai Muchuchuti not only entertained the whole scenario, but actually granted Lazarus a protection order against Violet pulling his penis again. Seriously.

And then there was the (very confusing) story about Pepukai Kuzovamunhu seeking a protection order against her husband, Gideon Sumbrero, both of 1248 Hopley Farm in Waterfalls (I love how full address details are given despite the fact that they are irrelevant to the story – no doubt for easy identification of the parties concerned by their local communities, just to maximise embarrassment). The headline of the story claims that there’s a grave inside their bedroom, on which Gideon “regularly defecated on a daily basis” (although using both “regularly” and “daily” in describing the frequency of Gideon’s defecation on the grave inside their bedroom is just the first of many confusing elements to this story).

Despite what the sensationalised headline says, however, the defecating-in-the-house and grave-in-the-bedroom issues seemed to be totally separate problems. Pepukai complained to the court about the smell in their house because of his defecation, and then later added (almost as an afterthought it seems), “there is also a grave in our bedroom and he once placed a cloth and my clothes on top before he covered them with soil.” There are just so many confusing issues going on right there!

Once again, the presiding magistrate (the very same Magistrate Vongai Muchuchuti of the anaconda-pulling fame above) fully entertained the case and promptly ordered Gideon to stop defecating in their bedroom. My real question is what Magistrate Vongai Muchuchuti did to deserve having to hear such cases – she surely could never have envisioned that this would be how she would spend her time dispensing “justice”.

Protection orders aside, there is the particularly curious case of Thomas Reuben (40) of Mbare, who “has confessed to having had remote-sex with more than 6000 women ever since he began the trade 14 years ago.” The trade? #dead. Apparently, Reuben hangs out at the Makombe passport office (just in case that place needed anything more to make your skin crawl), “with his business being entirely to have ‘BLUETOOTH’ sex with women every day” (‘BLUETOOTH’ is capitalised in the original article for, presumably, no other reason than to be melodramatic).

Reuben seems to have mastered “the trade”, but said that his juju doesn’t work on virgins, saying that, “at times I am disappointed with virgins, it does not work.” For non-virgins, however, it usually  takes him only about 2 minutes to “connect” with his “target” – he takes some juju snuff and walks around his target (no doubt staring intently and uncomfortably at them) and then “automatically connects.”

Reuben claims “he was given the juju by a sangoma from Nyamaropa in Madziva who claimed it was a charm for ladies. He said he doesn’t remember the exact number of women he molested but can just peg from more than 6000.” He was finally arrested for his bluetooth sex while in the act of using his mind to make an unidentified woman in a queue at Makombe start “experiencing a strange feeling as if she was in the middle of a sex act”. As you can imagine, he was also making sexually suggestive moves at her at the same time.

I don’t know about his juju, but I’ve spent enough time on New York subways to know that unfortunately Reuben isn’t the only man in the world who believes he can have BLUETOOTH sex. Luckily, we don’t have to worry about Reuben BLUETOOTH molesting us the next time we go to Makombe… we only need to worry about, you know, the bunch of other guys lurking there who are on the same juju.