Leon and I had toured the town early in the day on a small photo shoot. As we returned to the Triple NNN Café for a quick coffee we noticed a film crew, actors and extras all milling around the moat Gate to the night markets. It looked like a recreation of Songkran, the water festival held in April each year. Some of the extras were Farang and some were Thai. The crowd had high powered modern water pistols as well as the usual buckets and other containers for water. The idea behind the water Festival is that you drown whoever passes by with water.
Along with the water dousing are parades which include a water buffalo, Buddha images and other important reliquaries decorated and paraded high above the crowds heads. All were recreated for the movie.
Beside the Safe House Guest House we’re staying in is a little hair dressers. This is where I get my hair washed and blow dried. They have a dog which was paralyzed in it’s back legs. But they had managed to turn a pair of small wheels into a cage for his back legs which allowed him to walk on his front ones and ‘wheel’ along on his back ones.
Booked tickets to Bangkok and picked up the replacement power supply for the MAC.
My leg is much better, it definitely needed the visit to the Chiang Mai Ram hospital to get lanced and cleaned out.
This evening two Americans from Hawaii arrived at the Guest House. They’re here to get dental work done. They’re middle-aged to older and are way into ganga. One’s a Rastafarian. But they were too loud about the ganga and I was nervous for them. Eventually we thought we got the point across.
It transpired that a friend of theirs lives in Chiang Mai with his Thai girlfriend. He arrived later with a load of ganga and they immediately took off to their room to smoke it. As they are in the room next to us it’s impossible to not smell it.
Torrential rain again last night so I didn’t sleep very well.
This evening as I waited for Jeff, I met a lady called Jill. She and her husband and baby son Henry have come from Indonesia to live and work in Chiang Mai. She’s an English teacher. They figured it’s better to raise their son in the family-oriented and community environment of an Asian country rather than the States.
Leon was very sad to see us go. I think he will be more lonely now.
On the train our seats, 30 and 32, were occupied by other Farang. They didn’t realize how the seating numbering worked, but all turned out well once we’d worked through it. The gentleman we were talking with about the seats was from Madagascar originally, but had lived in Paris for the past 25 years. He was traveling with a group which didn’t really seem to suit him. He didn’t like the fact that they kept moving on day after day, mostly by bys. Unpacking and packing every night.
I can’t say I blame him. The group he was with included a French lady who was very rude. Her seat was by the diving doors between the carriages. At one point a Guard walked through the door and forgot to close it after him. She literally screamed at him to close the door. As he was Thai, and an authority figure, he didn’t understand what she was saying but understood the rude manner in which it was delivered. He politely closed the door, but you could hear the whispers about her actions make their way down through the entire carriage. An obnoxious woman. God help her husband.
We pass many small towns. Some with very picturesque stations, others just railroad crossings. Many dogs, many chickens.
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