DAY ONE -
SAN FRANCISCO - OAKLAND - LA - GUANGZHOU - BANGKOK - CHIANG RAI

Premature Embarkation

After a smooth 6-pm subway ride under the bay and a quick connection to the Oakland Airport, things quickly fall apart. It's Friday evening – bedlam for the LA air commute.  While standing for about 40 minutes in line at the Southwest Airlines gate, despite a prepaid ticket, I’m hearing that the plane is about an hour late. Then I hear two hours, then 2.5 hours – something about thunderstorms in Phoenix.

Leaving 2.5 hours behind schedule would blow my margin and put me into LAX about the same time my China Southern connection is at 35,000. Cooling heals for 2.5 hours in the Oakland Airport would kill me before then, anyway.

Upon reaching the Southwest desk, I emphasize that while I don’t hold the personnel responsible, I’m not a very happy guy. I think it went something like, "Find my bags and give me a refund, there’s no reason for me to go to LA.   I’m totally screwed."

Somehow, and I couldn’t believe it, these people find my bags and put me in the last seat on another flight, departing now. Within ten minutes of me reaching the counter and explaining my situation, I’m taxiing out of there. If I had been five people back in line, or among the 50 or 60 unlucky standby passengers, I’d now be back in San Francisco twiddling my thumbs over a defaulted and useless round-trip ticket to Asia.

I hit LAX with plenty of time to check in and have a drink with some tech gal from San Francisco -- but her accent and heart are still in North Carolina. She bitches about the high cost of SF real estate and tells me to send her a resume… yeah. I end up jogging for the gate.

When I stumbled across this ticket, I had no idea what China Southern was for an airline.  At $250 roundtrip, I even thought it might be some sort of scam, and I called a few times to make sure someone answered the phone. Turns out to be a fleet of brand new 777’s partnering with Delta and the service was excellent.

I was pretty exhausted from a tough week, but I don’t sleep well in contortion so after I negotiated an optimal seat I still dropped a sleeping pill. I was out for about nine of the 15-hour flight. Actually, I did wake up about two hours in and the stewardess noticed and brought me the still-hot meal I missed. I chowed on the okay food, got up to brush my teeth and relieve myself, then caught the other 7 hours.

About 15 hours after LA, smooth landing in Guangzhou, China, while listening to ‘Garbage’ (the band) on the CD.

Had to pass through incoming immigration, get a ticket to Bangkok and convert a 20 to Chinese currency to pay the airport tax of $11. Waited in another line at the gate, where I met the Chinese national manager of an MSG factory in Guangzhou. He spent some time in Idaho, of all places, and spoke Americanized English. Checked my bags and bolted for outbound immigration.

About 1.5 hours on the ground in China, then in-route for Bangkok. Landed there 2.5 hours later.

I had thought I might stopover for a day or two in Bangkok, but by then I was really beat. And Bangkok is no place to relax. So I bust a hump and break sweat to cover the distance from the international terminal to the domestic. Took about 30 minutes, counting the wrong turns. I book $50 passage to Chiang Rai, a small city a few hundred miles up north near the Burmese (AKA Myanmar) border.

While waiting for the flight I shoot the breeze with a really badly dressed, hungover, beer-gutted Aussie cricket player on the way to a match in Chiang Mai (big city 90 miles semi-south of Chiang Rai). After the tournament he and his mates are heading to Kho (means island) Samui, then to Pattaya.

This beach town, about 90 miles south of Bangkok, by all reports is about all the ills of Thai society. Prostitution is THE industry and drugged, boozed-out westerners fuel that. Historically, this is due in no small part to the US. The fleet converted what was a pleasant little town to a major base of operations during the Vietnam War… etc, etc…

Land at Chiang Rai Airport about 34 hours after leaving Oakland. Grab a cab and have him take me directly to the Golden Triangle Inn in downtown Chiang Rai. After some polite negotiation, I talk the room price down from 500 baht a night to 2,000 baht for five days. That averages out to a whopping $10.70 a day, but the room has A/C, a ceiling fan and breakfast is included.

About 35 hours after leaving Oakland, before I even hit the shower, I’m on the courtyard patio of the Golden Triangle, sipping a Singha beer ("beer Sing") while learning a few words of Thai as taught by the lady at the desk, name of Wan. I also manage to pick up some travel tips from an American Peace Corp-type gal, shower, take a stroll around town and eat. Then I crash for about nine hours.

DAY TWO - CHIANG RAI AND THE REGION

Map… what map?

I wake up feeling like a million friggin’ bucks. I have my included breakfast, go across the street to the Internet place, respond to some business e-mail and get an idea for the day. I figure I’ll rent a jeep, head up to the border town of Mai Sai and hike it over the bridge into Burma. (This checkpoint opens and closes depending upon the level of skirmishes along the border, but that’s another story.) Turns out all the jeeps in town (my end, anyway) are checked out. Next idea, I’ll rent a trail bike and do some backcountry sightseeing.

I get the biggest, baddest bike on the road of Chiang Rai, a big-inseam 250 (and that really is the biggest bike on the road, here) check a map and head out. My arbitrary objective is a waterfall down south at the end of some trail. So at least I’m justifying hauling my full face, fiberglass helmet all the way from the US. The headgear, too, is pretty radical for these parts, as there are no full-faced helmets here, apparently.

The Thais seem to really dig the specter of a big farang, on a big bike, with gloves and racing helmet ripping down to road. You get a lot of smiles and thumbs-up-type stuff.

I split out of town down the highway and about two hours later I don’t know where the hell I am.

Out in the boonies, I pull into this nice-looking, open-air roadside cafe thinking I might grab a bite. I’m the only guy at the place and I’m greeted by a good-looking, 50-ish gent. He explains that his family went to Chiang Rai, so no food, but I have a beer (a "beer Leo") and a cigar. He has a cigarette and we sort of chat for a while. He speaks virtually no English, so we kind of write things down and help each other with the language. Really nice guy – think his name is Renen.

At some point I light his cigarette and he admires my lighter. Before I leave, I’ve traded him for his bic. He politely refused, at first, but he was one happy dude when he finally tucked it in his shirt pocket. He asked how much it cost. Took a while to get across that it was about 760 baht ($20 US) and his jaw about hit the floor. Twenty bucks is, I’m guessing, a couple weeks wages for a lot of these people. I’m sure the itinerates see way less.

I say goodbye, hop back on the road and really get lost.

Way up in the hills I pull over to this little lean-to where some villagers set up a cooler (no ice in it) with beer and water for sale. These folks are hill tribe people who now just happen to be located near a road. I ask if they can tell me where I am, which is, naturally, a total waste of time. I have to wonder, what do they think when a farang on a big bike, wearing a space helmet, blabs a few unintelligible words, thumbs through his CD case, changes out the player, sticks headphones under his helmet and roars off. They either gotta get a grin or figure this white guy’s outta his mind.

A couple hours later I’m still lost. I’ve passed through more hilltop villages and small flatland towns - haven’t seen a white person since Chiang Rai. I have no idea what road I’m on, my map is the shits, and I’m using the setting sun for general navigation. I did stop and chat with some folks who indicated a general direction.

I’m pretty saddle sore after about six hours on the road and a little bugged that the bike’s electronics don’t access the GPS. Then, in an otherwise totally rural area, I round a bend and see it: what looks to be a four-star hotel on a river in a small town in nowheresville. And, it’s got a great little beer garden set up riverside. I figure this may be a good place to take a break.

I’m in the middle of my Carlsberg when I think ‘to hell with it;’ I check in. Cost me about $22 bucks and the place is sweet. Satellite television, A/C, hot water, a river view and about the most comfortable bed I’ve slept in… maybe ever. And if I wanted to use it, the mini-bar was completely stocked with soft drinks and booze, including Thai and American whiskey.

DAY THREE - THA THON

Jet Lag Blues

Despite the bed being maybe the best ever, I wake up at 4:00 am. I try to go back to sleep but finally bag it. I have to return the bike anyway… and there’s that included breakfast. I pack my gear, load Bob Marley, wake up the security guard on the way out and get on the road. And, man, it’s dark. I’m traversing rural areas and hills with no reference points while dodging roadside mutts, but now I have a good idea of my location, having looked at a real map.

At one point I’m up in the hills, crest and turn and there’re the fires. A mile-long ribbon stretches along the black hilltops dead ahead. I figure this is the norm for the dry season and head on. Eventually, I pass just under the brush burn, less than 50 yards up. Ash is falling all over the place.  I put down my face shield and blast out of the smoke as fast as I can. (It’s a different kind of deal: reggae pounding in your ears, on the road with fires burning around you in otherwise pitch dark.)

Maybe 1.5 hours after the hotel, I hit a road I know. Another hour and I’m pulling into the parking lot of the Golden Triangle. It’s still zero-dark-30. The place is dead quiet and the staff sacked-out, but they left my key out for me on the front desk. I head up, wash the smoke off my face and get about a half-hour sleep.

I wake up and take care of some business, currency exchange, e-mail and medication… A great thing about Thailand, you got a minor medical condition (I guess there’s no way around this: a small but stubborn patch of athletes feet for which you have to take a months’ worth of pills) you go directly to the pharmacists. In the US, you would first have to make an appointment, go to the doctor, get a prescription and probably deal with an HMO on top of it. I mean, the Thai guy looks at it, knows exactly what it is and what you need, he gives you the stuff and that’s it; fifteen bucks and ten minutes, you’re done.

Big points of the day after that… Before I had to return the bike, I blasted around town reconnoitering hotel pools and gyms. Then I got my second-ever facial and a massage (there went nine bucks for both). Late in the afternoon I negotiated a tuk-tuk down from 60 to 40 baht for a lift over to the Dusit Resort, a five-star hotel about ten minutes from my own modest accommodations. Naturally, after all the negotiation, had to give the driver the extra 20-baht (60 cents) as tip just to mess with his head. Tips are rare here and this seemed to make his day. Walked into the hotel like I knew where I was and borrowed the pool and deck for a while.

Dinner was fried (sautéed) morning glory with garlic and miso and a whole deep fried fish. In real-life this fish, a "hap tim," I think, looks like a big goldfish. This one likely came out of the Mekong River. And man, this hapless thing was tasty; a little like red snapper. Was going to chase it with a beer Sing, but the waitress, for some reason, sweetly insisted I have an Amstel. A big one it turned out. Best meal to date in-country.

DAY FOUR - CHIANG RAI - MAI SAI - ARMPIT CITY

Car for Myanmar

Jeeps are available, today. Sui, the little girl at the rental desk, holds tough and out negotiates me, but she has the guys take the top off, fill up the tank and she shows me where to stow the pop-off faceplate. I pull together my camera stuff, stock up on cigars and assemble the mixings for on-the-road Cuba Libres. Appropriately, the Marley CD is still in so that’s what I listen to for the fast ride up the highway to Mae Sai.

This little border town has a lot going on, much of it illegal. Smuggled emeralds, rubies and drugs flow across from Burma. This country’s official name changed to Myanmar, I think, when the current regime knocked-off the more democratic ruler some years back.

His daughter remains under perpetual house arrest, and from what I hear this woman’s got more guts than most of us combined. She could go exile at anytime, and likely live it up as an expatriate, but she refuses to give the buttheads the satisfaction. She remains dutiful to the cause.

All the parking spaces on the main road near the border are taken, so I hang an arbitrary left into an alley just before the bridge checkpoints. A Thai guy waves me over and for 30 baht I get off-street parking behind a ramshackle building. The space comes complete with windshield ticket, receipt and everything. The guy makes a semi-big deal about the little Suzuki jeep, like it’s a pretty hot ride.

I throw on my daypack and head to the Thai checkpoint. The friendly Thai guards tell me to make two photocopies of my passport at a nearby booth and come back. This I do. They stamp the copies, keep the passport and I’m heading over the bridge.

Just over the line, a Burmese army guy waves me into a little roadside room full of about six of his buddies. At first I think they’ll want to take a look in my bag, but all they need is the photocopies and 250 baht. I pay up, get a receipt and continue into Myanmar. I have no idea how much of the 250 these guys divvy up.

Just over the border there’s a palatable sense of severe poverty and a populace seriously screwed. Most of the Thai, no matter how humble in status, are fastidiously groomed and clean. Not so over here.

I’m no expert on world affairs and third-world governments, but I do know the Burmese ringleaders couldn’t give a damn about their own people. They also have murderously pushed out whole minorities, like the Karen. The Karen were living in the hills before there was a Burma, but no more. Thailand is now heavily burdened with overflowing refugee camps. I could go on about the regime’s proven links with the opium and amphetamines cartel, and its organized crime patronage, but I’m on vacation.

Within a block I’ve turned down about 15 offers for tuk-tuk guides. (A tuk-tuk is a small, noisy, two-cycle motorcycle that’s had a rear bench-type seat added. Some of these vehicles in the bigger Thai cities are like moving, polluting, lovingly adorned Easy-Boys. The Burmese version is bare bones.) One kid with a scooter hits me up but I tell him I want to walk, blow him off like the others and keep going.

I’m a couple hundred yards gone when he putt-putts up from behind me and kind of cuts me off. The kid speaks pretty good broken English and says something like: "Please, one-minute sir." He whips out a photocopy map and starts pointing out some of the sights he can guide me to. If this guy was in San Francisco selling real estate or pitching dot-com IPO’s, he’d be on his third mill.

I cough up his asking price of 20 baht, light a cigar and climb on the back of the moped. The kid sings as he drives and he’s got a pretty good voice.

First stop is a "temple" at the top of the tallest hill in this rat hole of a town. The scooter somehow makes it up the steep dirt drive, and there we are. A few souvenir booths and some poor little Burmese girls hustling flowers and incense so tourists can make "offerings" to the big gold ice cream cone. In Thailand, tourists always have to check out the temples. Most are authentic, but, really, except for the very old ones, if you’ve seen one temple, you’ve seen ‘em all.

The bulldozers are still doing the grounds at this place. This is clearly a temple erected for Western idiots. Not a devout Burmese Buddhist is to be seen anywhere near the place. I walk around the thing, look down at the town, take one photo and give up.

A few Chinese-looking people in western clothes seem to be doing the same as me, looking around and wondering why they bothered. The one woman, who’s running the expensive-looking video camera, in pretty-good English asks me where I’m from. Turns out she lives just off Geneva Avenue in San Francisco. At this point, I‘ve yet to see another white person in Burma, but I did bump into a Chinese woman who lives about a 10-minute drive from my place.

The kid, "Coolet," or something like that, next runs me over to a monastery. At least this place is legit with actual monks doing their thing. We take off our shoes, pay our respects to the Buddha and head down the road, but that’s about it.

After two cultural stops the kid is out of worthy diversions. He tools us into a dive with wire for windows. I have a beer and give him another 20 baht to buy himself something. Instead he dumps it into some sort of video gambling thing and gets a little bummed when he looses. I wonder what government cronies split the take on this piece of junk and how bad the odds are.

I have Coolet putter me back to the border. I disembark the scooter, lay another 20 on him and he smiles big, waves the bill at a group of his cohorts. I compliment him on his good work, shake his hand and get the hell out of there.

I stop at the Burmese army booth to retrieve my photocopy. One soldier gives me a once-over, smiles and says, "Strong, huh?" I smile, make a ‘tiny bit’ sign with my thumb and index and say, "Just a little guy." Don’t ask me why. I thank the guards, they thank me back and I’m off.

Back at the Thai side, I exchange my photocopy for my passport, and about the nicest cops in the world bid me farewell. Now I gotta find K-Joe.

About two years ago, when I was entertaining fanciful ideas of financing a trip to Thailand with a gem purchase, I made a roundabout e-mail connection with this K-Joe guy. I would come to find out that in Mae Sai, Joe is not only a gem trader, but also a guide and the proprietor of something called the Cobra Inn & Guesthouse. I’ve been on his e-mail list since that first contact.

Every once in a while, Joe sends out updates on the scene at the border, with some political commentary thrown in. He’s no fan of the boys in charge in Burma.

I wander around a bit in Mae Sai, stop at a hotel and ask if they know of the Cobra Inn. They haven’t a clue. I walk back to the alley where the car is parked, stroll a bit beyond that location and there it is.

The inn is kind of bohemian-looking place wrapped around an outdoor patio lobby and bar. I walk in, ask a Burmese woman if K-Joe is around and she directs me to the downstairs office. I head down past two big dirt bikes and a 650 road racer in the hall. I interrupt K-Joe in the middle of cutting a gem deal with three dark-skinned guys in skirts.

From the e-mail content, I already knew K-Joe was not Thai, and envisioned some fat, white ex-pat. Turns out he’s half Mongolian, on his mother’s side. The other contributor was a Spaniard-American father. K-Joe is a savvy guy who has a dead-normal American accent. Turns out that up until about age seven, his youth was spent largely in Melbourne, Florida, then he grew up in various stops in Europe and the Middle East.

After he wraps up negotiations with the Indian-looking guys, he comes upstairs and we buy each other several Thai whiskey and cokes and shoot the breeze a while. The attractive Burmese-borne woman turns out to be his wife, and they have a couple of great-looking kids: a daughter of four and a muscular infant boy he calls "Brucelee."

Besides a lot of other things, he fills me in on some of the goings-on at the border. Two nights ago he tells me he was woken by the tat-tat-tat of automatic weapon fire, punctuated by the poomp-bang of what he guesses was an M-79 grenade launcher. This, he assumes, was one of the rebel groups taking pot shots at the Myanmar army.

He also tells me that the U.S. DEA is out and about in the area. The big joke is: they ride around in new vehicles with heavily tinted windows, like they’re fooling people. The objective, supposedly, is to interdict the flow of drugs into Thailand, which, I guess, then makes its way to the U.S. But, like in North and South America, the Southeast Asian branch of the "War on Drugs" is a total waste of time and money and virtually nothing really gets done. K-Joe figures with a tiny portion of the U.S. cash expended, they could just buy up all of the drugs produced and grown, then burn it. But that wouldn’t pay salaries or yield promotions. Your tax dollars at work.

Joe and I part company with intent to hook-up before I leave Northern Thailand, and I head back to the Jeep.

In civilized San Francisco, if you mistakenly left a CD case on the seat of your locked and alarmed car, in about a heartbeat your windows would be busted out and you’d be shopping for a new music collection. In low-income, shoot-em-up Mai Sai, my completely open, no-roof, no-sides jeep was right where I left it – so was the CD case I accidentally left in plain view.

I mix a cocktail to celebrate, plug in the Rolling Stones and blast back to Chiang Rai.

Later that night, I take the jeep out, get semi-lost and end up at a highway-side open-air restaurant about the size and motif of a miniature golf course. I’m the only white guy in the place, and the 20ish waitresses are all over me until the manager runs them off – not at my request.

The food is killer: sum tum, a spicy green papaya salad, and fish in a really nice chili sauce. After dinner I tip the cute-as-can-be server 50 baht and I see her kind of strutting it, pretty pleased with herself, the hostess smiling with her. In San Francisco, 50 baht might get you a cup of coffee. An average joker can feel like a real big shot in this wonderful place.

DAY FIVE - CHIANG RAI - HILL COUNTRY

Naked Pigs, Kids and Backcountry Oddballs

My hotel, the Golden Triangle, has on premises an outfit that does treks of various sorts. These trips are typically geared to the basic farang tourist: take a boat ride, ride an elephant; that sort of thing. I’d rather not hang with paunchy Germans so I ask one of the young guides if he’d be up for taking trail bikes up into the hills. He’s got a tour, but tells me about another guy he says is an expert in that sort of thing. The staff makes the call and I’m told he’ll be here at 10:30.

I rent the same Yamaha 250 which got me lost a couple days back and "Kid" (the back-half of his actual Thai name) shows at the appointed time. This is a good-looking, big-for-a-Thai 24-year old, and he speaks good English. Only problem, he shows up on a little street scooter that looks like it won’t make it down the block before noon, much less traverse serious backcountry terrain. I pay him in advance, give him an extra 300 baht and send him off to get a decent bike. He’s back about 20 minutes later with a 225 rented from the same place I got mine. He seems okay with this deal.

About 15 minutes out of town we leave the pavement and start to climb. The trail is rough, winding and steep, but the Yamaha eats it up like ice cream. I’ve not done much trail riding, but learning the ropes on this bike is a breeze. I have no problem keeping up with Kid, who proves to know what he’s doing. I can’t fathom how he planned on handling this stuff on that little scooter.

We climb up out of a valley to crest a hill, and I’m listening to Tom Petty when we drop in on the first tribe. The village is a pretty laid-back setup. No amenities of electric and water sources from a bamboo pipe running down a hill. Kids, pigs, dogs and chickens roam free. Kid tells me that 100 baht, about $2.70, will cover the village’s expenses for a month.

I break out the camera and snap a few shots of a woman cleaning what turns out to be a small pig. Next to her is a big bowl full of fly covered entrails. I wander if the contents are refuse or dinner. I also can’t figure out why the still live and unhindered pigs don’t wise up to the deal and blow Dodge.

We visit a few minutes with a local making bamboo bird snares then take off. After about an hour of winding, rollercoaster trail riding, through some great scenery, we come into a more civilized, downright refined village. We’re still on a trail, but power and water has been run out here. We stop at the one commercial venture, a little open-air store with cafe. The family and proprietors are lunching as we pull up.

The father, mother and adult daughter are dressed western and nicely. I have a Beer Chang, and my hosts present me with a good-sized shot of local rice whiskey. Good stuff, but the first sip goes off depth charge style in my chest. They get a laugh out of this.

The mother brings me a great sort of ramen soup, then they invite me and Kid inside, just a little more off the trail. We take off our shoes, enter, wash up and join them in the communal feed. The food consists of some brothy greens seasoned with pork and sticky rice in a separate dish. The eating style is to ball up a bite of the rice between your fingers and dunk it into the broth while pinching out a bit of the greens and pork. These folks are very well groomed and clean so I don’t sweat the germ thing.

It is here that I learn Kid is a college graduate with a four-year degree. As he put it, "I have a certificate from the prince." I find out that the king used to sign-off on diplomas, but he might’ve got writers cramp because he delegated that job to his son. Kid’s major was English and he’s certified to teach, but he’s not sure yet what he wants to do. Until he figures it out, he works at a local travel and tour agency. Good guy.

I snap shots of the village and some cute kids and we head out.

About 45 minutes later we park the bikes and hike up a trail to a waterfall. Some Thai kids are building a sandcastle and a few villagers are selling trinkets. I negotiate price from 30 to 20 baht for a necklace made out of banana seeds. I guess some of the bananas around here have black, marble-sized, wood-like seeds somewhere on the tree. The thing is pretty nice, but I’m not sure what I’ll do with it. Maybe I’ll give it a try in San Francisco, some night.

We hike back down the hill to where the bikes are parked. Just below there’s a little stream and a concession set up. Down there I see a few western trekkers. I remark to Kid that the two 20-something girls and one guy look like Germans. He says he can’t tell; all breeds of white people look alike to him. We head down to check it out.

They turn out to be Brits. One of the girls turns to say hi, then raps her head on the sheet metal lean-to roof of the concession. A little late I say, "Watch that roof."

I wander around and take a few shots. Three buck naked Thai boys, about 10, are in the water clowning for the camera. I take a shot and head over to another spot.

Then this American guy stumbles into the scene. This bearded, skinny, ratty-looking dude I had actually run into days before when lost up north; I guess about 40 miles from where we now are. It was after I checked into the hotel riverside in Tha Thon. After showering I had taken the bike on a little local ride and had stopped at a really beautiful restaurant/lodge just up river from my place. This guy lopes into the place, and in zonked-out English asks me if want to get some people together for a bamboo boat ride. I pass.

But here he is again, solo, same dirty clothes, out in the middle of nowhere. He looks like he’s about to drop at any minute. He buys a Sprite with a straw in it, sits on a bench and hacks up some phlegm. Why would I again cross paths with this apparition?

I take the camera back down to the stream where the three boys are now clothed, but still soaked. They pose like muscle men and models while my power winder sings and I call out "You da Man! You da Man!" Nearby, the guy member of the three Brits tries to ignore me, but the girl who rapped her head seems to get a charge out of the photo shoot.

About an hour later we pull into a little park set between a river and a hot springs. We have beer Chang and chat. Then I give Kid my headset and let him listen to the Smashing Pumpkins while I stroll a bit and snap some shots. I take one of a Karen woman and baby in traditional garb, and she says, "Ten baht a photo." I pay her just as another woman hustles over with another baby on her back in headgear. I shoot her, pay and mosey back to Kid. He digs the Smashing Pumpkins and likes the idea of riding while listening to tunes. Selfishly, I take the music back, plug it in my ears and we hit the road.

We’re ripping along pretty good when Kid leads onto a long, narrow walking bridge over a ravine. I fail to take note of the suspension rigging and don’t keep a straight line. The thing starts to sway like crazy; like another few yards progress and we both go off the side. Kid stops, looks back and seems like he may even be a little bugged. I say something like, "What, what’s up?" We continue on, this time in a fast, controlled tangent, and drop into the elephant camp.

Riverside, this place, despite its tourist setup, is pretty neat. About ten elephants are waiting around, and coming and going. They’re geared up for carrying Westerners with big-butt benches installed behind the native pilot. I buy some bananas and cane and feed a tusker.  Then, face-to-face, I try to get a close up shot of the guy’s eyes. But every time I move a little left, he moves a little left. Every time I move a little right, he moves a little right. This happens about ten times, I can’t focus or line the shot and I give up. I think he was messing with me.

By the cafe at this place a small punching bag is set up. I hold the bag as Kid throws Thai boxing knee strikes into the thing. He’s pretty good. If I took one of these kicks I’d be down and out. Then he holds and I throw some punches. The cafe staff seems to enjoy this.

[Ed. Note: Photos begin again at DAY 10.]

We head out and about five miles later we drop from the trail to a nice paved highway winding the hills. I’m listening to the Police while using the bigger bike to blow Kid’s doors off in the corners and on the straights.

We drop back into the Golden Triangle about 5:00. Since we both have bikes until the next morning, we make plans to meet up later to check out a few clubs.

About 8:00 he drops by and we head over to the night bazaar. In a large outdoor patio type place, traditional Thai performers are onstage, and people are eating, drinking and socializing.

We sit with a couple of Kid’s friends, a guy and a young woman his age. Both speak good English, especially her. Turns out she went to college with Kid, also was an English major. And she, too, runs tours instead of teaching. Smart and good looking, she operates out of Chiang Mai. I say the usual male Western thing about Thai women being so attractive and she says I should call her.

They’re both nice people and we have some laughs. At some point I mention that the Golden Triangle is booked and I may have to leave on the 8th. The guy whips out his cell phone and calls the hotel his dad owns down the street. For about nine bucks a night I can get a nice room with A/C.

The gal has to return a tour group to Chiang Mai early the next morning, so they head out. Before she leaves the patio area she stops, turns, gives me a big smile and a wave. It’s then I learn from Kid that they’re not a couple, just friends. I may have to head to Chiang Mai in a few days.

On the way out of the bazaar, after a few Mekong whiskey and cokes, we bump into another friend of Kid’s. In full uniform with beret, boots and paratroop wings, this handsome, muscular Thai runs the local Tourist Police. This outfit was established by the national government not so much to ‘police’ the tourist, as to keep them out of trouble. If you get scammed or otherwise get in the shit, these are the first guy’s you go to. But if they catch you transporting drugs or messing with minors, you’re meat. There’s a lot of Westerners in Thai prisons, and their respective consulates can’t do a damn thing about it.

I ask how long the officer has served and he says about 20 years. Then he asks me how long I’ve been in. (This is a repeated assumption of me here.) This particular soldier-type guy speaks great English and says if I need help with papers, or anything, he’ll take care of it. I’m not exactly sure what he means, but I thank him.

We get the bikes and head up the road to another open-air restaurant. As I walk into the place, I hear country-western music vocals in perfect diction. I’m looking around for the American guy when I see a Thai at the mike singing and playing the guitar. Later he switches to homegrown tunes and he’s pretty damn good.

We eat sum tum, chicken with cashews and a crunchy prawn dish in a great sauce. We chase it with beer Sing and head out.

The nightclub we hit I can’t mention by name in a family writing, but it’s a regular, non-go-go local hangout. Kid calls it a disco, and the music is cranking, but there’s no dance floor, just tables and chairs. I try to order a whiskey and coke, but they only sell booze by the bottle, so we opt for beers.

I figure the main guy at the table just to our front may be a local mob cat. He’s got two big, tough-looking guys with him and his woman is the tallest, most Western-looking in the place. And she’s got attitude.

The place is otherwise flush with high school and college girls, and I wouldn’t know where to start.

DAY 6 - CHIANG RAI

Out of Gas

After the trail biking of yesterday, back-to-back with a little socializing and nightlife, I wake up too early and am worthless. I do some writing, return the bike, handle e-mail, drop off some film and eat lunch. At the hotel restaurant the seafood salad is great, but the Vietnamese-style spring rolls turn out to be pork. I leave them, go upstairs to my room, brush my teeth, read and pass out for about an hour.

In the afternoon I head out for another three-buck facial and stop in at an ice cream bakery joint. It’s a picture menu. I point to the coconut ice cream shot and the pineapple sundae and tell the waitress, "Pineapple sundae with coconut ice cream." Along with my bottle of water she brings coconut ice cream and a pineapple sundae. They’re both great and I clean the plates.

During my errands I stop by Kid’s place of business a couple of times, finally find out that he’s out on a tour and won’t be back until tomorrow evening. This is a minor logistical setback. I’m planning on heading to Chiang Mai in the morning and wondered if his female tour guide friend down there could connect me with decent accommodations, etc, etc. I’m not giving up.

When walking the main drags, had to cross the street a few times to exceed range of some kids and adults getting an early start on Songkran, the ‘water festival.’ I think this ancient weeklong holiday began as celebration of fertile crops, or something. The main bi-product, however, is the citizenry installation of roadside firebases. From these positions water is launched with weapons ranging in magnitude from squirt guns, to super soakers and buckets. Vehicles and pedestrians are fair game.

At first, this is kind of cute. But I’ve had past experience with motor scootering fast down a rural road when ambushed. At 50 or 60 mph, you take a bucket of dirty water full-on in the chest, it kind of hurts and, if you don’t brace fast, you could get blown right off the bike. The perpetrators do this in good fun and in the spirit of the holiday, but the whole thing gets a little irritating.

About two blocks from the Golden Triangle is the bus station. The air-conditioned buses to Chiang Mai leave every 30 minutes, the ride is three hours, the fare about four bucks and these babies are nice. Cushy seats, beverages and, most important, that ice cold air. I figure I can read, hammer the laptop in route, check out the sights.

Don’t know where I’m going in Chiang Mai, or when I’ll connect with Kid’s friend down there, but I’m working on it. Should have got her cell phone number from Kid the night before. Snoozed & loozed.

Got the photos back, a few are good. The kids in these shots are heartbreakingly cute. I may scan and e-mail them out to those that may be interested. Thought about posting them on one of my Web sites, but the logistics may be time consuming, unless I can plug my laptop in somewhere and get online.

After reading over this sizzling rundown of my day thus far, I’m thinking about making it a short night and catching an earlier bus out of town.

In the evening I head over to the night bazaar a few blocks away, figuring to grab a quick bite at one of the multitudinous food booths. The chow in these places looks good, with the possible exception of the fried worms. But all the tables on the basketball court-sized patio are taken. Besides, the fly activity around the food is a bit discouraging.

Overlooking the patio, stage, food booths, vendors and everything else, is the second flood of a really nice restaurant. Both ground and balcony levels are done up with quality antique Thai furnishings. I head upstairs and grab a table at the rail, overlooking everything.

Downstairs onstage, the entertainment tonight is a group backing various vocalists doing, what I guess is, modern Thai ballads. The solo females are good, but the duo males have trouble harmonizing.

During my meal a Northern European-looking gal comes in solo and sits down. I figure to chat with her, but her back is to me and she is really wrapped up in studying the menu. She asks the waiter some questions I can’t make out, never takes off her daypack and splits.

The food is good, but not the best, and the whole scene is pretty relaxing. I probably could’ve eaten at the booths below for about a buck. Up here, the VIP treatment, ceiling fans, a beer, two dishes, a great view and a good tip ran me about six. I figure I can live with it.

DAY 7 - CHIANG RAI

Change of Plans - Back to the Border

Last night I had this dream about being in China while my bankroll is in Thailand. I immediately get up, go over to where I have my cash reserves stashed between some woodwork, pull it out and place it where I won’t forget it.

During included breakfast I read a piece in the English language Thai newspaper, The Nation, about Songkran and my intended destination, Chiang Mai. Turns out the city is Ground Zero for that celebration. People pile on planes and trains as far away as Bangkok and head to this capital of the northern provinces. What follows is three days of rowdy celebration and water fights in the streets - and a lot of farangs. That would be fun for about 20 minutes, and I don’t like the idea of jammed roads and jockeying for hotel space.

At 8:00 I place a call to Mae Sai and wake up K-Joe. He says it was time to get up, anyway. Right. I reserve a $12, A/C, satellite TV room at the Cobra Inn & Guesthouse, head down to the bike rental place and cut a deal with the owner, Tsee, (phonetic). I save about 100 baht on two days with the same 250 Yamaha. The Golden Triangle Inn will stow the bulk of my gear for a couple of days, and Wan at the desk says I have to come back and stay.

When I pick up the bike, the owner’s sister warns me about Songkran, explaining that every year the roadside H2O barrages take a lot of people off their motorcycles. I imagine she means a lot of farangs.

Out of town on the highway, groups of attackers hang just at the side of the road with their buckets locked and loaded. You can usually spot their positions in advance by the puddled remnants of recent attacks. I conceive of a reasonably effective maneuver to minimize damage.

They drive on the left over here, so when I approach an ambush I come up slow far left where the smaller scooters stay out of the way of fast traffic. This makes me look like an easy target. This tact also pins the little bastards in their positions so they can’t advance into the middle of the road for point blank assaults. When I’m about on them, just as they’re about to let rip, I downshift, punch-it and rip far right. This works pretty well and at first I take only minor hits.

About 15 miles out of Chiang Rai, I’m doing about 60 with my helmet shield up, fiddling with my CD, when I take one right in the face. I curse and try to wipe the filthy roadside water away from my mouth and nose. I never saw it coming.

Other times the assailants seem to think twice when they see the big bike, the full headgear and good-sized farang. They hold up and I sail by clean. A few other instances, like when I’m having to near stop coming to a police checkpoint, they have me dead, but only reach into their bucket and splash a little water on me.

I roll into the Cobra Inn and one of K-Joe’s "wives," maybe one of the real ones, says he went to Chiang Rai and will be back in a while. This wife and five or six other women who live at the inn and dote over his baby boy, "Brucelee," are Wa. They descend from a large Burmese tribe of headhunters and cannibals. K-Joe says that while these eating habits and hobbies have been mostly discontinued, he thinks that way out in the boonies there are those that remain faithful to the old ways.

One of the headhunters takes me to my room and I’m looking at the first real screw-up of the trip. The place is a dump. Big time.

K-Joe’s main thing is the gem trade, and he’s the guy to see if you want to access more restricted parts of Burma. He’s toured book writers, photographers and National Geographic, but a quality hotel man he’s not. The room stinks, literally.

Everything in here seems to have a slimy feel to it, even the supposedly ‘clean’ towels on the ratty bed. A good-sized column of ants is filing down the moldy bathroom wall, the air conditioner does not, and the satellite TV is a crappy little box locked into a steal cage on the grimy wall. There’s no way I can offend him and head down the road, so I try to rationalize. I tell myself that for many people in this part of the world, this would be a real class setup. Then I wonder about the likely infestation in the three-inch foam mattress.

I get out of there and head to the main drag. I stroll onto the grounds of the largest hotel in town and into the restaurant. I stand around a moment as nobody greets me, then head over to the buffet where a chunky farang tour group is piling up their plates. After I finish the mediocre lunch, the waiter approaches, presents a check and politely explains that I have to pay for the beer. Now I catch on that they think I’m part of the group, and a buffet lunch must’ve been part of the deal. I figure why mess with the language issue and confuse the staff. I pay for my beer, give the guy a big tip and head out.

Later, back at the hotel, K-Joe shows and asks me if I’m settled in and how is my room. I say yeah and fine. We settle in for a few drinks and conversation. After the first round of whiskey and cokes, he says, "Hey, you didn’t get your welcome drink." He heads across the room to a line of, what I assumed was, a display of bottled, pickled snakes and miscellaneous other critters. He grabs two containers and returns.

Turns out the bottles hold Burmese corn moonshine. One also houses a wicked, reddish-brown centipede of a least a foot long. The other bottle contains the same moonshine with a small, formally dangerous viper. "Your choice," he offers. I say, "What a treat!" and opt for the snake. It’s only okay.

I can’t figure out how he gets the centipede in the bottle, since it looks about twice as thick as the opening is wide. He explains that the real trick is getting the things in live, which is mandatory in producing really good animal-infused booze. He says when you hold the centipede from the end; it folds its legs in and makes it easier to insert. The snake is pretty skinny, but still puts up a fight until it’s in the bath.

The centipede liqueur isn’t too bad, either. The animals definitely give the moonshine a differing and distinct zing. I tell K-Joe that back in the States, I sometimes infuse a decent vodka with stuff like vanilla, coffee and pineapple. He gets a charge out of this.

K-Joe’s menu of personal stories about life on the border is voluminous, interesting and believable.

His gem equipment was acquired indirectly from Khoon Sah, the legendary heroin producing rebel general who for years fought it out with the Burmese army, and on who’s head the US had placed a 2-mill bounty. For decades, Khoon Sah, a smart and tough SOB, successfully evaded Burmese and US-backed Thai actions.

After amassing a huge fortune, The General, a practical guy, made an offer to the US: pay a decent fee and he and his boys would burn all the crops and otherwise cease production. Out of principle, I guess, ‘We’ didn’t go for it, and instead opted to direct funds to then allies like Saddam Hussien and the right-wing death squads in El Salvador.

Khoon Sah eventually went to his mortal enemies, the Burmese bosses, bought them off for US 20-million and now plays golf with the same guys in Rangoon, the Burmese capital. Word is he is about out of gas at age 60 and wants to pay one last visit to his old strongholds around Mae Hong Son.

I ask about the security of my bike out front, Joe says it’s okay in the day, and tonight we’ll pull it inside. There’s a big problem with auto and bike thefts in Northern Thailand, perpetuated largely by Burmese border smugglers. Up here, police checkpoints, like the one I was waved through on the highway, are routine.

Joe explains that in Mae Sai, the local cops have a separate policy reserved for the Burmese brand of scooter thieves. Hands bound behind their back, at night the perpetrators are escorted to the Mekong River, a bullet is put in their head and in they go. Joe says that one day a local officer invited him to that night’s launching of six bandits. He declined the invitation.

While we’re sitting at the table, from his shirt pocket he pulls a few just acquired rubies, one cut, the other two still rough. They’re no big deal, he says, only worth about 100,000 baht, about US 3-k. The big-ticket items are either in his safe, or on consignment in London. A guy is also on his way to sell another of Joe’s products in Las Vegas.

Later in the evening we take the bikes down the dirt road for what Joe calls "The in search of the Carlsburg tour." Our first stop is about 15 seconds from the Inn. We walk into a dirty, small, neon lit rectangular room with low ceilings. At "the bar," more like a crappy kitchen pass-through counter, on one of the three stools is a morose-looking, skinny white guy. About ten prostitutes in black miniskirts are hanging around on a ratty wrap-around sofa. Naturally, they know Joe. They make some noises about me, then give up and gripe among themselves. There’s not a lot of good times going on.

The white guy on the stool 12 inches to my left and I exchange dirty looks then, while Joe fills me in on the setup, I try not to feel claustrophobic. Behind the counter is another young girl, an administrative type, and an effeminate little Thai guy in a cheap white shirt and stick-on tie. The admin girl has a bad attitude, and who can blame her. The seemingly happier little guy looks in a mirror and methodically tweezers whiskers from his lip. On the wall just above me, a little shrine sits on a shelf. The offerings to Buddha include a shot glass of booze and an ant-covered bottle of red soda pop with a straw in it.

We’re off to the next place, back even closer to the Inn. So far I could have pushed the bike to both these locations without breaking a sweat in the heavy, smoky humidity. I never figure out what the sour white guy was doing at the bar of the last cramped little vermin pit.

This place is bigger, a little cleaner and the soda pop offering to the Buddha here is sans ants - and the bottle still comes with a straw. The girls here seem to have a better attitude; only God knows why.

Sitting to my right is a tall, skinny, wacked-out Italian guy, mid-fifties. His bushy, frizzled gray hair explodes at right angles to his head. He makes some cracks about how my hiking boots look like I should be heading to Everest and he asks where I’m from. I say the USA and, naturally, he raises his indexes and makes a sarcastic big deal: "Ooh! We’re number one! We’re number one!" If the guy was a little less harmless, I might’ve given him a hard time.

An unbelievably cheerful, skinny girl brings up the karaoke menu of songs and tries to get me to pick a tune and sing. I politely decline, and Joe gives her 10 baht to do it herself. Compared to what follows, 200-amp fingernails over a chalkboard would be a joy. She sings "Feelings." The morose white guy from the last place opens the front door, hears this and is driven off. Some purpose was served.

So far, the prostitute aspect of our tour is serving to depress and I’m not enjoying my beers, but the next stop will set new standards.

This time we motor under the border bridge and ‘across town’ about five minutes. Seven or eight Burmese refugee prostitutes are in a shack-like room open to the street. They’re entirely engrossed in a Thai language soap opera on the tube. The mama-san tears away a girl in a fake Calvin Klein T-shirt and makes her sit with us. She’s not happy about this and after a few minutes she makes a fake around the corner and reappears back in front of the tube.

The next girl the mama-san assigns is even less enthusiastic. She openly displays her displeasure with a pout that could crack glass. Joe speaks to her in one of several dialogues he manages, and finds out the pudgy little thing is 16. I’m open with him on how this setup grosses me out, but he tries to put things in perspective.

Joe explains that these village girls have a lousy deal here, but back in Burma it’s worse. The parents try to smuggle the daughters to Thailand because at least here they have some level of protection. In Burma, all they can look forward to is poverty and inevitable rape by the Burmese.

A larger, craggy-faced guy, I think Thai, is lurking around the place. I figure he’s some sort of enforcer and Joe confirms this. He says that while the guy may be able to intimidate the girls, he’s likely a lightweight and would be no trouble for him or me. I agree and, like any good American redneck, say it might be nice to kick the guy’s ass and call the tourist police. Joe likes the sound of this.

I pay the 100 baht for the beers and smuggle the little girl a 50. She successfully hides this from the mama-san and is markedly happier. Joe says she’ll likely send that cash back to her parents.

To round out the night we head down the highway to a disco. This is a big, flashy, well-run place with a solid band backing good male and female vocalist. They do well-choreographed moves while they belt it out. No dance floor. If the Thais want to dance, they’ll have some pops, stand and gyrate right at their seats. After some prodding by some new friends, a couple of happy young guys and a girl, I join them for some Thai-style tableside dancing. I’m the biggest guy in a crowd of about 2-300, and the only one in tropical shirt and shorts. There’s not another white guy in the place, including K-Joe.

DAY 8 - MAE SAI

Head for the Hills

After a lousy night’s sleep on a bed that smells like 90 years of stale sweat, with an air conditioner that does more harm than good, the Order of the Day is to never return to this room.

K-Joe and I had talked about doing a daylong trail ride up into the hills. But between the effects of the night before, and the thought of returning to the Room of Death at the end of a day on bikes, I conceive of a diversionary plan. I buy him a drink.

We chat a while and he confirms what I suspected about the profit margin on the fee paid to cross into Burma. Officially the crossing is about $5 a head, that’s what the border guys have to log on paper. This means that the Myanmar guards skimmed about 50 baht of my entry. Of course, that’s the western rate.

Cruel irony is that they sometimes extort more from their own people. This is because, with the exception of rice, the food in that area comes from the Thai side. Supply and demand rules the day and the guards soak the Thai-bound locals for whatever they think they can pull. Actually, the guards themselves get the trickledown. The big split goes to the local colonel, then captain, then lieutenant, and then the grunts.

I’m in the process of letting Joe bootleg some software off me, and helping him clean up the hard drive on his Toshiba laptop, when a New Zealand couple pulls up on a couple of trail bikes. They say they now live in Chiang Rai and are friendly, but vague about their business. After they check into a room and clear the area, Joe theorizes that they may be DEA snitches. He explains that sometimes the agency will hire couples to snoop around the vicinity and see what they can pick up.

Joe may have the best coffee in Thailand, which quite often is instant Nescafe. I had seen these signs around the place, "Real Coffee, 30 Baht," but I figured it was just snappy marketing. But when I came back from ‘downtown’ earlier in the morning, he shows off an Italian-made machine which automatically grinds and brews espresso-style. I actually watch the guy put quality roast whole beans in the thing. He got a steamer nozzle, too, and makes some crack about teaching the headhunters to use it.

Joe’s got three new computer programs and about 200 Megs of memory freed up when I decide it’s time to hit the road. I eat his dust for about a mile as he leads me to a back road. He points me in the general direction of Chiang Rai via the hills, tells me to throttle it when the dog chases me at the rock quarry, and we part company.

(Here in the writing to date, I now do a search-and-replace to correctly spell "Chiang," with an ‘i’.)

I ride dirt for about five miles then hit pavement and start to climb. The scenery is great, except for the perpetual haze of smoke in the region. The Burmese are clear-cutting and burning their forests and the sky, air and aroma here never clears.

I spiral way up and come into an amazing little village. The winding, narrow road is brick and the houses and foliage are very well kept. I’m kind of thinking about snapping a photo when I round a tight bend and run into a gauntlet of 20 kids with buckets. They soak me.

Miles down the road I’m straddling the border of Myanmar. Opposing army outposts are literally across the street from each other. The Burmese compound is spartan, drab and they are dug in. They’re behind a high fence of sharpened bamboo. These pungi-type stakes are where the US may have used razor wire. Directly across the very rural two-lane road, the Thai cavalry is more laid-back. They’ve nicely set out a few dark green sandbags to front their scenic driveway.

I drive on until I almost make a big wrong turn, but pull short early enough to ask a roadside vendor directions. She speaks good English and from here on it’s a no-brainer, except trying to rev past water assaults.

I’m on the side of the road stopped just out of Chiang Rai when a kid and passenger on a slow-speed scooter take a surprise bucket in the face. He starts to lose it side-to-side and he’s coming right at me. About three feet before Contact he regains control and heads on.

About as dirty as I’ve ever been, I roll back into Chiang Rai mid-afternoon and head over to Kid’s business. He works in a touring, trekking, auto rental place for which the offices are a few chintzy desks, a table and chairs on the side of a busy downtown road. At night the roll-down steel doors drop for security. Kid’s got a room in the back of the place. His real home and parents are about 60 kilometers out of town, too long a bus ride to make every day.

I stop there and shoot the breeze with Kid and a few of his work buddies while another guy makes calls to find me a hotel. In a while Kid runs me down to the new place about six blocks away. The room is great; good bed, clean, cool, quiet and modern with a good TV - albeit only receiving Thai shows. It cost the same as K-Joe’s place, about $12 a night.

I shower, shave, head down the road and grab a massage. Afterwards I pick up five Heinekens, stop by Kid’s business and there are four guys there; don’t know how I picked the right number on the beers. They’re sitting around the alleyside table when I get there, one guy strumming a guitar, another joining in occasionally on a PVC flute. I help the guitar player work through "Hotel California." He’s not bad.

Kid and I go out later, have a couple of beers and hit dinner at a really nice place. A guy is strumming a guitar; we sit outside by the fountain. It’s a little romantic for two straight guys, but the food is good.

After K-Joe’s and the long bike ride, I’m beat and looking forward to a bed that doesn’t smell like dirty socks. About 9:00 I have Kid drop me off and let him take the Yamaha. I trust him because 1) he’s a damn good rider; and 2) he seems to know everybody in town, including the cops and the guy that owns the rental shop. I figure he might use the big bike to shoot around town and show off to his friends. The next day he tells me he motored to his home in record time, visited with his parents and played with his sister’s kids until 2:00 am.

I sleep like a rock for about nine hours.

DAY 9 - Chiang Rai

Work and Water War

I make a total of four trips to the Internet place today, all for business with the exception of sending out the Log. Keeping up with a real estate deal, my clients' Web sites and some bill collection.

I’m a pedestrian today and put on clothes that I hope will dry fast. In my repeated trips up and down the main drag, I have to fend off constant attacks from water throwers. My technique here is to walk up casually, again like an easy mark, and as the kid is about to give it to me point blank, I grab quick for the bucket and backfire it in his or her face. This works well and they all seem to get a kick out it.

During one trip, I come up on a platoon that seems to be headed up by about he biggest Thai teenager I’ve ever seen; looks more like a Somoan. He’s got at least 50 pounds on me. It seems I’m about to slip by when I hear the kid running after me yelling "You, you, you!" He’s about on me when I jump, get a hand on his bucket and put it right in his face. He’s kind of stunned but his buddies love it.

About 40 minutes later I’m back that way again. The big boy is in the street laying into cars and scooters. I enter the action area and gesture to a little girl with my finger on my lips, like ‘be quiet.’ She holds up on throwing down on me while I grab a bucket, fill it up from the barrel, sneak up on the big boy and give it to him over the head. They all laugh like crazy, but before I can get out of there the teenage girl with the hose and the little girl who held back cut loose. Soaking, I enter the Thai Airways office.

I had planned on motoring to Chiang Mai via the three-hour bus ride. Then I discovered the 25-minute flight by jet costs about $11. I believe Thai Airways is operated and subsidized by the government. Otherwise, I don’t know how’d they do it. In San Francisco, you can’t take a cab halfway across town for $11, before tip.

Earlier in the day I connected with "Aimee," Kid’s friend in Chiang Mai, and she booked a hotel for me. So I have a place to go when I hit town.

At the Internet place that night I’m e-mailing in near real-time with two ad agency people, one in New York, one in Florida, while I have the attendant set Kid up with e-mail on the computer next to me. He’s pretty excited about it. He’s a college grad, but has not a lot of experience with computers. His reading and writing of English, however, isn’t bad. I give the girl at the place a couple of bucks to help him out when he comes in at a later date.

The first e-mail moniker I come up with for him, "chiangraikid" is available on HotMail. I try to explain to him about the concept of old west-style "The -something- Kid" type thing, but I doubt he gets it. I send out a notice to all Log recipients to consider shooting the guy a message just for the hell of it. My guess is only my sisters may actually do this. But if anybody is heading to this part of Thailand, this is the guy to contact.

Kid and I head over to the night bazaar and go to the two-story restaurant where I grabbed dinner some nights back. He introduces me to a homemade whiskey they make there, flavored with roots and such. The stuff is delicious, peppery and strong. For three bucks I buy a bottle to take back to the States.

We grab dinner at the same nice restaurant and this time we’re joined by a female friend of Kid’s. Pretty, seems nice and doesn’t speak a word of English. Tonight the talented guitar/vocalist is joined by three kids; a couple of boys and an older girl, about 10 or 11. They take turns soloing, are cute as hell and good singers.

After dinner we leave the restaurant and the young lady heads back to work at some local place. A few steps later and we’re in the new Honda of a good-looking Thai woman, another of Kid’s friends. It’s about 1:00 a.m. and I’ve still got to pack for a too early flight. Kid asks me if I want to go out with them. It’s tough, but I have them drop me back at the hotel. Flying hungover and tired first thing in the morning is brutal… I should have taken the evening flight.

Day 10 - CHIANG RAI - CHIANG MAI

Adios Chiang Rai Kid, Sawasdee Angry Internet Bar Girl

Last night Kid insists that he’ll find a car and give me lift to the airport at 7:30. I tell him he should stay in bed and I’ll pop for the $4 cab fare.

Just as I’m about to head out at 7:30, there’s a knock on my door and there’s Kid - hammered. He partied all night. As he grabs my bags and makes sure I’m not leaving anything, he repeatedly apologizes for being loaded. I say no sweat, but he should have hit the sack. He wouldn’t hear of it.

On the way downstairs he explains that the girl with the Honda got a little miffed when at the party he tried to kiss her. I settle my bill and we haul my bags out to the car and there she is, also having pulled an all-nighter. She and her Honda are my ride to the airport. Man, this guy can operate.

They drive through a downpour, pull into the terminal and both get out to say a nice goodbye.

In about 30 minutes the plane boards. No sooner do I sit down and buckle my seat belt; the jet is backing from the gate. The center seat between me and the gorgeous Thai woman at the window is empty. She either speaks zero English, or doesn’t want me to know she does.

About 50 minutes after taking off, my Chiang Mai cab driver can’t find my hotel. After several aimless loops around parts of this big city, and him stopping to ask directions twice, I tell him to head to the Imperial Mai Ping Hotel - the place I wish I was staying. I know this location will have some pro tuk-tuk drivers hanging around nearby. It does and after some rough translation, we get a general fix on the hotel location.

About 10 minutes later I spot the place as my guy blows by, and I still give him a $1.10 tip, likely the biggest, or only, he’ll get in a week. He’s a nice guy and most American drivers would have been bitching up a storm, by now, even if they screwed up - which this guy’s outfit at the airport actually did.

The room is nice enough with some amenities and a great A/C. It overlooks a major boulevard, but the windows are double pane, so it’s quiet enough.

I immediately head out to walk the area. Less than 50 yards from hotel I get soaked. Songkran is really starting to bug me, now. I will never come back to this country during these days, unless it’s in the islands. At least there you don’t have to be fully dressed.

The hotel, more like an apartment-hotel hybrid, is across a big boulevard from the moat. Since, I think, ancient times, this square water barrier has surrounded and protected the core city, now essentially the middle of town. This afternoon outside my windows, the muddy water is serving as an ammo dump. This is where the locals are filling their buckets to deluge cars, scooters and pedestrians. And they have a blast doing it.

At about 4:00, traffic is heavy, and moving slow. It looks like the whole town is out there either using the road or washing it down. They’re all wet. I think about going out to get some photos, but know that my camera would likely be trashed. I can’t go anywhere unless I want to swim there, so I grab a shower.

The unwritten rule seems to be that about 6:00 p.m., things are supposed to wind down. And, indeed, about that time the streets start to empty and things begin to dry out. About an hour later I’m in a tuk-tuk heading to the night market area, near the moat at the other side of town, when a stubborn pocket of hostiles opens up with buckets. In jeans and shirt, I only get partially wet but enough is enough. I hit the roof. I start cursing up a blue streak and the startled, and really wet, tuk-tuk driver joins in repeating my USA obscenities. I don’t think he knows what he’s saying and that’s just as well.

I had negotiated the driver down from 50 to 30 baht earlier, but when he drops me off I give him 40. I’ve rarely seen a Thai display anger, or even attitude, that’s not their thing. So I figure the guy deserves a bonus for me raising his pulse rate.

I’m having a beer in an outdoor cafe when a squad of old one-person taxi bicycles rolls by (I can’t remember the name of these things, but they have the umbrella over the passenger in the rear). This must’ve been organized as part of a tour because all 15 or 20 of these bikes are carrying like-looking, overly fed white people. The driver of each of the dilapidated vehicles, on the other hand, is an old and emaciated Thai. These guys are at the bottom ring of the transportation food chain; probably working for literally pennies a ride. The image of an overweight white person grinning stupidly, while a little old man busts his hump to peddle them through heavy traffic and smog, is obscene. But that’s the way it is.

Later that evening I’m in an Internet place in the go-go district when a good-looking bargirl comes in and takes the computer next to me. I sneak a peek at her e-mail subject line: "I miss you daring (sic)." This is implementation of new technology to the oldest of industries.

She is either trying to get him to send her cash, or hoping he will marry her and take her to whatever western burg he’s from. Chances are she knows the latter won’t happen, and she probably prefers it that way, so she’s likely just on the hustle for more funds. Either way, the guy is home and sobered up by now and she won’t get anything.

In her interactions with the staff, she’s got sort of a sour disposition. She sends her e-mail, gets steamed about her bill, which is based at a rate of about 80 cents an hour, and storms out. When she exits and slams the door, the three-person staff looks over at me and gives me a big grin.

What I said earlier about the Thais and their mellow disposition may not apply to working girls with attitude. And, frankly, I’m surprised that those ladies I’ve met in this line at least seem to have such good natures. It’s a tough life.

I’m in the neighborhood, and an ugly American, so I drop into a couple of the places. A lot of the women here are genuinely beautiful, fashionably dressed and either have a good disposition, or make a good show of it. Most of the white guys in the place are not beautiful and are drunk.

I would say having to deal with these guys is a brutal deal for the girls. But, truth is, from what I hear the Thai guys are worse. No Thai woman I’ve ever spoken with had anything good to say about her countrymen. But this could be the circles in which I travel. I’m supposed to meet up with Aimee, the tour woman, tonight. I’ll ask her.

I’ve been in a few Thai go-go bars and I’ve had experience with their high-class cousins, the "Gentlemen’s Clubs," back in the States. (I was a floor manager in one for a few months.) The Thai women in general are more gracious, way less artificial and less mercenary. Or it may just seem that way due to custom and language barriers. In the US, the women will typically get right to the point, get the cash up front and immediately take off when the well runs dry. In my experience their Thai counterparts typically don’t even ask for money. They ask to sit and if you buy them a drink or offer them a couple of bucks (literal), great. Of course, it may be that they’re in it for the long-term return.

The gal I chat with at the "Spotlight" seems a little taken aback by my manners. Probably unlike most other farangs, because I’m not going anywhere with this, I offer to buy her a "Lady Drink" early on. That’s some concoction that she gets credit for, a kickback on, and it looks like Sprite with a lime in it. It cost me about $1.30.

She’s got on some nice gold-looking jewelry; a few bracelets, rings and a pendant hanging from her neck. The quarter-sized pendant displays a picture of the current king and his father. "Sui Maaa," I say. This means "very beautiful," but may be gender-specific to describing a female and not applicable to objects. But she acts impressed anyway and says: "You speak very good Thai." I make an exaggerated expression, which in any language would indicate, "Yeah. Right."

(A couple days later I find out that the pronunciation of 'very beautiful' is more like "soy-ee-maa." In pronouncing it, "su-ee maa,' I wished the girl, or her pendant, bad luck.)

DAY 11 - Chiang Mai

This water thing is getting really old… or maybe not.

As I write this during my included breakfast, I look over the boulevard outside. Traffic is already heavy, the water barrages are going full blast and I’m thinking about heading to either Laos or Koh Samui, the island in southern Thailand.

I head back up to the room and while showering come up with an idea. I put on nylon hiking pants and the thin, short sleeve wetsuit-type shirt my friend, John, lent me for diving. I also put on the rubber diving booties and a baseball cap - I don’t look bad.

I insert my 3.5 floppy, money and other stuff in the little waterproof pouch thing I was given as part of my dive certification, and stuff it in a cargo pocket.

I figure that with this gear I might stand a chance.

By afternoon I’ve walked about six miles around town and I’m ready to take it back: if I return to Chiang Mai, I’ll do it during Songkran. It’s as if all of San Francisco, from the Ocean to the Bay, was full of several hundred thousand smiling, sober and soaked people having a hell of a time.

The battle dress works like a dream. The lined nylon pants repel water and dry fast, the hat adds eye protection when you take a head shot, the light rubber boots are remarkably comfortable (good for sprinting retreats or attacks on wet terrain) and the neoprene semi-turtle neck shirt is like a bulletproof vest for this stuff. The Thais seem to like the looks of the getup, and a few English-speaking farang are impressed by the practicality. Naturally, I’m still taking heavy damage, but I recover fast and give as good as I get.

I stop and buy a big bottle of water, finish it off then, for the first time, scam a refill from one of the countless roadside barrels. These are what the individual fire teams use for supply. I take a lot of hits during the first and subsequent ammo dump raids, but afterwards I thank the owners in Thai and they say you’re welcome.

The weapons of choice, for both Thai and farang, are squirt guns, super soakers, buckets and three-foot long, one-inch thick PVC pipe-type things that draw water in syringe-like, then pump it out under high pressure. The effective range of this lightweight firearm is about 20 feet, and some are U-shaped, double-barrel models. My plastic water bottle works out fine, though. It’s good for friendly close range splash shots and when I sling it, I can nail everything from running kids to pick-up trucks loaded with mobile troops.

The Japanese-made trucks carry their own supply source: one or more big barrels from which the standing-room only crew replenishes weapons. They carry a lot of firepower, but you see these things coming a mile away and, in the slow moving traffic, they’re an easy acquisition.

I’ve never seen anything like this. The town is just happy nuts. I walk about five or six miles through scores of people, but I don’t see a single person who is smashed, wasted on drugs or showing bad attitude. From three-year-olds to older folks, they seem high on getting drenched while drenching.

I stop at a corner store to buy some cigars. A little kid I just blasted in a preemptory strike follows me in to retaliate with one of the PVC rigs, but the owner shoos him away. Then he wants to shoot the breeze. As I’m tucking the cigars into my waterproof pouch, he looks over my military-like nylon hiking trousers and asks seriously if I’m a "sky pilot."

Down in the go-go district, where the rock music is pounding onto the streets, it’s a free-for-all firefight. From a block away, as I approach this zone, it looks like a hundred high-pressure hoses cut loose and are out of control. Water’s flying everywhere. For the pedestrians, the preferred target is the slow-moving column of traffic, especially the many mobile troop carriers that role through blasting back.

But allegiances are weak. If the moving targets occasionally grow thin, due to rolled-up windows, the ground troops will turn on each other in a heartbeat. Often fire teams launch cross border barrages from opposing sides of the street.

When I enter the battle scene, a bunch of bar girls at one place single me out and start blasting my lower extremities. Once I load up from their water barrel, my retaliatory strike is quick, decisive and in the face.

While this carnage is going on, a more traditional observance is taking place at one of the local temples; perfumed water is being trickled into the hands of respected elders. This is one the several more ceremonial ways Songkran is observed. The water is meant to cleanse the spirit. So when splashed, the splasher is actually doing the splashee a big favor. The way K-Joe explained it, if a bucket of dirty water knocks you off your motorcycle at 60 mph and you get banged up, you probably had some pretty bad evil spirits.

So the water war thing ain’t all bad. But when I’m clean, dressed and out later tonight, if I get nailed I’ll still be pissed.

DAY 12 - CHIANG MAI - AND ADDENDUM

Same, same, water game.

The owner of the hotel tells me that Songkran was originally a three-day festival, something like April 15-17. It was by will of the people that the duration expanded to about 10 days.

Today in Chiang Mai the day is either spent inside, in a car or devoted to aquatic Jihad. A simple thing like going to the Internet place is a tactical operation. And when you get there, you’re so shot up and soaking it’s not worth it. Nevermind touring cultural stuff or just hanging around. The streets are full of cars and celebrants cutting loose. I might try to come back before returning home, but after two days of fully participating, I figure now it’s time to move south. I book a next-day flight to Koh Samui.

Since it’s a no new news day, I’ll memorialize a couple of things I missed from earlier in the trip.

It’s my first morning in Thailand, in Chiang Rai. I exit my hotel room, pause to put on my shoes, and sitting in front of the next room is a pale woman smoking a cigarette. She asks where I’m from and I say, "The USA." In obligatory return I ask where she’s from. She says "France." I say, "Yeaaah, I heard of that place." Her face kind of drops as I finish tying laces and split. I may have been a little off kilter from all the flying, or maybe I just didn’t really want to see any white people right then. Whatever the reason for my abruptness, I figure if you gotta insult somebody, it might as well be the French.

I’m on my way back from the first trip to Mae Sai and Burma. I’ve been blasting down the highway in the little Jeep, having downed a couple of Cuba Libres while listening to the Rolling Stones, and I swing back into hot, humid Chiang Rai. About the first thing I take notice of is two pale Mormon kids in ties, white shirts and long Hagar’s peddling across the highway. Could anything be less needed in this part of the world?

If anybody wonders, the word ‘farang’ routes from one the earliest intrusions of westerners into Thailand. They were the French. The Thai tongue twisted around whatever the pronunciation was then and they became the "Farang." As more and different whites came in, they all became farang, with the ‘R’ spoken like an ‘L’ in the northern regions. To tell the truth, it’s possible that the Thais rarely use the word. It’s probably implemented mostly by writers who are trying to snap up their copy.

About a year ago in the States I was doing some channel surfing and paused at the satellite station that rotates international programming. There’s Myanmar State television. It’s a string of obvious propaganda clips: officials opening new buildings; officials in ‘important’ meetings; officials accepting floral arrangements from grateful citizens - who seem to be fighting for their life to keep a smile on their face.

Unprompted, K-Joe explains that before he got satellite, Myanmar TV was about all his rabbit ears could pick up, given his proximity to the border. He tells a story about being at a Myanmar airport and coming across a bunch of unhappy, over-dressed citizens standing on the tarmac in the heat. He speaks to one of the men he knows and is told that about four hours ago they were brought out here. They’re waiting for some higher-up dope to fly in so the cameras can record the spontaneous and joyous arrival reception.

K-Joe figures more accurate footage would be bodies out in the bush with an announcer declaring something like: "Look! We shot up about 240 people today!"

In Chiang Mai I take a break from the water war and stop at a roadside open-air food setup. I have a great lunch for about a buck. The twenty-something waitress is very cute, sweet, smart and speaks about the best English of any Thai I’ve met this trip. She’s a college graduate with a degree in applied mathematics and television production. And she keeps right on smiling.

Aom (aka "Amie") says that Thai men are basically jerks who have little regard or consideration for their wives. So I’m still yet to talk to a Thai woman who says otherwise. ‘Cheating’ by the man is not even a concept here. Multiple wives and live-in mistresses are common. I explain that a woman in the US who catches her rich husband cheating can nail him to the wall.

I explain ‘grounds for divorce’ and teach her a new expression: "clean him out." She likes the concept and the phrase and her eyes kind of sparkle. I also explain that if the woman is the moneymaker and the husband catches her cheating, the same could possibly apply, as in: "clean her out." This is a bit more than she can grasp. I give her a quick overview of the concept of community property in California, then figure who the hell am I to be explaining this stuff to anybody.

I query Aom on her thoughts as to the politics of the Royal Family. Thais are not supposed to speak anywhere near ill of the family (and if I were to badmouth The King in a bar, I would likely get my ass kicked, if not knifed). But she sort of looks around to see if anyone is in earshot, then says she would like the see the Princess, rather than the Prince take over. This seems to be a common view. The Prince is viewed, I gather, as a spoiled guy whom looks down on the people, whereas the Princess does a lot of good for the commoner. The King, a sax player and photographer who was born in Cambridge, Mass, when his father was studying there, can deselect his son and select his daughter at his discretion.

Aom is a college graduate and she explains that The Prince hands out every diploma issued in Thailand. It takes him a month and he’s got it down to 35 handoffs per minute. (No wonder his father stuck him with this job.) The King still gives over masters degrees at the three universities that issue them.

After dinner we’re walking down the street and she says that Thai women seen in public with western men are looked down on, likely perceived as prostitutes. She claims that because she’s a tour guide, and deals with westerners almost daily, she doesn’t care. I know better. Not long after this she says she thinks a western man would be better for her. It’s hard to disagree.

I tried to find out what she pays a month for cell phone service, but the formula is so complicated I lose interest before I figure it out. I do learn that she can call nearby communistic Laos for 12 baht, about 30 cents, a minute.

DAY 13 – CHIANG MAI – KOH SAMUI

Bound for the Islands

Before the streets go bananas, gotta grab a too early cab to the airport.

Ends up that the owner of the hotel offers to drive me. I let him take point as we exit the hotel for his van. It’s early so he only has to head-off one kid with a squirt gun. I still move cautiously, peeking around corners like a cop reconnoitering a crack house.

I get away clean, but at the airport I effect the second screw-up of the trip; I forget my sunglasses in the van. I call the hotel and the owner says he’ll hold them for me. I figure Aom might pick them up.

On the first and second plane to Koh Samui, I sit next to a 25-year-old Swiss-Italian woman who just finished up four days of trekking out of Chiang Mai. She was less lucky than I – she’s still wet from tuk-tuk transportation that morning.

Turns out that Monique is a junior account executive at a European ad firm for which I once wrote a big fat press release. For a month she’s traveling alone and on the cheap, even cheaper than me. We hit Samui and she gets sticker shock. She was budgeting about 200 baht, six bucks, for a room, but it’s a big weekend and things are booked and at top dollar.

After checking several hotels on Cheweng Beach, I end up getting the last room at a place, a bungalow with a loft bed and one lower. I let her know that for one night she’s welcome to take the lower bed and offset my expense by her budgeted amount. I write this at about 8:00, as I smoke a cigar and have drink on my porch, and I’m the backup plan. Monique’s backpack is in the room and she’s out ‘trekking’ for a cheap guesthouse, or something. If I were she, I’d be doing the same.

The flight to Samui was full of Germans and other light-skinned Euro-types. In 11 days I have spoken no more than five words to any western person. Monique is equally unsettled at the complextion of the plane. When we go out to grab something to eat later in the evening, it’s worse than we thought. Chaweng is stinking with white people. About 90% of them are Germans and a lot of them are wearing sour faces. (No offense, Marion.)

Monique and I start making separate plans to evacuate.

After dinner we stop into an Internet place to check e-mail. The outfit also doubles as a travel agency. There’s another far less visited island, Koh Tao, that’s about a two-hour, six-dollar boat ride from Samui. This is where all the good diving is done.

A dive shop I had already checked with wanted about $90 for a day with two dives. That’s a par with western rates. But they just have to boat you out to Koh Tao and bring you back. There are cheap bungalows on that Island. The power is on only late afternoon to morning, but the place is surrounded by great dive spots, and the costs are at a fraction. I tell the travel agent guy I’ll be back the next day.

Monique and I are both beat, having done a lot of yawning at dinner. But we take a walk and just for the hell of it head into the Green Mango. This is about the best disco I’ve been in anywhere. The whole thing is kind of open-air, it’s lit right, service is great and the sound system awesome. We take the second half of our beers onto the dance floor.

She’s not very good, but I go at it pretty hard, anyway. Pretty soon I’m in a full sweat; my tropical shirt is dripping and the top half of my shorts are soaked. We dance for what seems about an hour and a half. I say, "Now I’m ready for the Reggae Pub," and we head out to the street to catch a ride.

We jump on one of the little rattletrap pick-up truck things with benches in the back. Two guys about my age are already on-board and one immediately starts talking. It takes me a while to get a read on his accent and understand what he’s saying. He’s a Brit, cockney side, and he’s not saying anything worth mentioning here. His pal, on the other hand, has a slightly more refined accent and a good sense of humor. I note that around his neck is an expensive-looking gold chain. He says he and his buddy have been about five months in Thailand as part of a "world tour." These guys have working class written all over them, and I ask what the tour is all about. The better speaker says they knocked off a bank and are staying well out of reach of the law. He could be joking, but I kind of believe him.

Monique, not a big proponent of her own Swiss heritage, likes the robbing the bank bit. While the truck bounces along the dirt road, she tells a quick story about a recent bank robbery in Switzerland. She keeps pronouncing ‘robbed’ like "robb-bid," and ‘caught’ like "caught-tid." It’s pretty damn cute. I make a crack and I believe that it’s here she thinks I’m making fun of her. We still head into the Reggae Pub to do some dancing. Her moves haven’t improved.

DAY 14 – KOH SAMUI

The Big Slow

For much of the day it rains like hell and it’s just as well – I’m whipped from the day and night before. And the place is still full of Germans. Big events of the day are doing a little business via e-mail, checking into the dive trip, getting a great massage, a nap and… I think I’ll skip the rest.

DAY 15 – KOH SAMUI

Evac Interruptus

If I were smart, instead of writing and eating breakfast, I’d right now be booking my flight back to Chiang Mai before they’re full up. It’s beginning to look like I hauled this dive gear all over Thailand for no reason – except for doing Songkran war in the wetsuit shirt and booties.

I’m out on the beachside deck of the hotel restaurant. There’s a five-foot chop, the wind is blowing like hell and I hear thunder in the distance.

A few minutes later I learn that all flights off the island are fully booked. Big surprise.

But that’s a good thing. Later in the day, the weather clears, it’s beautiful and I book next-day space on a speedboat to Koh Tao. I discover that there you can get a "fan room," sans A/C, for about 300 baht. Paying eight bucks a night to stay on an amazing tropical island with great diving all over the place seems an okay deal. I figure even if it does rain like hell part of the day, big deal. I’ll make due.

I write this on the beachside restaurant deck of the hotel at about 15:30, 3:30. There are topless German women all over the place and, to be honest, I wish that most would cover up. (Again, no offense Marion. If the place were loaded with American women, I’d say the same.) The Thai women have more of an island build, and that would be okay, but they are by nature modest. I also don’t think they see the upside in lying around the beach for hours.

Earlier today I got an e-mail from Graham Joyce, a successful author and Brit. He says he’s enjoying getting the Log and it’s making him nostalgic for Thailand. (His next to be published novel is set partially in Chiang Mai.) I send him a few dispatches he missed. One includes an update on the linguistic encounter with the bargirl in Chiang Mai, the one that said I spoke very good Thai.

A couple days after that discussion, I learn that when I said of her pendant, "Sue-e-ma," for very beautiful, I really should have said something like, "Soy-ee-maa." It seems that in my pronunciation, I wished her and her locket bad luck. (The stuff these women have to put up with.) Trying to be suave and charming at dinner with Aom, I had said the same. She gives me a look like I may be nuts and asks flatly, "What did you say that for?" Pronunciation and tone is everything with this language.

On the deck an older German gentlemen is relaxing at the table adjacent. We have a short, pleasant conversation. He’s retired, living in Bangkok and gets to Samui at least once a month. Loves it here. Seems like the guy couldn’t be happier.

My pickup for the speedboat is at 07:30, so I expect to make it an early night. I head to the Internet place to ship this out.

DAY 17 – KOH SAMUI – KOH TAO

Island to Island

Got up at 06:30 to get ready for the 07:30 pickup for the speedboat to Koh Tao. Went looking for a cup of coffee, but the hotel restaurant was yet to open and I had

 to move on. Went out to the beach and in a short walk actually came across a Thai kid at a beach bar dinking around with a cappuccino machine. Ordered one, somehow two showed up. They weren’t cappuccinos in a traditional sense, but I pounded them both. They weren’t bad and I gave the kid a tip.

The night before I had stowed a duffel bag holding excess gear with the hotel, so when the van arrives at 07:40 I only had to throw my backpack on top. I shared the bow of the speedboat with three affable, very tan German guys with a lot of tattoos. In the wind the guy next to me, a smoker, took a hit of my cigar ash in his face. I apologized, but he smiled big and said he liked it.

The 35-foot boat was big, heavy, and powered by four 200 Mercs. An hour and a half after leaving the beach at Koh Sumui, I step into another dimension.

My guess is, Koh Tao is what partially-trashed Koh Samui was about twenty years back. The island is pretty much all palm-covered hills, rock outcroppings, beaches and little rock-protected coves. Coming in by boat, here and there you can spot little splotches of huts. Around the pier is ‘downtown,’ about two blocks of ‘commercial district’ with a few little ramshackle bars, cafes, some shops, diving outfits and, yes, several Internet places. (This confirms what I’ve long suspected; this Internet thing might be big.)

I disembark the speedboat and some of the natives are waving little brochures hustling dive operations. I already set that up in Samui, so I call out in the crowd, "Buddha View!" A Thai guy steps forward and a few minutes later my gear and I are in the back of a pickup rambling down a dirt road. In about five minutes I’m at Buddha View Diving. At this beachside establishment I’m greeted by a Brit named Lee. He’s one of several western dive masters working for the Thai owner of the business.

Lee shuts me down when I say that I’ll have no problem dealing with depths exceeding 100 feet. He insists that I take a review course since I haven’t been down in more than three years. I cut a deal for the written and in-the-water review, plus four additional excursions. He still says there’s no way he can let me down past about 60 feet.

After that negotiation is concluded, he walks me down to a little bungalow operation a couple doors down the beach. My timing is pretty good, as the one beachside room just cleared out. The entire space, including the bath, is about as big as a medium bedroom. The power is on only from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. There’s only a fan, no A/C. The Thai style shower runs cold water only. There’s no top sheet included. Just now, this is the most wonderful hotel room I’ve ever had the pleasure to inhabit.

It’s the end unit corner room and my main window looks over the beach. I’m dead center in a remarkable cove guarded at each side by huge boulder outcroppings. Just beyond is the Gulf of Thailand. If I walk out my door across my porch and make a left, in about 10 paces I’m in the water.

Occasionally one of the Thai staff will look over my shoulder as I write (they dig the laptop). I’m in the hotel’s open-air restaurant/lounging area about 25 feet from my room. Also overlooking the Gulf, the place is set out on about 700 square feet of beautifully varnished hardwood decking. You recline against pillow-type things on mats next to short-leg lacquered tables. And you eat truly fabulous food for about two dollars a dish. This hotel room is costing me ten bucks a night.

And the room itself isn’t bad; very clean and all ceramic tile. A traditional Thai style bathroom is open. This means the shower, sink and toilet are all one deal, not even a shower curtain. In other rooms in this country this has bugged me. Not here. It works out fine and shaving in the shower is practical.

Along this little section of the beach, divers from all over the world (the white world, anyway) come and go, lounge around and wait for the next boat out.

I head back to Buddha Divers and knock-out the written portion of the review. About an hour later I’m in one of three pickups loaded with divers heading back to the pier. We pile on a big two-level rig with spotless diesel engines and ornate woodwork. A pink and white ribbon is tied around the bow. I’m told that this represents Buddha, and if I step on it, or maybe even near it, the Thai captain and crew will be royally pissed.

For the water portion of my test, I’m assigned an Irish instructor named Jack. I learn that Jack is, or was, an industrial production engineer. The other guy, Lee is, or was, an IT engineer. These boys have taken a big pass on all that. Jack tells me a few weeks back he tried to return to Australia and the ‘real’ life, but couldn’t stand it and came back to Koh Tao.

Because I still need to complete the water portion of my review, the first dive I can’t take part in, because it’s "too deep," about 50 feet. So after Jack goes over some basic scuba instruction on board, I throw on my mask, fins and snorkel and go overboard. I do some free diving to about the depth that most of the others are at with scuba gear. Everybody piles back on the boat we’re off to the next spot.

Jack and I go in. We cover the mandatory stuff; signals, buoyancy control, buddy breathing and lost mask recovery, then we tour around a bit. Visibility is about 70 feet. Back at the boat, he says, "No worries. Thanks for making it an easy day for me."

On the way back in, Lee, the guy who earlier said I couldn’t exceed 50 feet, wants to know if I want to do the morning dive to 125.

I’ll send this out tonight or tomorrow. There’s a satellite-linked Internet shop on the beach next to my bungalow. Only problem here, I’m running low on cigars and this island seems to have none.

DAY 17 – KOH TAO

Pandering to Paradise

Two additional dives today, the first at 08:00. Both were nice, but except for one large fish that skirted in and out of vision, perhaps a leopard shark, not a lot of real excitement. The reefs and underwater rock formations are sort of interesting, but it’s a little like being in an underwater tour group. Things move slow and nothing big happens. Visibility was good, at about 90 feet, and we did a little minor cave diving.

The instructors tell me that about a 10 minute walk down the beach from the hotel there’s a spot where black tip sharks school. If you go in with tank and regulator they spook. But if you freedive it, they’ll hang around you. I’ve put this on the agenda.

Last evening I was alone in the hotel restaurant writing Day 16 when the battery on my computer died. I pushed it away and sat back against the backrest pillow. There on the mat to my left, apparently having been there for some time, was a beautiful Scandinavian woman about 25. I think I said something like, "Where did you come from?"

"Anne Marie," one of those names Norwegians give themselves so Americans can contend, and her friend, Barbro, are traveling with a young Thai woman. The Thai end of the trio seems to have something going on that most don’t in this country. A college graduate, she just returned from three years in New Zealand and in a few days will depart for several months in Italy. I guess the years in New Zealand are the cause of her unusual speech inflections. Ying speaks good English with an exotic accent that seems as much French as Thai. The combination is about the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.

Ying is a rarity in several ways; not the least is she’s big on working out. She has legs like a pro tennis player. I cracked that because of her strong lower body, she might make a good farm wife. She didn’t seem to mind. She also has a wicked sense of humor and did not hesitate to use it on me.

Heading out to the beach disco I exited my room wearing a tucked-in tropical shirt, pleated white shorts and tennis shoes with white socks. Ying gives me a hard time, says I’m dressed too well for the place and tells me to lose the shoes.

Assertiveness and a strong build are not big sell points is a culture that likes it’s women submissive and skinny. Ying doesn’t care because – big shocker – she thinks Thai men are jerks.

At various times the four of us did some lounging and chatting at the hotel and they invited me to join them for dinner. Later on, under a full moon, we jumped in the back of a truck and jostled down about a mile of half-flooded dirt road to the beachside disco. Out into the water the place had set out a circle of about 100 small gas torches. Naturally, the bar and big dance floor was open-air.

I was sitting with the three girls when Jack, the Irish dive master, ambles by in a Tie-dyed shirt, shorts and bare feet, which is the norm here. He’s carrying a small plastic bucket with ice and several straws sticking out. I learn that this half-gallon container holds a bottle of Mekong whiskey, Sprite and Red Bull, the "energy" drink. Jack has a big heat on. He makes a big deal over the girls, gets nowhere and tells them I’m a great diver. Why, I don’t know. I get a lot of thumbs up type stuff as he heads off to do some damage.

A short while later, while the Norwegians are dancing, Ying and I took a walk on the beach. Among other things, she says I should be careful with the women in Thailand, that they are sometimes dishonest with farang men. I pointed out that I am now 40 years old and explained to her the meaning of ‘jaded.’

There’s a nice breeze blowing and beyond the tall palms the moon is full. A few feet away the Gulf of Thailand is calm. You can see why some gu