THE ART OF WALKING
I walk to work, passing many shrines, and sometimes, an enormous monastery. I also pass a 7-11 and several restaurants. If you double-click them, the thumb-nails should (!) enlarge.
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- 7-11, where yesterday I counted SIX shelves of products like these. Imagine all that time @ Palm Beach Tan!
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- If I walk to work the back way, and sometimes I do, I pass Wat Phra Sing, started in the mid-14thc…this Buddhist monastery covers several blocks, and has the fish to prove it.
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- Wat Phra Singh also has the afternoon laundry to show it!
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- I love that this is a Family Restaurant
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- In 7-11, there is also this, and, no, I haven’t tried it…
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- Fried bananas, 7:30am. Nothing better.
THE ART OF THE RED TRUCK
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If I’m going any distance – Mass, museums, my favorite EngLish language bookstores – I take a Songthaew (“2 benches”), one of the ubiquitous Red Trucks of Chiang Mai. As long as I don’t ask, 20 Thai Baht, about 60 cents, gets me just about anywhere w/in the Old City. Here’s how it works for me: When I arrive at my destination and climb off, I walk to the front, hand a 20 TB note through the window, and with a huge smile, murmur, “Korp-kOOn,” as I walk away. Very Quickly.
It’s not always a quick hop-on or hop-off,however. I’ve been known to flag down 4 or 5 Red Trucks before finding a driver willing to take me where I want to go.
What’s more, the drive can take awhile. Last Week, I practiced, as I always do, the trick Elizabeth & Roy taught me in Beijing: have the address on your phone, and be sure it’s written in the driver’s language. Normally, this photo gets me to 7 Fountains, the Jesuit retreat house across town:
Not quite so straightforward, though, last Sunday. I jumped in, and already in the Red Truck were some German university students. We went first to the airport, where they didn’t want to go (“Plane? No! “), then to the train station, where they DID want to go – before being dropped at 7 Fountains
THE ART OF WALKING, cont’d
Around Arak Rd, soi 2 (things I pass on my walk to work) —
Coffins and flowers (wreaths) Shop
i live on soi 2, a studio apartment (truth? A large bedroom, with armoire & desk; a door from here leads first to a closet holding a refrigerator and plastic electric teapot; from the closet is a door to ithe bathroom: toilet, sink, and handheld shower head.). It works for me: breakfast here, terrific lunch at school, dinner, out. Every night. In an ideal world, if I could have either a personal chef or dinner out every night, I’d be hard-pressed to choose.
Besides the funeral shop on my walk to work, I pass those places at the top of this page. The gods of technology are against me right now, so I’m forcEd to end here. I say: GO BACK AND LOOK AT THOSE NICE PHOTOS OF FRIED BANANAS AND WHITENERS AND WATS!
mebtravelling 