In Search of Siam

By Carson Christiano - It’s hot, and the food is hotter, and my shoulders are in the sun and the sweat is threatening to burst from my pores, and my book lies unopened on the table—I meant to be reading casually while consuming this mid-afternoon meal, in an effort to savor my surroundings, perhaps slow myself down a little?—but I can’t, can’t stop feeding the fire in my mouth, can’t stop teasing my taste buds, tickling my pores. My fate is locked in a bittersweet struggle for domination; it’s me and the sticky rice (my edible weapon) versus the contents of the bowl. Finally, the last drop of curry wiped clean from its sides, the evidence hastily destroyed (eaten), I fall back heavy and victorious against my chair, shoulder blades reconnecting with hot plastic. Letting the pores open now, I breathe a fiery, pumpkin-and-basil-laced sigh of relief.

Longboat on Ko Phi Phi (Photo by Carson Christiano)

Like so many things in Thailand—delicious meals, wayward travelers, support for the ruling party—winter has come and gone in the blink of an eye. Nights retain their comfortable cool, but by mid-morning it is blazing. Today, while expertly navigating my way through traffic brought on by the annual Flower Festival, I was doused from helmet to toe in the spray of a large, misdirected garden hose. Rather than curse the bearer of said hose for his negligence (or naughty sense of humor?), I realized that it hasn’t rained here in over a month and a half.

The last time the sky dutifully tipped its watering can over Chiang Mai, I was crouched under a tiny shelter on the side of a windy mountain road, drenched and gawking at the offending downpour with a handful of other shivering motorbike drivers. That was back in December. Now, turning the corner of the moat into a sea of trucks and people and flowers—so many flowers!—I feel the heat bearing down on me, seeping into my nostrils and sucking the precious moisture from my eyes (cool air turned warm and dry retains a substantial amount of dust). Yet, as if to ease the ocular discomfort and quench the aesthetic thirst of the emblazoned earth, the sunsets these days have been particularly amazing.

I've been here for almost four months and I still let out a secret little chuckle every time I realize that—wow, neat!—I'm living in Thailand. The wats, palm trees, tuk-tuks and markets have all settled comfortably into the background of my daily existence, but the reality of living in a foreign place is as fresh as a garland of pretty yellow chrysanthemums in the Flower Festival parade.

In December, I welcomed my dad and eighteen-year-old sister as accomplices on my quest for truth and adventure. We spent four days on Phuket, soaking up rays, speeding aimlessly around the island on rented motorbikes, and fruitlessly searching for “the real Thailand,” which regrettably may no longer exist there. I think we saw more tourists than locals, and more snorkel masks bobbing up and down in the water than sea life. Sure, we weren’t alone in our quest, but what we found was indeed spectacular.

If not for the quaint lantern ceremony we came across on Patong Beach the night of December 26th (and the help of global mass media), we may not have known that one year ago to the day the island was completely devastated by a giant tsunami. It was surreal witnessing the extent to which the tourist industry has covered up the disaster, knowing that millions of people suffered and still suffer deeply because of it. Where we sought information, however, we found it readily available. The driver of our boat to Ko Phi Phi lost his entire family in the waves. The expanse of beach carefully hidden behind our resort walls was littered with palm fronds, abandoned fishing boats, and misplaced blocks of concrete—stubborn remnants of a recently forgotten tragedy. When prompted, our island guide recounted in eerie detail the morning he turned his boat (the one we were riding on?) out to sea to escape the receding water.

Heading north to Chiang Mai with varying degrees of suntan (I won by a landslide, but then again I live here), we embarked on a two-day jungle trek, spending the night shivering under thin wool blankets in a bamboo hut. Was this the "real Thailand" we were looking for? It felt like it. The villagers maintained an impressively simple and natural way of life, wore colorful garments and serenaded us with traditional songs around a campfire. The kids were adorable, clambering for our attention with playful tugs on our clothing and huge, gap-toothed grins. But with more than one other trekking group sharing the "remote" Lisu village with us that night, it was difficult not to classify the enterprise as yet another baht-hungry Venus flytrap.

But then again, when has Thailand—or any country rich with beauty and culture, for that matter—been completely free from the reaches of tourism, in some form or another? Is it not in our nature to cultivate curiosity, always searching for new knowledge while never being completely satisfied with the old? Perhaps it is unfair of me to criticize that which brought me here in the first place.

One phenomenon in the village captivated my senses the old fashioned-way: if you've ever had the opportunity to see fog literally pouring over a mountain range like foam off the top of a steamed vanilla latté, then you can imagine what it was like to stand on a peak between two valleys at sunrise watching one empty out into the next. I happened to share the moment with a trio of hungry piglets.

The scenery to and from the trailhead was similarly impressive, and typical of the northern Thai countryside (or at least what we could see of it with our heads awkwardly twisted out the sides of the songthow)—banana palms competing for space along twisting, gurgling brooks, steep hillsides, villages teeming with barefoot children, sleeping dogs, women cooking outside thatched-roof huts, tremendous valleys dotted with fruit trees, distant waterfalls disappearing into canopies of dense forest—at once an invigorating and refreshing sight, and certainly no less "Thai" than the Thai people themselves.

 Eight days and six plane rides after our journey began, I returned to my one-room apartment in Chiang Mai, exhausted and enlightened. Transitioning back to my full-time job and full-time independence might have been difficult if not for the off-the-hook Centennial Celebration my school put on the next day. The event, attended by an estimated 20,000 people and bringing in over 34 million baht (that’s a lot, even in dollars!), featured three stages of student musical and dance performances, a professional re-creation of the 1906 founding of the school, a live national TV broadcast, and a heart-stopping fireworks display.

No less extravagant and certainly no more modest was the school musical, which took to the stage last month for two three hour-long performances. Students from kindergarten through high school carried out four acts entirely in (broken) English, stopping every ten minutes or so to change the scenery. Initially I didn't think it would happen at all; mass chaos ensued every time we tried to hold a rehearsal, a feat which wasn't even attempted until a week before the show.

On Friday we brought all the students to the theater for our first (and only) run through, which took a mind-numbing eight hours. Since the school's theater wasn’t equipped to handle such a massive production, we picked up and hauled our way across town to a bigger one. Nearly three hundred students and a handful of teachers piled into two dusty red busses, the engines threatening to backfire with every agonizing shift of the gears. Students were literally spilling out of the doors, which wouldn't close, so my job was to make sure none of the little kids fell out (enter heroic story of me grabbing a girl by the pigtails before she is thrown mercilessly into a sea of sharp, swerving metal here).

The rehearsals were likewise conducted in a wildly disorganized fashion. Not enough scripts? Sets popping up the morning of the show? Main characters missing? Entire scenes scripted minutes before curtain call? No problem!

To everyone's amazement, and my disbelief, the show came together with only a few technical glitches. In front of a nearly sold-out audience, the stage was awash with sword dancing, traditional Thai drumming, elaborate costumes, enough props to furnish a large house, dancing skeletons, a second re-enactment of the founding of the school (100 years is a lot to be proud of, after all), a sub-plot that tugged mercilessly at the heartstrings, and countless other elements that made me gawk and go "Where on earth did they come up with that?" Thai students are not known for their apathy in creative pursuits.

Just as the New Year rolled into Chiang Mai with a bang, the coming months are bound to be filled with the ins and outs, ups and downs of a highly transient, curiously unpredictable place. I’ll start by ordering a large, delicious bowl of kao soy (egg noodles with chicken in coconut broth—a northern Thai treat), and ask for it spicy.