So, today is the second full day I've been here in Chiang Mai. The trip from Seattle was pretty good and I actually slept for about half of the first flight. I rarely do that, but it proved to be an excellent plan. Despite the two airplane transfers and some waiting, I have no complaints about the travel. In fact, one of my friends actually picked me up at the Chiang Mai airport, took me to my rented room and then we went out to dinner! I thought she was working for Uber (or Grab as it is called here), but she wasn't and just took the time to make a special trip to get me! Pretty excellent! It was comforting to see her and my friends at the vegetarian restaurant more or less on arrival!
Since I arrived in the evening, I had time to just chill a bit and also randomly fall asleep. This allowed me pretty much a full-day yesterday. Here are the highlights:
- Waking up sort of early to do mediation, then a 10 km run, then arranging stuff in my room
- Eating at the closer vegan joint (which was really good!)
- Walking to the Thai massage school to find out about class (I start tomorrow!)
- Walking to the other side of the city to find out about language lessons (I start Tuesday evening!)
- Walking home with a giant bottle of water
- Taking a nap for too long
- Getting rained-on during my walk to eat dinner
- Stopping in a quiet temple in the old city for some time on my way back to my room
- Coming back to my room and randomly falling asleep
So, a lot of walking! But, it was nice to get out and be enjoying the sights and sounds of the city. There are seemingly less tourists due to the rainy season, which is odd, as I have not been here around this time before. I figured there would be tons of people.
Today was pretty full, too. I went for a shorter run, did laundry at a really small/clean laundromat a few blocks away. While the laundry was in, I rented a bike from a place about half a block away from where I am staying, which I will trade in tomorrow for a different/bigger bike that was in need a of a new tire. After that, I did some random errands (including eating) and then went to train at the boxing gym. It was nice to be back, but I feel like I have done better. I did some drills and sparring with one of the trainers. Let's just say, the good thing is that I have a lot of room for improvement...I was not displeased with anything, but as usually with the first few training sessions, it was more of a mental block than anything else. Finally, I went to dinner at the closer vegan place and met an American who spoke some Thai. He was definitely and interesting guy...in his 60s, a jazz musician who apparently jammed with Pharaoh Sanders and was generally pretty "out-there." We talked for a while and, as conversations with other Americans usually go, it grew from talking about observations of being back home to some sort of cosmic/universal themes. I mentioned that I had a new sound recorder that I've been trying out, so I might go to this guy's upcoming upright bass/bamboo flute gig and record it for him. Pretty cool.
Speaking of the sound recorder, I just started playing around with it today. It is pretty cool. I made some random recordings of walking around the alleys here as well as outside and inside of a large temple during the evening chanting ceremony. Doing this made me think about all of the aural things I rarely pay attention to in my everyday environments. Additionally, it made me realize that in our sometimes visual-heavy society the undocumented sounds of experiences are sometimes lost in the shuffle as we strive for the perfect image...which most of the time doesn't depict how something truly is. In fact, these audio recordings I've been making are full of blemishes, but I feel are more accurate in their representation of contextual environment and experience than just seeing a photo. As I get more familiar with the recording device, I will definitely be posting some combination of images and sounds to try to give a clearer representation of these fleeting sensory experiences.
With that said...here are a few photos that I took. Matching sounds to come.
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