CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
I’m back in Thailand (though there are still a few more India posts) and everything completely hit the fan last week. The protesters’ rogue military commander was assassinated and Bangkok turned into a warzone for nearly a week – all told, 52 people died, 407 were injured and 34 buildings were burned, including the stock exchange, a major news channel and the second largest mall in SE Asia. On Wednesday the violence spread and three major city halls were burned in the Northeast.

Chiang Mai is a little tamer than the rest of Thailand in most aspects, but there were still a bunch of drunk rioters camping out on a bridge. They set up a barricade, destroyed a police box, burned a pile of tires and eventually blew up two fire trucks while taunting the police line on the other side of the river. The fuzz made a few attempts to drive into the camp, but they never got closer than about two hundred meters thanks to one crazy motherfucker with a fire extinguisher. Two dipshit foreigners destroyed street signs and threw tires on the fire, after which I hope they were arrested and summarily executed. After a few hours the military marched in with machine guns and stood there until everybody left. I heard some buildings on the other side of town were burned too, but nearest I can tell no one was injured.

It’s all over now. Nothing was solved. I could complain at length about how the Thai establishment asked for this, how the red shirt leaders let their legitimate political grievances take a backseat to rhetoric and senseless rioting, and above all how the international media completely misrepresented the situation and jacked themselves off over a fantasy about class warfare and “Democracy”, but in the end I’m not sure anybody really wants to hear it. Thais, expats, the media and the rest of the world already know what they think.

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
I used to be really hard on Chiang Mai. At first glance, it offers the same buffet of contrived debauchery and fake luxury that Thailand’s beaches have long been famous for. Pet a tiger! Look at a temple! Get a massage for five bucks! Buy a hooker and don’t feel weird about it!

But you know what? There’s only one street with hookers. Byeond that, the weather is always perfect, there’s a twenty-four hour 7-11 on every block and thirty thousand college kids who just want to party. The streets are clean, the food is delicious and the western edge of the city is 150 miles of mountainous jungle.

Chiang Mai is awesome. It’s easy, but it’s awesome. For now I’m off to India, but this won’t be the last time I set foot in this fair city.

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
On the way to the Sunday Market we noticed an enormous pillar of smoke rising from the east side of the city. Turns out Wat Sanpakhoi was completely on fire. I don’t know how it started, but we showed up about five minutes before the police were able to set up roadblocks and stop people from getting inside the temple grounds.

Chiang Mai’s finest firefighters were out in force, spraying everything down while the Royal Thai Army pulled furniture and boxes full of records out of the building. The monks stood around helpless.

Unfortunately I only had a cameraphone, but it did the trick. I left the city the day after this happened but my agent in Chiang Mai has reported that it’s, um, still all burnt up. There’s a neighborhood donation box to help with its reconstruction.

SAN PA TONG, THAILAND
The buffalo market also has an enormous covered parking lot full of used motorcycles for sale. Most of them are the standard underbones you find everywere in Southeast Asia, but there are also some decades-old treasures hidden among the newer models.

It’s enough just to look, but the vendors will actually let you try any of them out. I still kind of wish I had an ancient Yamaha to tool around on, but after actually trying a number of them I think I’ll stick with a Wave.

BUFFALO MARKET, SAN PA TONG, THAILAND

7:25am – sticky rice, organ soup, raw tomatoes and some kind of chili paste. I’m not too big on organs, but the paste stuff was pretty good. 50 baht, ~US$1.50 (two people).

SAN PA TONG, THAILAND
The livestock and motorcycle market happens every Saturday just outside of San Pa Tong, about 20km south of Chiang Mai on the 108. You’ll see it, trust me – there’ll be about a kilometer of plastic tarps, police directing traffic and an overwhelming smell of barbecued pork.

Instead of the handmade shoulder bags and sushi stands of the Sunday Market, San Pa Tong is more of a water buffalo and 1974 Honda Supersport kind of place. You’ve gotta get up early though – it’ll take about forty-five minutes to get there and all the good buffalo action is over by about eight am. But if you do arrive in time and make your way through the darkened canopy, past the chinese sneakers and cheap machetes, you’ll find yourself among hundreds of snorting bovines and their prospective owners.

You’re going to try to avoid stepping in a pile of dung, but you’ll give up after about ten minutes.

In the back is the fleet of trucks that take the beasts to and from the market, where men in sweet hats try to subdue angry cows and buffalo long enough to wrestle them into the vehicles. Chickens and turkeys are a little bit easier, but they make a hell of a lot more noise.

In our next installment, we’ll take a look at the manifold array of awesome motorcycles sold at this fine event.

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
Wat U Mong is seven hundred years old. The builders carved elaborately frescoed tunnels into an artificial hill, constructed a huge stupa and turned it into one of the most elaborate temple complexes in Northern Thailand.

Then they abandoned it, possibly as early as 1487. Wat U Mong sat rotting in the forest for almost five hundred years before anybody bothered to restore it in 1948, and a significant number of monks didn’t move back in until 2003.

But the coolest thing about U Mong is this pile of derelict Buddha statues. A monk who stayed here in the late sixties traveled around Thailand collecting them, and I guess everyone just humored him with a little plaque.

Maybe I can find a temple that hasn’t been restored…

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
Next time you’re in Chiang Mai, walk down this side street and find the guy banging an elephant design into a sheet of silver. It’s okay, the dog’s friendly. Ask to see his chedi and he’ll take you to the red gate around the corner, unlock it and let you in. There, built into his living room, is the remains of the centuries-old Wat Bang Muang. He still lights incense on it every morning.

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND
Any brochure will tell you that Chiang Mai has over three hundred active temples, but what about the ones that have been lost to fires, Burmese invasions and run-of-the-mill decay? Chiang Mai has been the largest city in Northern Thailand for seven hundred years – so many religious sites have been built that no one can even guess at the number.

But we can try. Buddhists won’t intentionally destroy a temple even if it’s abandoned, so while the wooden buildings have long since crumbled there are dozens of brick chedi scattered throughout the city. Each one contains some sort of Buddhist relic – Chiang Mai University’s art department has put up placards on a lot of them, but for most nobody remembers their name or when they were built.

This bad boy is stuck discreetly behind the saddest pawn shop I’ve ever seen:

This one is on a major road, between a pharmacy and a lady selling deep fried horrors:

And a few more:

These are all obvious though, right out in the open. Tomorrow we’ll find a secret one.

TACHILEIK, BURMA
Mae Sai is a pretty average Northern Thai town, but just across the border is an entirely different world. The sidewalks are covered in brick-colored betel nut spit, old toothless women smoke green cheroots and, perhaps most strikingly, everybody looks completely different. Cosmopolitan Thailand is fairly homogeneous (mostly due to the success of Thaification), but the population of Tachileik is a bizarre mix of Shan, Bamar, Lahu, Akha, Muslim groups and Indians from all over the place.

Also, everything is in Burmese. That sounds obvious, but you’ll find some familiar script almost anywhere you go in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia or Vietnam. In Tachileik even the license plates are written in a language you’ve never seen before.