Around CMU and Meeting An Old Friend

The gate to Chiang Mai University

It’s now morning of day two in Chiang Mai and the tour of town has already been great.

After checking into the 3-Sis Guesthouse and getting myself fed and cleaned up yesterday, I headed over to the CMU campus for a walk down memory lane. Some things have changed, some things haven’t  now you can get there in your own personal tuk-tuk, but they still try to overcharge silly farangs.  “Whaddya mean 100 baht because of the traffic jam?? Can’t you see that I speak Thai and am clearly not new around here??”

The area around the campus has developed quite a bit, but some landmarks like the Chiang Mai Orchid on Huay Kaew Road are still there.  The campus looks different in a lot of ways, but the Faculty of Humanities building is still pretty much the same.  The students still wear the same white and blue uniforms and crowd around some posh coffee shops while the old canteen sits more or less abandoned. This dining at the fancy Western-style places may explain the increased size of some of the students

Yesterday was graduation day at CMU so I got to see all the students parading around in their gowns and posing with the new cars that mom and dad had bought them.  (I guess the Honda 50 is no longer the vehicle of choice).  Hope you enjoy the pictures and feel free to comment.

Last night I had dinner with Ked (Somsiri), who was in the group of Thai students who hosted us in 1983, and we had a long talk over curry and vegetables while we gossiped about all the folks who went on the trip with us and who had a crush on who way back when.  Ked is now living in my old home town of Rochester, MN, but it seems like both of us would like to retire to Chiang Mai one of these days.  (I guess that I should start practicing my Thai again).

Chiang Mai itself has changed a lot. 25 years ago this was a mostly agricultural city where you could see truckloads of hilltribe people rolling into town to trade their handicrafts and crops for necessities.  Now those same people man the cash registers in their villages while busloads of tourists “trek” to the hilltribe villages to buy trinkets.  The streets in the inner part of the city have been re-paved with concrete paving stones to give the town that ancient city/Disneyland feel.

But it’s still a charming place to vacation.  The temples seem more beautiful than ever, the people are polite, and the sky gleams in a color of blue that big city Shanghai residents rarely see. Guess I had better grab my sunscreen).

Today I will be going up to the top of Doi Suthep, and later pass through the Night Bazaar.  I promise to take more pictures and hope you will enjoy travelling with me.

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1. Moving On