Leaving Chiang Mai

I had everything packed up by 9:00am, including the few dishes, the electric teapot, and left over food. I started taking things down. Pop, the manager of Baan Nai Lek, and one of the sons of the owner, came up to help bring down the rest. There wasn’t that much. I have a small rolling suitcase and my backpack. J took the big roll suitcase to LA (where she did get to see our daughter going to her flight back to Seattle). Pet, Ping, and Bon, were already downstairs loading the pickup.

We took the bike back to the bike shop and then went to the Buddha Image shopping center. Actually I should have gotten the name. It’s on the way to the airport. A market that has Buddha images, chains of all varieties to wear them on, and places that make plastic and glass covers to put the images in.


This is a whole world of its own. Ping is the expert and took me around while we were waiting. Lewis had asked if I could bring him three more images back from Thailand. We had gotten him a Buddha image at the temple near Sanaoom Luang in Bangkok back in 1968 and he wanted enough for the rest of his family. Of course, we got this done on my very last day, in the very last hour before going to the airport.







I had asked Ping to help me with this since this is his speciality. He brought me three images from his collection yesterday and today we took them to be put in covers so you can put them on chains. These are like any collectable item - there are good ones and better ones, ones that have various different meanings. There made of clay, of stone, of various metals, and he showed me one made of the eye of a coconut. In Thai you don’t use the word ‘buy’ when you purchase an image, you use the word for ‘rent’. The three he gave to me include a metal image of Rian Luang Po Chem a famous monk from Phuket, a white one, not sure what it is made of, of a monk covering his eyes, who brings wealth, and a little tiny one, Phra Rot, that protects against harm


While the man was making the plastic cases, we bought three chains for Lewis family to wear them around their necks.

There are so many worlds hidden away in Thailand and here on my last day, on the way to the airport I got to discover one more, and be reminded of how little I’ve seen, though it seems I’ve seen a lot.

I’m trying to treat this like a border run, I’ll be back soon. We’re talking about December - after the election and after the Anchorage International Film Festival. But it’s hard to leave people you’ve grown attached to.

At the airport I learned the plane would leave 45 minutes late, but I should have time to catch the Singapore flight. There’s wifi, but you have to pay for it. There was a coffee shop outside of security that said free wifi. I think I can wait.

11pm I wrote this at the Chiang Mai airport and I'm posting it from my son's apartment in Singapore. I'm in a bit of culture shock. I haven't been in Singapore since 1968 or so. I knew it had changed and all, but coming here from Chiang Mai is like going to NY City from Anchorage.