A Tribute to St. Patrick: He Makes It Rain

Call it luck of the Irish, or whatever you will, but a true miracle has happened: it rained in Chiang Mai.

On Tuesday night, as I was on my way to the U.N. Irish Pub for a celebratory pint of Guiness, an unseasonable thunderstorm hit Chiang Mai.

The result: clean air! It's amazing what several hours of rain can do for air quality. Tuesday night, I slept better than I have in months (I know what you're thinking, and it wasn't the Guinness). Wednesday was cool (even chilly at night), and I saw a blue sky for the first time since Sam and I were in Krabi three weeks ago. I actually feel like exercising again.

Today the heat is back, but the pollution isn't! Thanks, St. Pat, for a little reprieve from Na Rawn.

The Joys of Na Rawn

I returned home to Chiang Mai on Saturday, and was excited for a full day of climbing the next day that I'd arranged over email from Laos. I set my alarm for 7.30am.

Instead, I started my day with a 4.00am sprint to the bathroom - an unfortunate trend that I continued for another 24 hours. Needless to say, climbing was off, as was reading, eating, drinking, being upright, etc.

Dao, my housemate and the only real witness to my first bout of Thai food poisoning, commented when I'd recovered that it's na rawn (hot season) now, as if that explained it.

To Dao's credit, all illness in Thailand is blamed on the weather, especially changes in temperature and moisture. This winter, I caught a cold, and concerned coworkers asked me "Ted, do you have a good blanket?" or, "You need to wear a hat; it's cold at night." Clearly this time my stomach bug was caused by my abrubt return to unrelenting dry heat.

The next day at work, this exchange happened three times:
Kind and gracious coworker: sabaii dii mai, Ted? (How are you feeling, Ted?)
Ted: Mai sabaii. Meua wan nii tawng sia (Not great. Yesterday my stomach was really upset.)
KaGC (with a smile): Oooh. Na rawn ma laew. (Oooh. It's hot season.)
Ted (laughing inwardly and a little depressed): Chai. Na rawn. (Yes. Hot season).

Luckily, the last such exchange, Phi managed to salvage a little of my respect for the Thai departments of Health and Education. He explained to me that in hot season "You have to be careful, because there are more flies and rats and things, and you have to only go to the clean restaurants. Farang (white people) don't have very strong stomachs and get sick a lot this time of year."

Great.

My hypothesis - that my Laos airlines meal was left to fester on a 110-degree tarmac somewhere for a couple of hours before it was served to me on my flight back from Luang Prabang - may seem similarly absurd to those uninitiated to Pasteur, so I try not to judge.

So yes! It's na rawn here in Chiang Mai, and man, is it hot. It also hasn't rained since October, so it's dry, which makes the leaves fall off everything and the crops shrivel up. The natural response to all this yard rubbish is to burn everything, which causes major, major problems for air quality.

When my plane was landing on Saturday, I was gazing out the window so I could watch Doi Suthep, the mountain to the west of town, as we came in. The airport is only about 2.5 miles from the summit, so the views can be great. Except I couldn't see Doi Suthep at all. It was like it wasn't there. It was afternoon; the sun should have been at least silhouetting the mountain through the haze. It wasn't. I panicked for a moment and thought I must have gotten on the wrong plane.

One of the few things I noticed on Sunday, as I was briefly conscious between bouts of restless sleep, is that a couple of very industrious spiders had built massive webs in the upper corners of my room. And then I noticed that those spiderwebs were black. The air here is that bad.

The only redeeming feature of na rawn, as anyone will tell you, is Songkran, the week-long Thai new year, also commonly referred to as "the largest drunken water fight in the world." Songkran starts one month from today... can't hardly wait.

This afternoon I sat by myself in a cafe on a river. I read Hemingway and thought that, given the circumstances, I should get drunk.

What stopped me wasn't a cultural sensitivity or a carpe diem "you're only in Laos once" attitude. It was a handful of uncooked greens that led to a 36-hour gnawing stomach cramp that was only then subsiding. If I was going to enjoy Laos - or Hemingway for that matter - it seemed prudent to abstain.

Reading Hemingway makes me want to write. I think it is because he lets so much go by unsaid. I find myself wanting to fill in the blanks. So here I am in Luang Prabang, in front of a computer with a crappy keyboard, with no real story to tell.

Sam left this afternoon, after we shared a dizzying and incredible 10 days together. We filled up my passport by visiting too many places in too little time. In Krabi, I got to the top of a climb and declared that it was the most beautiful place I had ever been. In Hanoi, Asia felt new all over again as I marveled at all of the activity on the streets. And in Luang Prabang...

I'm still not really sure. Something is preventing me from loving this place. Could be the raw veggies.

In retrospect, one of the funniest differences between Sam and me during the trip was that Sam would, by default, assume the food was dangerous, and I, after nine perfectly healthy months in Thailand, would assume it safe. By the end of our time together, I was basically cutting his questions ("Do you think this water is safe?") short.

At dinner, again reading Hemingway, I thought about what a Thai person would ask, when confronted with American food. I then considered the irony of a Thai man getting badly sick by eating a peanut butter sandwich, against all odds.

I go back to Chiang Mai on Saturday, and have nobody but Hemingway and Augusten Burroughs to keep me company, so odds are I'll make it back here before then. Sam has promised to blog about our trip, so with any luck I can keep things anecdotal and philosophic.