The closest I got to the political clash was seeing red and yellow taxis in close company, and I must admit I don't know if taxi colour even denotes political alignment in these parts. Anyway, it was an interesting coincidence. Reds are Thaksin/government supporters, yellows are PAD (read: anarchy) supporters.
Word from my boss's girlfriend's friend's Thai army general father ('s flatmate's ex-hair stylist's postman's....) is that there might be a coup today, so I'm remaining vigilant... in fact, I'm taking the car and heading for the hills (with two colleagues, we've decided we need to celebrate our first Saturday not stuck in a factory).
We headed east towards San Kamphaeng, with no particular idea where we were going. We crossed some hills, and stumbled upon the Mae Takhrai National Park. We drove up to the visitors' centre, where we were greeted by a friendly Thai man, presumably a park ranger manning the headquarters, who apparently didn't speak a word of English. He gave me a large pile of pamphlets, mostly in Thai. I found one in English, the leaves crackling as I opened it. Apparently it had been there a while. There were cobwebs on the some of the others. I thanked him, and went to use the men's room before continuing our journey. There were cobwebs in the urinal, which smelt as fresh as a urinal unused for months. Brown water gushed from the faucet.
We encountered many cryptic signs along the way,
as we meandered along friendly rural backgroads.
We came to a lake, where a woman was angling for bite-sized fish.
She heard me step onto the rickety bamboo jetty; turned, smiled, said something in Thai, and went back to flipping her line. Her dog seemed disinterested in me, and the tiny fish being caught.
Zammo experimented with a trick to lighting a fire from little kindling, which involves opposing thumbs and index fingers pressed together to make a small hole, then blowing through the hole. Apparently it creates a concentrated jet of air, delivering oxygen to the fire. It didn't seem to work, but looked pretty funny.
Zammo up to no good:
Looking toward the setting sun through trees along the lakeside:
There was a hut with some facilities in dire need of attention. The door was stuck in soil, presumably after the last monsoon:
Sun setting over the lake:
We left the lake just before the sun went down, and drove 7km north to a lookout point. The road, although wide and sealed, was little used. Clumps of grass scattered the asphalt, which was covered in leaves and stones. Almost a ghost highway, it was quite strange. It transitioned abruptly into unsealed road.
We reached the top just after sunset as the crescent moon, stars, and town lights began to appear. The view down the valley was impressive; Zammo joked this was probably a popular make-out spot for the locals, just as I spotted an empty wrapper, eww!
We took some photos of the sunset, and lit a fire.
We drove back to Chiang Mai, half expecting to see tanks on the street. Much to our disappointment it seemed to be business as usual. I went to the night market and bought Christmas gifts for my manifold young nieces and nephews, and some t-shirts and Cuban cigars.
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