Chiang Mai Reminiscences (Vegan Tourism & Autobiographical Reflections)

so we are now in Bangkok Airport we were
just enjoying life for a little over two weeks main reason being that ISIL had another court date for the case with durianrider and it was my first time coming to Chiang Mai and to me I don't think this has as much significance as it does tell other vegans people who we're yeah into the raw fruit diet I think it probably wouldn't mean more to them to go to Chiang Mai where it seems like the vegan Mecca like the closest thing that vegans have sOooo Mecca so but yeah you know I had I had heard your video with Jake Eames talking about Chiang Mai and it didn't give me that great of an impression and yeah it's true like it's not a good place to walk around I don't it is strange to me that it is that it's obviously such a popular tourist destination but you know we spent two weeks there and it was comfortable we got to go to a lot of vegan restaurants yeah I think this this is the place the only place I've been to with so many vegan restaurants so yeah that is was impressive to me I think it's kind of funny like just even hearing you say that like vegan Mecca the thing is like I feel like you're starting to be a Mac person to be a destination just because something to do like I said you repeatedly when I was there it's like I feel like this is like you know it's like everyone's behaving as if they're here to see the pyramids but there are no pyramids yeah everyone's behaving as if there's some attraction here yeah ality is like Chiang Mai is just a less dysfunctional city than the big cities of Vietnam Indonesia Malaysia like most of all Myanmar Thailand Laos you know like it's a less dysfunctional city even than Bangkok right you know you ain't you only attraction right you mentioned one time we were walking around that like you know it's safer for women to walk around here than in Malaysia you know like it's a safer more like you know single women you can travel here in Chiang Mai Tyler anywhere inside I'm wearing or wearing revealing clothes yeah yeah there's a lot of elements to that yeah if you want to wear a burka so yeah I was just saying to you know well I just wished no a lot of female Travis you must've had friends didn't who did India who did the hippy trial or thing in India or no but that little probably people from my high school that's right I'm not really in contact with it I think you recently though one of my friends went to Cambodia Facebook friends one of one of the most common complaints as women go to India expecting to have this kind of spiritual experience yeah they're a lot of experience and they get sexual harassment really everywhere they go yeah yeah so I just mentioned that's a bit of a mass phenomenon and know walking around Chiang Mai wouldn't be a problem today and walk more into a mine you're in your bikini that would put someone pretty much do bikinis or yoga yoga outfits that are about as we're doing this with you yeah right that's one factor but it's weird for Chiang Mai to fundamentally be a good place to do nothing yes yeah we got a lot of reading done let's do it right yeah you got work done for finishing up grading exams and whatnot but yeah I guess the main attraction that we could have done it is seeing the elephants going to an elephant sanctuary but really I didn't want to do that I just didn't want to do that I think mmm I think people generally do that just so they can take photos and say that they did it I think a lot of people do things for FOMO like fear of missing out fear of missing out on something they so they're like oh I'll regret it later like and you know I kind of had these thoughts when I was walking around and Chiang Mai with you I was like oh well maybe we should go to the zoo maybe we should go I was like really is this gonna be life-changing this really like mean going to rub my hand on an elephant's trunk yeah is that gonna change my life I've never heard you use that abbreviation with a fear of fear of missing out oh yeah in a sense that's like the exact opposite of my approach my approach the always is to say like make sure you've done enough reading about sigh so you know what you're missing hmm yeah which is nobody I know like I said you about learning Chinese we make sure you know enough with the language you know you're missing yeah right but to me uh you know I was just telling you before we hit record that I know that you you've lived in Chiang Mai and various times in your life so like to me it was kind of special to be in Thailand for an extended period of time with you and see you you know even though you haven't spoken Thai really in years like you know you were able to communicate and make people laugh and you know it just shows how like worldly you are obviously you know like I really admire you you know for that you know that you're that you're able to like that you go to a country and like you make an effort to learn languages it's obvious that you when you were here you did really make an effort I can get up my language cards that show him on screen yeah I mean you know for me it's it's a little bit tragic to reflect in that mountain lost potential because now most these places kind of mean nothing to me but yeah like this is this is my handwriting and lotion and this is a huge stack of cards I wrote out so just it was fully ten years I didn't use this language at all and then I was amazed myself that my handwriting was this good sitting down and starting to been you know yeah and just last night like you were going through some of your things trying to throw out paperwork where you showed me like you know some of some of your handwriting from when you were learning pally and different scripts of family and stuff like you know it and you know you I got to see you like excuse me uh like throw out the Law Dictionary that you've had like three separate times and you know you're right yeah so yeah like I know this is a special place for you and even though it doesn't have much like significance to me as it does you know at one point in your life is like I totally think it's I totally go what you're saying like its meaning for you to see like an echo of that side of my life I yeah and be a scholar of Buddhism I used to be a scholar pally I still know all this stuff there was language as history and politics but you know we saw that documentary together it was just a documentary about like factory owners in China basically economics in China but one of the factory owners they interviewed that grave well I think I was the Great Wolf as he called himself yeah I don't know if anyone else calls it that right he was a German guy with gray hair or living in China and he really said like part of why he will always feel like a foreigner in China is that the people there can never give him the respect he's seeking it was an interesting comment remember he said that he said like it's not just about having a roof over your head or having enough to eat it's also about this kind of ecology of respecting others and them respecting you yeah right and like that really that really strikes home with me in Thailand you know I mean like Thailand it's one of those things I mean of course I can say good and bad for it but like you know it's just a country where I don't even want to what I was studying was their history and their culture and their politics no one is gonna understand me that's one of the strangest things if you're like oh yeah like my current research project is like I'm studying the history of slavery like you're in Chiang Mai people just look at you like why what you mean like where they don't even see anything you know worthwhile about your owns about your scholarly interests when you're scholars is their history and their language and their culture yeah that's nothing like you know so I mean I knew a guy who lived everywhere in the world friend friend of mine keyboards in hotels so he had really lived in a very long list of places and I told him this this line my father made up of a tile and my father just made up this witticism about Thailand he said the Thais the nicest people money can buy you know and its bit of a course but I remember this friend of mine libero he said wow you know he nailed it that's really but perfect they at least work you know tells in Thailand you know that was his that was his experience and you know a line I made up back when I was living in Laos but back and forth from Thailand all the time I said I would say to other foreigners I'd say people here are friendly but they're not your friends you know there's a difference you know I mean and being in a place like Thailand for me with my intellectual interests and political interest and so on like you know I feel like there's no way to ever get past the kind of facade a very shallow you know distant friendships which is what you know what makes your life work day to day here the woman we bought mango and sticky rice from yeah we bought that's a that's a standard mango what's a way of serving mango rice and yeah coconut fat you know yeah you know people are nice to you people are friendly towards you but especially me because I spoke the language I could still speak the language at a certain level where I get quite a lot of I can see I can see people like like pulling up when they saw that you could actually speak tired that's right I mean normally of course you couldn't understand what I said but you could tell immediately there and even even prices for things and if things but you suddenly became cheaper because I could speak Thai yeah yeah but um you know there's really kind of nothing past that you know is this point the point diminishing returns is is right there and you know it's so I mean that's for somebody like me I don't drink alcohol hmm you know I don't I don't participate in a lot of the other things that culture has to offer I don't sleep with prostitutes you know said it's and that's for most white men those the ways into the culture or like alcohol drugs prostitutes partying and for me the doors closed on that and I'm you know I've spent a lot of time going to archives and libraries and go in there alone and leave it alone you know yes aircraft celebrities I made friends with other Europeans you know it's yeah meet French and German intellectuals who were also there studying slavery in history over anyway so emissions we actually this stuff that case you guys think we've talked about this 10 times there's not like we really haven't but we didn't talk about this yeah well we were in shame I know that's that's cool for me to hear I mean and the other thing for me is obviously like my last several major girlfriends in a sense or this is going back over ten years right like you my ex-wife and then like the two that were before that it's true that all of them also kind of had this experience with me where one way or another they kind of realized that there's this other side of my life they they haven't seen yeah well you know I'm comfortable with the fact that it's over now but yeah so yeah it's all we know except except we had a great example of it not being over remember we went to we went to the vegan activist Meetup yeah remember and this guy started talking about the history of history and politics of Buddhism and what is in relation to to veganism and then I got to say look I'm sorry but I'm actually actually I'm a poly scholar actually so once in a long while it comes out but otherwise it's it's just an echo of the past yeah I guess it was it was funny too because you know the less you said that the last time or less one of the last times that you were in Chiang Mai and you were recognized by vehicle but it was actually nonetheless like thirty minutes that we were in Chiang Mai that's right did anyway notice or you know recognize you yeah I got recognized I got recognized on the street yeah last day in Chiang Mai just we were going to the airport that's right but in the past what I've come to chain my people did recognize me and in the past since so I've been recognized because of you know my evolved with veganism but also the I used to get recognized just as a scholar of Buddhism sure yeah just and my work on guess you'd say contemporary politics because I wrote a couple articles that were you know raise some either was this kind of sex scandal about corruption and the yeah I read that yeah rather cuz that also people knew people knew there was this bald guy yeah yeah that wasn't that wasn't on YouTube that was just text but people would meet me in those places those kinds of archives and political places maybe like oh well yeah but now with now one people organizing from YouTube they know how to pronounce my name that's the beach it's no pretty joy to put outside yeah yeah but I think you know I can safely say that I'd be happy if we never went back to you right right it's just how you know what though I really don't want to walk around like surrounded by so much I don't know it's not even like a nice place to walk around on no there's just so much traffic and it's to think about it from from Thai people's perspective to look the other thing that's kind of weird and pointless about am i okay why do white people like it there because they can show up and just speak English right yeah there's a lot of signage and English as all the advertising there's a lot of menus in English right like but for Thai people that City now like 50 percent of the city the city is like conducted in English you know what I mean and maybe like 20-30 percent is in Chinese you know like downtown yeah there's a lot of Chinese signage but that's kind of way but I mean like Las Vegas at some point tourism has taken over such a big percentage of a town or a place that there isn't anything unique about that place going to see like what what in Chiangmai is really chiang mai and what is just there for foreign tourists the majority of the vegan restaurants who went to yeah are just for I know white people yeah and we're speaking Westerners and that's obvious from the menu and the sign and everything else right I did take you to a couple of like authentic local places that are yeah really by Thai people for table that also exists but that the the restaurants at the least of the problem like when the whole city becomes in that sense just something that exists for yeah I mean when we were searching for gifts I wasn't looking for anything that was authentically Chiang Mai it was just really clinically time well in some of it was made for foreigners yeah that's right right anyway but I mean you get into a situation where the representation of a place for foreign consumption becomes more and more detached in the reality of what that place is and I don't know I may be the real Chiang Mai is still out there in the suburb somewhere because remember we once gotten a taxi that kind of took us in the wrong direction I was pointing out to you look over here in this neighborhood I know there were actually poor people and the you know that looked poor and then we're skinny and their clothes were dirty and you know there was kind of like oh look you don't see this you know downtown we don't see this in our neighborhood it's a might that's another another side to this so you know there's something you can reach out and touch yeah yeah it was a it was a it was a difference from patio and jaunt in the other part sure it's true Thailand that I have seen in Bangkok sure so I got to see yeah it does seem like a wealthy City compared to that's right obviously Bangkok is full of well to people's minds Yahtzee is going to court right first time in court ever so I got to go to court for the first time in Thailand the court is not something phony for tourists let me tell ya but yeah I had a great vacation with you oh thanks love oh that's great okay well Chiang Mai Thailand I mean you know I remember there was a time when people said about currency that the value of the euro was always being driven up just cuz it was less dysfunctional than the surrounding currencies I feel like in a lot of ways Thailand has kind of gotten a free ride because it's just a country that's less dysfunctional then and less scary then neighboring countries but when you stop and examine you know what's this worth in itself yeah why would Chiang Mai be the vegan Mecca rather than Jamaica I really mean that sincerely you can go on vacation rather than you know you can make a list you know but the the advantage they had and being relatively cheap or low-cost that's gonna erode away and unless you have a specialized research interest in something that brings you to Chiang Mai I can't recommend anyone go there for vacation you know yeah all right Chiang Mai a nice place to do nothing