11-8-2008 StarbucksChiang Mai, Thailand
I have landed in tourist Mecca. No shortage of English language books, junk food, memory cards, Thai massage parlors, eager tuk-tuk drivers, Italian restaurants, travel agencies, and coffee joints here. There's a beautiful riverfront lined with attractive
restaurants but almost no historic architecture is left. Sadly, while Thailand has protected much forest in national parks, there are no laws for the protection of historic neighborhoods or architecture. There are a few old teak houses that survive near the riverfront restaurant district. In these restaurants you find heaps of foreign tourists, despit
e the recent bombings and protests that have greatly reduced Thai tourism. The live bands all play American pop music, sometimes well, but always too loud. They all seem to be working hard on their American accents. At night people crowd the riverfront and incautiously light all manner of fireworks. Teenagers shoot bottle rockets over the river. Men launch large exploding rockets of the sort we use for Fourth of July celebrations into the night sky. Massive noisemaker fireworks, small bombs really, periodically make your heart skip. And, most impressively, paper lanterns, fueled by small attached fires, rise glowing towards the moon.
While no one was paying much attention to the U.S. election in Thailand, the covers of magazines and newspapers from all over the world in the English language bookstores made it clear that the rest of the world was celebrating.
