know from all the countless trips to Thailand that I have arranged over the years for our clients, that Chiang Mai is very different to Bangkok. It’s known for its slower pace of life. It’s an ancient moated city which, thanks to its conservation laws, has mostly stayed intact with it seven-hundred-year-old walls and lack of high-rise buildings. The city is filled with beautiful old buildings, golden temples, sacred shrines, galleries, museums, restaurants and coffee shops.
It’s a place that seems like the perfect fit for my current mood.
The flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai takes a little over an hour. When I arrive, the sun is shining in a clear blue sky and, although it is still boiling hot with temperatures in the high thirties, I immediately find it less humid and polluted than claustrophobic Bangkok.
I take in great gulps of the fresher air and feel my head clearing.
I take a taxi from the airport to the old part of the city and watch the wonders of Chiang Mai unfold in front of my eyes. Here, at last, I can really feel the benefit of time and distance working in my favour. My thoughts this morning are heavily focussed on self-preservation.
It has occurred to me that if I’m going to be alone in future then a positive mindset is going to be my strongest tool for survival. I don’t have to be a betrayed wife and a sad empty-nester – I realise I have a choice. I can be the old me, or I can be set free.
It’s simply a matter of shifting my perspective.
A small, dirty child runs to my taxi as we wait in traffic in the narrow streets. She bangs her tiny fist insistently on the window where I am sitting. The driver yells something and waves his arms dismissively to scare her away. In her hand, the girl has a small packet of tissues to sell and she waves it at me. Her pretty face is imploring me to buy from her. I wind down the window, much to my driver’s irritation, and give her a hundred baht note – the equivalent of around two pounds in sterling. In exchange, she throws me a delighted smile and the tissues and I smile back at her. I don’t need the tissues. I suppose I just wanted to do a small act of kindness in the remote hope that karma might smile back on me and provide a little compassion in return.
I feel like I need all the help I can get.
My accommodation of choice is a family-run homestay. It’s ridiculously inexpensive for a three-night stay when I consider what I’ve just paid for one night in Bangkok. The moment I arrive, climbing out of my taxi in a quiet shady side street just a few minutes’ walk from the old square, it’s glaringly obvious to me that I’d underestimated how long I should stay here.
The place is simply gorgeous. The house is of a bygone age. Traditionally built in the local thick, honey-coloured stone, it has a first-floor terrace overlooking the street and its long oak balustrade is covered with twisted flowering vines. It looks so weathered by its history and by everything around it, and so reflective of what was once here in the ancient capital city of the Kingdom of Lanna, that I feel immediately enchanted.
I’m welcomed at the kerbside as I get out of the taxi and led into the house by a barefoot old man who insists on carrying my rucksack. I’m assuming he is the grandfather of the family. I slip out of my flip flops and trot along behind him as he shuffles along a cool hallway lined and scented with incense sticks, where the floors are inlaid with beautiful mosaics and where all the doors have big, heavy, wrought iron latches, making the place feel like a safe haven.
At the far end of the hallway, I glimpse a small shaded garden with wrought iron tables and chairs and tropical plants. At the reception area, I meet the mother of the family, whose name is Noon and who speaks very good English. I explain to her straight away how I’d initially booked for three nights but that I might now like to stay longer if that’s possible.
She smiles and tells me no problem and just to let her know by tomorrow.
She hands over a heavy iron key that looks like it unlocks a castle gate and bows to me graciously. ‘Yours is room seven. Breakfast is served between 7.30 and 10 a.m. in the garden. Enjoy your stay, Miss Anderson.’
And there it is again; the assumption that I’m single and unmarried.
My room is on the upper floor and set back on the terrace that overlooks the street. Inside, it is deliciously cool thanks to a stone tiled floor. I look around to see a double bed and simple bamboo furnishings and a clean and functional bathroom, with a toilet, a vanity sink, and a walk-in shower. It feels strange to be here on my own but I’m not scared.
I’m feeling something else now. Liberated? Excited?
I spend the afternoon walking the streets of the old town. I stop for a delicious Pad Thai washed down with a cold local beer at a busy and popular-looking street food stall. I devour the meal. Anyone would think that I hadn’t tasted food in weeks. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was. The soft noodles and the fish sauce and tamarind and fresh lime flavour is exquisite in my mouth. How can such a basic dish that costs so little taste so good?
With my hunger satisfied, my thirst quenched and my mood lifted, I explore the bustling market, primarily looking for a few more items of clothing and some underwear, but to my dismay, the only undergarments I can find are tiny slips of silk and lace. As my knickers of choice are usually plain cotton from M&S, I flick through all those on offer looking for comfort.
With none to be found, I actually consider buying some men’s cotton underpants instead, reasoning that besides the baggy Y-front bit at the front they look like my sort of thing.
You’ll be relieved to know I didn’t. Instead, I give in and buy several pairs of colourful silk and lacy ones, although I’m convinced they’ll be uncomfortable and scratchy.
I am, however, pleased with my other purchases of loose-fitting cotton shorts in lovely bright colours, a pair of elasticated, baggy, hippy-style, elephant-patterned trousers (everyone seems to be wearing them and they look so comfortable), and several floaty cotton dresses and skirts and silk scarfs and sarongs – and all for such ridiculously cheap prices that I can’t bring myself to barter for them even a little.
In a second-hand book shop, I browse and manage to pick up a tourist map and a Lonely Planet: Thailand guidebook. Then, with my bags of shopping, I wave down a tuk-tuk to take me back to the homestay. I’ve never ridden in a tuk-tuk before and I’m really looking forward to the experience. It’s one of those things that everyone says you must do in Thailand. I suppose it’s like a rite of passage. No matter how dangerous and foolhardy it might seem at the time.
I can see there are two distinct types of tuk-tuk whizzing up and down the street at breakneck speeds. All are performing traffic ploys and manoeuvres that would certainly be illegal back in the UK and outrageously dangerous anywhere. The first type of tuk-tuk looks like a small motorbike with a precarious homemade sidecar welded haphazardly onto it. Or, there’s the more purpose-built three-wheeler with a domed-cab type that has a bench seat in the back.
The latter looks a little safer of the two, but of course as soon as I raise my hand, the one that screeches to a halt beside me with its engine popping and its driver grinning at me like a maniac is the precarious kind. I climb onboard and we’re immediately off, with both the warm evening air and every other vehicle’s exhaust fumes blowing in my hot face and
