NTM - New Tribes Mission | Planting Tribal Churches

Hot chili squid chips -- yum!

We’re back home, so I thought I’d fill you in one some things I found out …

I don’t like riding elephants. Enough said.

I’m better at bargaining than I thought. One vendor in a street market cut his price for a silk scarf from 200 baht to 150 baht (about $5). But we were buying two, so I asked him, “How about 250 for two?” He said, “No. 240.” OK … I must have Jedi mind powers I never knew about before.

Nok Air is cool. Nok is a budget Thai airline that paints its planes like colorful tropical birds. The flight crews are friendly, helpful and fun, the prices are not bad, they sell great souvenirs (including plush toy jet-airplane-birds) and they serve great food – on flights of about one hour. Flying to Bangkok (a one hour, ten minute flight), they served the best warm spicy curry chicken pot pie sandwich thing I have ever eaten. Yes, it was the only warm spicy curry chicken pot pie sandwich thing I have ever eaten. But it was a really good warm spicy curry chicken pot pie sandwich thing.

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Sidewalks are for ...

OK, here’s a quick quiz for you.

Sidewalks are for:

a.       Pedestrians

b.      Riding motorbikes, especially against the flow of traffic

c.       Parking, especially for motorbikes

d.      Setting up stands for selling food

e.      All of the above

In the USA, of course, the answer is “a.”

But not in Thailand.

On one-way streets, or divided highways, motorbikes will use the sidewalk to go against the flow of traffic. That’s also where many of them choose to park – sometimes so many of them that you have to walk in the street to get around them.

And of course, it’s a great place to sell food. People set up little carts or tables with woks and grills and cook right on or next to the sidewalks. There’s even a restaurant that sets up each night on a wide area of sidewalk near our hotel.

Our friendly neighborhood tuktuk driver

It wasn’t nearly as scary to ride in a tuktuk as you’d think it’d be.

A tuktuk is a tiny three-wheeled motorcycle-rickshaw hybrid, with no seat belts – just a bench and a couple of grab handles. Crush zone in case of accident? That’d be … you.

And they’re driven on streets where the lane markings – and even the idea that you drive on the left — are just kind of suggestions, for people who don’t seem to want suggestions.

But I found it to be a rather un-scary experience.

That’s probably because I’m tall. My eyes end up almost entirely in the canopy that covers the driver and the passengers, and I can’t see most of the things we almost collide with.

Ah well – any tuktuk ride you walk away from is a good tuktuk ride.

Chiang Mai's Three-Story Market

Prices in Thailand are amazingly low on many things.

At the Sunday market, Julie and I ate dinner from street vendors, and including fruit shakes and dessert, it came to $4. Another day, we passed on dinner at a place that sounded too expensive. They wanted 290 baht for dinner. That’s less than $10.

I’ve been looking all over back home for a real leather dress belt, and finally figured I’d have to spend $10 for the leather and buckle and all, and make one. I bought one at another market for $3.

But not everything is less expensive. The camera I bought for this trip is almost 10 percent more expensive here. And the reason I checked? Well, there’s a sticker on the bottom of the camera that says, “Made in Thailand.”

And not everything is genuine, either. We bought a daypack (a small backpack) for Julie that bore the name of a major outdoors retailer. It looked right, and even had what looked like the retailer’s hangtag … until we saw that it proudly proclaimed the pack to be “teshnically advanced.” But we didn’t exactly pay a major outdoors retailer price for it.

A vendor at the Sunday market

One of the stranger experiences Julie and I had was at the Sunday market in Chiang Mai. Every Sunday evening, the main street in the old city is closed to traffic and filled with vendors of almost everything imaginable: silk, leather, clothing, carvings, food, massages …

It’s a noisy, crowded, active place.

Then all the locals stopped talking and stood still. The few of us foreigners standing there stopped and looked around, confused, and then I heard music being played over loudspeakers. It was the Thai national anthem, and everyone stopped out of respect.

As soon as it was over, it was as if someone had shouted, “Play ball!” and the Sunday market was back in full swing.

A truckload of durian

We came around the corner in Chiang Mai one day and were faced with something I would hope to see only in a nightmare: A truck full of durian.

A woman was just setting up to sell it, and fortunately she hadn’t cut any yet.

Durian, if you don’t know, is a tropical fruit with a particularly, shall we say, pungent aroma. Kind of like something died. But I’m told it tastes like, well, like something died in your mouth.

But don’t take my word for it. Consider this: In Indonesia, where they like durian, it is illegal to eat any durian product on public transportation. And that’s important enough to them that there are big signs saying so in Indonesian and English at airports.