This is our second stay in Chiang Mai. The first time we flew in to treat ourselves to a week in a gracious little hotel called Ratchmanka, and promptly got sick. We spent most of time in our (very pleasant) bedroom and saw little of the town.
But this time we’re staying in one of Heather’s Airbnbs. It’s spacious, elegant and has a beautiful enclosed garden.
We’re also round the corner from a little hotel, in which Heather spotted the gorgeous fabrics that the proprietor has been collecting.
His wife’s a good cook, and their young son Jeff a coffee freak, so we’ve had a meal or two there, and coffee and cake, and we’ve become friendly with them.
As a result Jeff agreed to drive us to a market called Jing Jai today. So we rose early (for us), got the laundry started, had a bit of breakfast — I’m now a master of microwave eggs — and headed round the corner to our new friends.
Heather went on ahead of me, as I was waiting for the washing machine to finish so I could hang out the clothes. This is worse than waiting for a pot to boil. When I texted her to say I was on my way she replied not to rush, as everyone was just getting up.
We headed off with young Jeff driving. He’s an engaging young man, which appears to be a family trait, although we haven’t met his siblings, just Mum, Dad and their little dog. Turned out he’d spent three months at Liston College, the Catholic school in Henderson, boarding with a Māori family of whom he had fond memories. It’s hard to work out whether he was on track for an education and job in business or administration, or whether he was, like me at his age, a bit aimless. Either way he was called back into the family business, to help renovate the old hotel they’d bought.
I wanted to know how this had come about. They sound like rat race drop outs. His Dad’s business had gone bad, he said. I asked how he’d got back on his feet. Jeff, though effusive, was hard to follow. I gathered he’d got a job utilising his sales talents and easygoing charm, had somehow spotted opportunities that nobody else had — I have no idea what or how — and, once those feet were back under him, thrown it all away and bought the hotel, which they were lovingly fitting out.
His story reminded me of my boss in the Solomon Islands, Trevor. He set up business back home in England with his son John, buying shabby vintage furniture, refurbishing it and selling it on. Buying old homes too, but to do up and move into. The last one was a big Georgian place in a very bad way, which they were renovating room by room when we visited.
I love these stories about families building lives and enterprises that might make sense to no one else, but are their dreams. Jeff’s Mum doesn’t seem to have worked outside the home before they bought the hotel, but now she and Jeff run the coffee shop. She’s a talented and engaging cook and he’s dead keen to sell us coffee. It might have been Dad’s joke but I think she handles the money too.
My attention was starting to wander as we reached the Jing Jai weekend market, which we’d had sold to us as the hip market for young, entrepreneurial people with good taste in food, music, arts and crafts.
Well, yes.
Heather found me a hat, but thank goodness, it didn’t fit me.
We admired the very tasteful clothing on display, and the elegantly turned out women and girls buying it.
We admired a black haired little 2-3 year-old, wandering around happy as a lark with no parent in sight.
We ventured into the bamboo maze, we took photos, and we bought a mug for my birthday, half price because it was a second — whatever. We found another for Heather, not because it’s her birthday but because all the Airbnbs seem to feature genteel little cups when what we want is a mug. The couple we bought from were colourfully dressed and a treat to do business with.
We found another young couple at a handcraft leather stall. Beautiful Italian leather made up by the two of them into nicely styled items like wallets, purses, belts and Apple accessories of all sorts.
They reminded us of Earthworks in the 70s, though the style was very different and we certainly hadn’t made straps for Apple Watches! We traversed the goods on display, remarked on how well made they were, talked about how important it was to avoid waste — to use up all the leather — and how little items compensated for more demanding things like belts. How we had tonnes of scrap at Queensberry, and what could we do with it. And how good it was to be retired.
Heather bought a watch strap, which they customised for her on the spot with a silver buckle etc to match her watch.
As we’d first walked into Jing Jai — hurried along at the crossing by an impatient policeman and his whistle — I could have sworn I heard Bob Dylan’s harmonica in the distance, out back by the covered food court. But by the time we got that far Bob was on a break and two Thai groups were playing. The first of these was a couple in the middle of a rather world-weary, nostalgic song. He was playing a rather beautiful electric cello, she was on guitar and singing. The song was in English although I didn’t recognise it — hardly surprising, and anyway I was more taken by her unusual smoky voice — until I caught the phrase New York State of Mind, and wondered at how out of place, but apposite, it was. I looked the song up later and it turned out to be by Billy Joel.
At times like that you have to love the internet. The first music video I ever saw was a revelation — Bryan Ferry singing Bob Dylan’s Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall. We heard it once on TV and never again for decades.
Now you can hear the video any time you like, and also the original by Dylan. Maybe you could listen to them in the reverse order to see why the “revelation”. And after that go on to discover all about these men, and all the other people from what I guess is a long time ago but fresh in our memories.
That sort of discovery was harder back in the day. Back then it was difficult to hear or acquire the music. Now it’s hard for it to get our attention in the cacophony.
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Bob was still back stage somewhere, but further along, under a thatched shelter, Neil Young was doing a fine rendition of Heart of Gold. These were three guys, two with guitars, one with a banjo, and with Neil’s harmonica this time.
They were moving on to John Denver and Country Road as I tossed some cash into their open guitar case.
These people did seem a little out of place in a vibrant market full of the young and entrepreneurial and their customers, but they were good and I was far from the only person enjoying them, making movies or tipping them. Although maybe only I could have shared the mike and sung along with them. We can dream.
And this does support Baugh’s Law of popular music, that:
— There are only so many great songs, so
— Most of the best bands are cover bands, and
— The music most likely to survive is music we can sing along or dance to.
That leaves aside the truly great, which demands our full attention, and wallpaper music, which adds to the ambience of dinner parties — and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Before we left Jing Jai we bought lunch from one of the stalls — a 30 Baht Pad Thai for me. We’ll see if that was a good idea in due course.
Then back to the car and on to Jeff’s parents for coffee.
