“Even the occasional mosquito is strangely reassuring. And the purposeful ants on the windowsill.”
We landed in Chiang Rai at 9.00pm, and it was still hot. A car had been arranged for us, and we drove 20 minutes or so out into the country and up a winding road and driveway to our Airbnb. A modest man in brown labouring coveralls and sandals carried our bags up a dirt and gravel path to our little cabin.
After giving us a chance to compose ourselves, he led us along a path of concrete blocks, laid in pairs in the dirt, and up several steps to the dining room. I stepped carefully with my stick, spacey with tiredness, and was glad to take off my boots.
The dining room opened out over a spacious pond lit by lamplights reflected in the water, and floodlit Thai installations. By this stage we were regretting our decision not to eat all of Paris Baguette’s dry bread, but we didn’t want to put anyone to any bother so late at night, so we declined our hostess’s offer to cook us fried rice and settled instead for generous slices of a delicious chocolate cake, and headed off for showers and bed.
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It’s like we’ve entered a different world here. The dirt and gravel and concrete blocks. The buildings rough sawn and unpainted. No air conditioning, just breezes, high ceilings and fans. Ducks and chickens everywhere, fish by the dozen in the lake begging for tidbits. Even the occasional mosquito is strangely reassuring. And the purposeful ants on the windowsill.
I was going to say that things don’t get much more basic, but of course they do — you just have to look out across the rusty roofs from the top of the Lady Buddha to know that.
Still, as a traveler, a bed on a tiled floor in a room so small it’s hard to move around it — very little other furniture — and a bathroom where your privileged feet have trouble walking on the pebbles — that’s basic. Ironically Heather found this place after I complained that her original booking had no cushions. Well, this has only two, and here I am, on our verandah, writing, sitting on them both. Just being here.
Our little bungalow is sheltered and shaded by banyan trees and bamboo, and I can put my feet up on the railing of our little deck and take a photo of them and our view across the pond … lake … towards the ornamented landing on the far side, or at night the solar lights reflected in the water.
Our hostess Nee is an excellent cook. She’s baked bread and fruit pies and cinnamon rolls and cup cakes, whatever takes her fancy. She’s cooked us eggs for breakfast. One morning, without realising, I went outside the regulation choice of omelette, fried or scrambled. She made sure she understood what I wanted, then delivered perfect poached eggs without demur.
And she’s cooked us dinner almost every night, and shown us how she does Pad Thai and stir fries.
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They built this place themselves. They run it themselves. By themselves. They care about it. Everything is for real. Everything we sit on is homemade. So is everything we eat, including the jam on the homemade bread.
Nee is one of those smiley-faced women with wrinkly, engaging, spectacled eyes who you know just loves organising things and talking to people. We talk about Thai food, and Thailand. She’s arranged massages for Heather, and drivers, and she recommended a wonderful little Khaosoi restaurant in town.
We noticed her wedding album on a shelf, and there were more photos on the dining room wall. The wedding was a big elaborate event, with the groom in gleaming white, the bride too, with a burgundy and gold sarong over her dress and flowers in her hair. Wedding albums are our business. Ours are beautiful and high end. This was a big ring bound affair with a handmade cover and ring-bound plastic slip-in pages, full of pictures of celebration and pride. I snapped a charming shot of the bride and groom ceremonially cleansing their hands together.
Back then he worked at the hospital — he was pictured on the wall snappily dressed in a white uniform with a line of women in navy dress. Nee did something in secretarial and admin. They met about ten years ago, married three years later and dropped it all to build this place on family land.
It transpired that Nee’s husband Oi was the modest man in brown labouring garb who’d carried our bags silently up to our cabin.
Oi dressed in those working clothes every day. He was a wry, engaging, funny man with demonstrative gestures, and a rubbery face and smile that were halfway to Marcel Marceau. You’d be doing well to get two words out of him, and I don’t think we ever did. But knowing that he’d built the place, and cared for and maintained it by himself, said it all. This was Nee and Oi’s dream, and their livelihood, and it was great to share in it.
I’m writing this on our last night. I’ve just been sitting on a bench beside the water with the lights, the frogs and the sunset for company, taking photos.
I saw Oi padding silently toward me on his way round the lake. He squeezed my bare knee with both hands, gave me a silent, rubbery smile and walked on.
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We’ve been delivered by airlines and airports through a fairly unconvincing simulacrum of good taste and good service back to the real world — this little place on the rural edge of Chiang Rai. I hope they enjoyed our company because I know we enjoyed theirs.