Expat Home-School Meet Up. Food in Chiang Mai.
Well, as this is the very first blog on Four Go East, I’m just going to launch straight in:
“…especially when your money ends up going to ‘other places’, if you know what I mean. Don’t always know who I can say that in front of, but…”
Huay Kaew Waterfall
R has found and been in touch with several World School groups on social media, and today was our second meet up since being in Chiang Mai, albeit with a new group, specifically a local home-schooling group made up of expats. It was around a 40-min ride from the place we’re staying, so we took advantage of one of the many local ‘Red Buses’, which costs as standard 30 Thai Baht (฿30) per person - around 70p. The difference between these and regular taxis or Tuk-Tuks are that you can ride with various groups of people if it’s going in the same direction, thus making it nearer a bus than taxi. As we are a family of four it tends not to make too much of a difference, but it’s nice to experience. Our driver, Mr Narin, quoted a very reasonable ฿1000 (£23 approx.), to take us there, wait around for as long as we needed, and bring us back making any stops en route. As we had been warned to pay around 50% more than this we jumped at it!
The meet up was at Yuu Baan Studio; a cafe and play area that features a Koi carp pond and small paddling pool with watermill motif and slate water slide. Nice enough, but you get the feeling the place was built and marketed with the Western traveller/tourist in mind, however it lacks any Wi-fi, which we found odd.
It varies, but usually at meet-ups families arrive sporadically, introduce themselves and socialise. Perhaps a touch self-consciously at the beginning, but - as most home/world-schoolers claim to have a similar mindset and way of thinking - it’s not long before travel tales are swapped, advice asked for and given, links from home are explored or coincidences when it comes to areas already travelled. To us, this felt a little different. We arrived, ordered our drinks at the bar, made our way outside to the group and said ‘hi’. A few ‘hellos’ back, but nothing more. No problem - as said, people (including us) can take a while to warm up; personally nothing would horrify me more than an over-extrovert bounding over, bugling “HEY GUYS!! GREAT TO HAVE YOU!! COME AND TELL US ALL ABOUT YOURSELVES!!”, at the top of their lungs. I know, I’m British.
We had our drinks, ordered some food for E & e. A mum introduced herself and sat down to chat.. She described herself, when asked where she hailed from, as a ‘proud Israeli’. Brrrrrr….. Giving the benefit of the doubt is tricky in this situation, as to do that presumes a colossal amount of social ignorance. It’s basically that, or Zionism. Ironically, this was on the day when the latest ceasefire came into effect, which gives Palestinians a tiny glimmer of hope against the brutal and obnoxiously public genocide they have been suffering.
Things got weirder, albeit over the course of an hour or so and in a very sedate, everyone-sitting-outside-enjoying-drinks-and-food kind-of way. An Aussie family arrived, and we greeted them warmly. Once they got settled we chatted to them for a while. The dad worked back in Oz as a miner, having recently cut his hours so he could travel most of the time, only going back one week every month to work. We engaged in the usual adulting-talk of moaning about the cost of living; rent, food, bills. It was then that he, in one sentence, showed his true colours: “…especially when your money ends up going to ‘other places’, if you know what I mean. Don’t always know who I can say that in front of, but…”
I’ll be honest, I didn’t catch it at first; initially I thought he was talking about savings, and how there’s always something that prevents this. But then a moment later, his true meaning thumped in my head. No, he’s talking about foreigners. Foreign-aid, maybe. Or money set aside for immigration services. Whatever, the type of laze bigotry and ‘I wouldn’t describe myself as right-wing, but here’s some right-wing comments anyway’ narrative that has sadly and alarmingly become so mainstream and acceptable. What made it doubly odd (for myself, at least - R is a lot wiser to picking up signs of this and being generally wary) is, as mentioned, the world-schooling/home-schooling community could be described as (again, to myself) alternative, almost borderline hippy. Having lived close to Totnes in our time in Devon, a town that R frequented a lot, the alternative scene was one we knew well, and it certainly seems to share strands of its DNA in the world schooling community. So it stood out just as much as a beer-bellied England shirt-wearing skinhead at a Ravi Shankar concert.
We won’t be keeping in touch. I’m not going to get on my soapbox and plough a load more words about this, mainly because I want to get on talking about Thai street food (which is a lot more appetising than right-wing, anti-immigrant rhetoric), but the lack of self-awareness from this white Australian was beyond ridiculous.
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Thai people don’t cook. That may be something of an exaggeration, but that’s what we’ve heard from several locals. Thai street food is so affordable, that most people just eat out rather than buy ingredients and prepare meals every evening. It’s integral to Thai culture, as well as being fast and flavourful. So far we have visited many food markets both night and day, and sampled a wide range of street food: beef skewers, seafood, dumplings, noodles, rice, Tom yum, pad Thai, Panang curry, as well as lychee juice, coconut and fresh fruit smoothies. Now, none of this has been totally new to us coming from the UK and being well-travelled (we were in Bangkok just over a year ago), however experiencing it fresh from the vendors, amongst the locals (and other visitors), sitting at wobbly plastic tables whilst the Chiang Mai nightlife buzzes and rushes around us, in a whirling typhoon of lights and noise, is intoxicating. I’ll be honest, writing this is making me hungry, so I may cut this short. One can eat incredibly well for only a few hundred baht a day (less than £7). Most main meals cost between ฿60-฿120 depending on if you are in a very local area or more of a tourist-catering place. As a family of four (E & e easily eat about as much as us), it’s not quite as pleasingly cheap, and although we’re not penny-pinching, what we tend to find is that we stick fairly well to our daily budget until mid-afternoon/early evening, when somehow or other in only an hour or two we reliably blow over our target by failing to resist (yet again) the street food. One other thing to note is the dominance that pork has over every other meat. As non-pork eaters (we’re not religious, just for health reasons), we have to constantly check and double-check that when it says ‘chicken’ or ‘beef’, it’s just chicken or beef, and there aren’t any porky-surprises in-store. Last year, in Bangkok, we visited a place that even supplied pork in the egg fried rice…
Anyway, I’m going to stop going on about the food. For now. I’m sure I’ll revisit it in later blogs.
Street food in action
Take yer pick!
An example of street-food: chicken gyoza