The urban landscape changes within an hour to bucolic hills of brilliant, almost chartreuse, green, lambs dotting the mounds in a pattern not unlike my favorite dotted-swiss dress of childhood. Things are looking up.
IT is time for our relaxing first night as campers in the renowned New Zealand car parks. The campground has all the amenities Rudy has read about—electricity, hot water, showers, fully equipped communal kitchen, recreation room, and snack bar. All closed. We are totally alone. Only two tall street lamps give hints of light. It may be July but it is winter in New Zealand and, although we have read of their mild seasons, it could be that New Zealanders know better.
I never leave home without a flashlight, emergency water, and protein bars, and that is good. We lock the camper door over and over, make the bed, don wool hats, and add two more layers of sweaters before snuggling in for a lonely, cold night. Even Rudy admits our “Meet the People in Their Campgrounds” itinerary may be in jeopardy. Time will tell.
Time does tell. Nine out of ten accommodations repeat the first night’s amenities and solitude, but we learn to ensure that an electrical source is available and that we can take off our wool hats at breakfast. One out of ten accommodations is at least half open if you look at the world as Rudy does, or half shuttered if you see things as I do.
One of these one-in-ten facilities is the grassy backyard of an elderly woman. It is late, dark, and no time to argue about the description she has entered in the Tourist Bureau registry. We have learned by now not to count on a shower, but we do rely on at least one light standard and an electrical plug. Not here.
In another one-in-ten open facility, we encounter a camp manager, taxi and tour driver, postal officer, and wildlife expert. All the same gentleman. He wears special embroidered caps for each role and hands us a variety of his neatly printed business cards.
Wearing his “Preserve New Zealand” cap as we check in, he asks, “Have you ever heard the nocturnal calls of the kiwi?”
“I don’t believe we have,” I say, making a fatal faux pas.
The next morning Rudy comes back happily from the showers, his merry whistle slowing when he opens the camper door and finds me in my pajamas, boiling water in the microwave while the wildlife expert sits on the only chair, playing a tape recorder. Sounds of the nocturnal kiwi.
To his credit, Rudy is more enchanted than appalled.
I explain later. “He knocked once on the door and walked right in, asking if he had missed morning tea and had I missed the night calls. You have to admit he’s friendly, even charming.”
“I do.”
The gods are with us until they are not. We tour the two islands, relishing clear bright skies in the midst of their winter, checking off each must-see attraction. Even the ferry crossing between islands is calm, pleasant. But one day we drive too far as we head for the campground of the Franz Joseph glacier. Duke complains for the last of the four-hundred-kilometer route, groaning as if he knows something we do not. What we do not know is that the skies are about to open. I have never seen—or felt—so much rain come down in such a short time. I step from the truck cab and someone pours a bucket of cold water over my head. Or at least it seems that way. In the time it takes me to climb back in the cab, a deep mud hole emerges and claims my right foot.
Back in Duke, I peer out and see a neon “Welcome” sign for a lodge next door. “Victory—a hotel,” I yell to Rudy, who has disappeared.
His voice comes from afar. “I can’t find any power-point outlet,” he shouts. “And the lavs are all locked up.”
“There’s a hotel next door.”
“A hotel? Why would we need one of those? We just need a manager to turn on the power.”
It does not take long to conclude that the manager is a sane man, home by his fireplace. Or perhaps he is at the hotel. “We can go find him,” I say.
The hotel clerk looks at us with a mix of sympathy and amusement. The man wants power turned on in a flooded campground; the wife wants a deluxe room with bathtub. “Room 115,” she says. “It will be perfect for you.”
In the hotel restaurant, we find a table next to the fireplace for our first dinner out in weeks. I try to forget what we look like in camper clothes. Four bubbly baths later, two for each of us, we sleep in silky splendor. I have forgotten our mission here, but Rudy cannot forget the unseen glaciers. A weather report on television forecasts gloomy skies for four days, gloomy enough to obscure any mountain or glacier, gloomy enough to depress even my mate.
“Think of how far we’ve come to see these glaciers and now they’re hidden,” he says.
But when we wake the next morning and pull open the drapes, there it is, bathed in sunlight and snow, a glacier, right outside the window of Room 115.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING. AT HOME, IN THE WEEKS before we leave for Thailand, our roof leaks, our heater fails, and two appliances groan in the throes of sudden death. Rudy, always a thrifty—indeed cheap—tourist is in budgetary overdrive even before we leave our driveway. His speech is rapid, anxious.
“We need to cut corners: cheap hotels, picnics in our room, local buses, walking . . . a lot of walking.”
Silently asking myself how this would be different from any other trip we have taken in the last fifteen years, I try to pacify him. “Sure. You just keep an eye open for bargains.”
What was I thinking?
As we land in the early morning at Chiang Mai airport in mountainous northern Thailand, a throng of drivers stands ready to whisk tourists to their hotels. They hold signs, “Cheap ride,” “Hotel 70 baht,” calling out prices that decline in moments, stowing luggage in car trunks before visitors can reconsider. The airport lobby empties as our fellow travelers disappear, each in a small, shiny yellow car. Dragging our luggage down the block, we find an aged brown bus, packed with uniformed airport workers apparently heading home to their neighborhoods. They nod and smile, making room for us and our suitcases on the wooden benches.
“We save twenty baht, and we get to see the whole town too,” Rudy enthuses during the two-hour bus ride.
Math was never Rudy’s best subject; this is not the time to tell him a baht is roughly four cents.
Chiang Mai is one of those places that seduce you gradually. Our first impression is that the air is polluted, the streets congested with colectivos and endless streams of motorized rickshaws.
“I thought you read that this is Thailand’s artistic center,” Rudy says.
But he is the first to convert. While I unpack, he finds street merchants setting up the night market. He is in heaven. There are five-dollar silk robes, ten-dollar fishing vests, bargain jeans and cotton shirts, craft booths everywhere.
He also finds the Whole Earth Restaurant, upstairs above the transcendental meditation center.
“The place is an oasis. Wait until you meet the little shoe boy.”
It is true. The child, perhaps six or seven years old, removes our sandals, guards them through our meal, knows which are ours, pulls them on our feet.
No, he does not take a tip. “I help,” he says.
Rudy has another reason to visit the night market each evening: we watch native diners and see that the little boy can be thanked in cookies.
IT is one thing to find a cheap bus ride. It is an entirely different thing to find a cheap elephant ride. After a deceptively relaxing day spent exploring handicraft studios and orchid farms, and visiting enormous but gentle-looking elephants, Rudy spies a sign advertising “Special 50% last elephant ride.” We have seen the smiling tourists dismounting from Raj-style baskets atop placid elephants in the circus-like ring, having their pictures taken hugging the animal and the pleasant handler, the mahout. This touches Rudy, and some sort of childhood dream à la Kipling resurfaces. Besides, there is a fifty percent discount for the last ride of the day. As well there should be.
We learn too late that the last ride of the day is not another tour of the level, circular path,
but a return of the tired, hungry elephant to his food and bed at the bottom of a long, steep, wooded cliff. By the time we understand this, it is too late: the four-ton animal has knelt down and we have awkwardly climbed into the royal basket atop him. After he rises slowly and reaches full height, I realize I am nine or ten feet off the ground and there is no seat belt, no restraint, no way to keep from plunging out of the basket. When I protest my seating arrangement, the handlers gesture to the elephant’s head. Would the lady like to sit there? I change my cry to “I want off. Now,” but it is too late.
Closing up the tourist area for the night, the manager gestures to a slim young mahout to accompany us “down.” I have taught adolescents and know the signs of a bored, diffident teenager. This one is classic: stuffing a pack of cigarettes in a back pocket, he slouches toward us, dismissing the manager with what must be the Thai equivalent of “yeah, yeah, I got this.” Our continued pleas to dismount go unheard as the animal begins his downward trek. Until now, Rudy has been happily taking pictures of our new ride, but at this moment, with the elephant moving out of the ring and heading for the edge of the jungle, Rudy stows the camera and locks arms with me, our white knuckles grasping the edges of the basket. His grip is hard; I rarely feel fear in Rudy, but today is one of those days.
There is a visible trail, presumably worn by elephants moving between the performance arena and the camp far below, but our elephant knows a more interesting route. His choice takes nearly two very long hours, featuring forty- and fifty-degree angles, tasty tree limbs at our eye level, cavernous mud holes, and a fast-running stream. Periodically the mahout takes a break, wandering off for toileting, bathing, or smoking, leaving us alone and out of sight atop the massive animal, who enjoys a little free wandering time of his own. With no resistant teenager to plead with or cry to, I have time for a little planning.
“I think our wills are in order, don’t you? How about hospitals? Does Chiang Mai have its own or do we fly to Bangkok? That could be bad too. What kind of airplanes do they have?”
Rudy has a suggestion. “Why don’t you do those deep breaths you do when you get nervous?”
“Nervous does not begin to describe this.”
We agree that if we survive we will lead better lives.
Rudy shows unusual insight. “I don’t suppose we should be glad we got the discount.”
At last the land levels out and we spot the elephant camp. So does our elephant. It is as if the dinner bell has sounded: his ears rise and he picks up speed, leaving the mahout behind, and in record time, lumbering past competing elephants, takes us directly to the food troughs.
A half dozen other mahouts encircle us, coaxing the elephant to kneel, bribing it with feed, and finally, helping us dismount onto stepladders. One of the guides knows a bit of English. “Elephant ride tomorrow,” he smiles, pointing up the hill.
We carry remnants of the elephant ride with us this week, arms and shoulders stiff from clinging to the basket, leg muscles sore from steadying our bodies, minds tired from graphic memories. Typically, when I have had a trying experience, I allow plenty of time to sit alone and suck my thumb, replaying the event over and over until I tire of it. Rudy, as we have noted, is different.
“Vacation time is running out,” he says. “We need to see Chiang Rai, so we’ll just have to postpone feeling bad until we get home. I’ll go back to the temple—maybe free another bird.”
ONE week earlier, on the day we had first arrived in Thailand, Rudy followed the advice of a monk he met at a small temple. He purchased a bird in a metal cage, made a wish, and set it free. Devout Buddhists free birds on their birthdays to make merit, or, in illness, to ask for prolonged life. The monk, however, had assured Rudy that other, less noble wishes are granted daily. As the tiny bird flew away, Rudy was rightfully certain that he would at night market that evening find the fishing vest of his dreams, one with at least ten pockets. The next morning, dressed in his new vest, Rudy discovered his camera was broken. Back to the temple. Another grateful bird. Camera repaired.
Today he is confident. “I’ll ask the Buddha for a safe trip to Chiang Rai.”
It is good that he freed the bird and petitioned our longer lives; I shudder to think of what our tour would have been like if the little bird had not been involved. As it is, my feeling-sorry-for-myself ritual distracts me, and Rudy, left on his own, finds a bargain-rate driver and tour guide for the four-hour drive north. The pair are grandchild and grandparent—or more likely great-grandparent—she about fifteen, he probably eighty. The age of the car is somewhere in between, measured by the tired springs of the backseat. Our driver is hard of hearing and sleepy; our adolescent guide sits up front, poised to yell into his right ear and/or steady the wheel during drowsy periods. Neither speaks more than a few words of English.
Closing my eyes as the old car speeds to Chiang Rai, I know I have done it again: I have not left Rudy’s bargain tour in time to save myself. Now on this deserted road, as in the jungle, there is no easy escape, no small roadside business with a phone booth, no police to rescue tourists realizing too late that theirs is not the luxury package. Even Rudy pales as the driver weaves between the two lanes and their deep potholes, tolerating no one in his way.
We stop at villages not named as models in Fodor’s guide. Each is distinct and in each we are the only outsiders, gaining admission by a single coin offered by our teen guide. In normal times, I would be afraid to be alone in these areas, but relief at being out of the car outweighs fear of being kidnapped. In a Karen tribe settlement on flat, open land, old men sleep in dirt-floored opium huts while women cook game over open fire, weave garments, and care for children. The young men, our guide explains, have left to find jobs, usually as mahouts in elephant camps.
Other villages cling to steep hills covered with thick vegetation, palm and teak trees, ferns and flowers. The beloved Thai king himself sponsors a floral industry here as an alternative to opium trade. In the Aka tribal area, we pass through a gate to purify our spirits as strangers before the women and children swarm about us, don colorful head-dresses, take us by the hand to see their huts, sing and dance. The Yao tribe is a contrast: their village more sophisticated, quiet and orderly. Noted for linguistic skills, they speak several dialects and act as translators between tribes. There is no dancing or singing for tourists here; instead, clusters of women and children gather to embroider and speak quietly together, occasionally pausing to nod shyly at us.
At last the car tour is over, leaving us at a simple Rudy’s-pick hotel. On our own again, tuk-tuks and small longboats take us through the Golden Triangle where Laotian and Burmese borders meet Thailand. The Opium Museum displays pictures of drug dens, labeling them “historical photos.” The King’s sister is in town to open an extravagant, traditionally designed resort. Cannons fire and hundreds of balloons fly in tribute. We are walking toward the public entrance to join the luncheon line when we realize that we are the only pair in shabby jeans and tops, not brilliant silk fabrics. The contrast between the huts we have seen in the villages and the elegant new hotel startles us, turning us back to find a street vendor who has lunch ready, and no dress code.
SHORTLY before we had left home for this trip, a friend told Rudy about Ko Samui. “You can’t miss it,” he said, “it is the loveliest island in all of Asia.” Flying in at dark in the harsh rain, we see hints of that loveliness at the small open-air airport, with its thatched pergola roofs, seats carved from precious woods, airport hostesses in bright embroidered gowns. Riding in the old bus to the remote hotel Rudy has reserved, it becomes harder to see the beauty through the rain. And then there is the hotel, which seems to be a bar—a very local smoke-filled bar—not commonly found in resorts anywhere in the world. Thai patrons, all male, are having a wonderful time, laughing, singing, slapping each other on the back as people do who have been together a long time at a bar. They are welcoming, raising bottles of native beer in honor of the two Americans who stumble into their revelry
.
This is not promising, but it is late and dark and stormy. We look around for a registration desk. No sign. We look around for someone who seems to work here. No sign. At last an older woman comes from behind a curtain at the bar and looks at us, puzzled. She explains the situation fully, in Thai. A customer knows just enough English to tell us that someday there will be a hotel here. They will build one. And the tourist information Rudy saw about the hotel?
“Yes, is hotel. Coming.”
Sensing that this is no time for an argument, either with the men or with me, Rudy takes the fall. “Maybe I read the ad wrong. I’m not great with details.”
Unlike the hotel, the rainstorm is here now, getting louder and interrupting the joy at the bar. The woman confers with her patrons and yes, there is a simple solution: we will sleep in her bed. She pulls the bar curtain back and— voilà!—a small couch made into a twin bed and topped with a light velvet cover. Before we can demur, customers are cheering, offering us bottles of beer for the next toast, getting louder and louder. It is clear they will be here a long, long time tonight.
Somehow Rudy conveys a complex message: we are grateful to the woman, we cannot take her bed from her, and we must get to town. The patrons confer, then select one thin, rather quiet young man, who will take us in his new truck to find a hotel. One that is here now. We three squash into the cab of the older-model Ford, driving over muddy roads until we come to a resort area. The first sign I see announces Ko Samui’s “finest new luxury international hotel.”
Rudy's Rules for Travel Page 10