Cotswolds : Day 3

Taking tea in Wooton.

Another night in a random bit of wood, and this time it actually rains - has been a bit dry in England over the last few weeks I gather.  Well, the tent copes - this is the one I bought for the Grand Canyon back in 2007, I replaced the poles that broke during the 2015 festival marathon.  There's life in it yet...  The route continues to be very pleasant, through hilltop cornfields with splendid views.  I walk down into Wooton-under-Edge, historic centre of the wool industry and now a charming little place - I check out some 17th century almshouses, then enjoy a pot of tea in a 16th century garden.  And then into the hills once more, am liking the Cotswold Way I must say, beautiful country this.  Lots of monuments too - on an edge overlooking the Severn I find an impressive memorial to John Tyndale, first to translate the bible into English and martyred for his trouble.  There's a spiral staircase inside which I duly climb, good view from up here.  Not much further to walk from here - honestly, taking seven days for this trail is not terribly strenuous.   And shockingly enough, I finish the walk at an actual campsite!  Ashen Plains it is called, I'm vaguely expecting it to resemble the gates of Mordor, but it seems nice enough.  And yes, there is a nearby pub...

Tyndale Monument.

Photos to go with this post can be found here

Cotswolds : Day 2

Rather pretty up here.

I make camp in a random bit of wood, not for the first time, but it works out fine.  I did try to find campsites, but mostly they were a few miles off route, and then either wouldn't answer their phone, or did and said 'no tents'.  Ho hum.  Will try in person at a couple of them.  An early start then, and nice walking, up into hills with fine views as far as Wales.  I pass Norman churches and Iron Age hill forts, massive stately homes and a charming newly built folly - intended as a home for barn owls apparently, all seems very English.  Sheep graze, the trail is in good condition - I meet a volunteer who has been whacking nettles, good work that man.  There are plenty of hikers up here, many of them American or German, well why not.  My start this morning featured a monument to civil war luminary Sir Breville Granville, and my day ends with another, this time to Lord General Somerset, a contemporary of Wellington it seems.  And then, shockingly enough, to a pub...

Lord Somerset Monument.

Photos to go with this post can be found here

Cotswolds : Day 1

Royal Crescent, Bath.

Back to walking then - has been a while, particularly in the UK, so finding myself back here in summer it has to be done.  Off to Bath then to walk the Cotswold Way, one hundred and twenty miles or so through the west country, should be fun.  Not too much fun getting there mind you, some sort of problem with the line means my train gets to Bath around forty-five minutes late, but never mind.

Bath is really very impressive, I walk past the Roman Baths and many stone built houses, and of course many tourists.  Then up into the hills, grass covered chalk it seems, sheep graze, it is nice, ah, I have missed this.  I pass golf courses, a racecourse, the site of the civil war battle of Lansdowne, and then it's not far to a pub at Upton Cheney.  I have missed the 'beer after a long walk' thing also.  There is indeed beer, and pizza with thick cut chorizo, all good.  And if I have largely failed to sort out anywhere to camp this week, well, whatever...

The Upton Inn.

Photos to go with this post can be found here

Chiang Mai : Retrospective

Silver working - well, probably aluminium actually - at the Silver Temple.

Seems I rather let the blogging from Thailand peter out a bit, and now I am back in the UK, I should really bring the story of my time in the Land of Smiles to some sort of conclusion.  I guess, after being in the same place for five months or so, it became a bit tricky to think of much new to say - I don't know if the internet needed any more of me complaining about how ridiculous the Thai language is, and while there were an awful lot of places to go and see in the area around Chiang Mai, by the end of my time there I was going back to locations I'd already seen and indeed written about here.

Company!

Indeed - for a week or so in June, my friend Chris visited from the UK, and so I spent the time trying to pack in the highlights of the region for him and generally act as a tour guide, which was fun, but again obviously stuff I'd seen before in the main.  We did get to Doi Inthanon, Chris hoping to see some birds, however this is the rainy season... actually generally speaking the rain hasn't been too bad, just the odd heavy shower.  But during our trip to Thailand's highest mountain it rains fairly solidly, which apparently leads the birds to stay out of sight.  Never mind, I do also take advantage of his presence to do a few things I wouldn't normally, such as an excellent evening cookery course, a night of 'Kantoke Dancing' which is good fun, each of the local hill tribes taking time to do their thing, and even the city's famous ladyboy cabaret - it is in fact quite tasteful, and you can see that the performers are having a good time.

Not a bad Panaeng, though I say so myself.

But anyway - pluses and minuses of my stay here.  Really, there are going to be a lot more pluses here, I already miss the place, it was just such a pleasant city and indeed country to live in.  Fantastic, cheap food, beautiful surroundings, friendly people and really I got to live quite a luxurious lifestyle on my meagre budget.  Probably the best thing about Chiang Mai was going to school, crazy though the language itself is.  All my teachers and fellow students were fun to spend time with and while I may have struggled with Thai, learning such a different language, or trying to, certainly gave me a new perspective on linguistics, and had me wondering why English has some features and Thai has others.

Minuses - well I guess a minor annoyance was the way I started getting regular fines from the traffic police for not having a Thai driving license - but this was actually sorted pretty easily, I didn't even need to do any sort of test, just show my English license.  But really the major downside of being here really is the language.  Seriously I was one of the best students at the school, but progress was agonisingly slow, and when study is the only 'productive' thing I'm doing this gets a bit depressing after a while.  The way that even after six months, I could try talking to Thai people and just get a blank look, was really a little bit sad.  A consequence there of course that it was really quite hard to have any sort of conversation with anybody, and while I am generally pretty self reliant I actually did start to miss talking to people - it was good that Chris came when he did.

So... the question is now, should I try going back and continuing to bang my head against learning Thai, or just give it up as a bad job?  There are other places to go after all.  Still, not going to worry about that just now, rather, let me get back to where this blog started, namely long walks in the UK.  And pubs.

The ladyboy cabaret.

Photos to go with this post can be found here

Chiang Mai : The Vowels of the Beast

With my 'Lanna Flag'.  I totally made it myself.

So - four months into my Chiang Mai adventure, and I have managed, just about, to not throw my hands in the air and run screaming away from the language learning.   It is, however, hard not to get a little bit disheartened at how slow progress is - seriously, we are still talking about noodles and shopping.  I've got a decent handle on reading now, the aforementioned vowels, which use fourteen different symbols, variously written above, below, before or after the first consonant (or consonants) of the syllable, are no longer a mystery to me, and I can more or less correctly pronounce a whole bunch of irregularly spelled words.  Sadly it becomes clear that given the lack of spacing, punctuation and capitalisation in Thai script, the chances are that if I see a series of syllables that I don't know written down, not only will I not know the meaning, but I won't even know how to speak the words - basically you just have to know.

Traditional dress.

And it seems, it is pretty much the same deal with what passes for grammar here.  I increasingly get the impression that Thai consists of a (very large) number of what I might call 'template phrases', which allow you to express a certain sort of thing, with a few spaces into which the 'nouns' or 'verbs' can be plugged in - again, my early guess that Thai doesn't really differentiate between nouns and verbs seems to be on the money.  Is there any consistent logic as to how these template phrases work?  Maybe, if so I've not really spotted it yet, again you just have to know.  Get the phrase wrong, and Thai people will not understand, even if every word you say is correctly pronounced - or worse, you'll say something very different to what you intended, word order is very important.  On the other side of the coin, if you encounter one of these phrases for the first time, then even if you manage to recognise every word, the initial impression is often of an incomprehensible word salad.  It does not help that every Thai word seems to have many meanings, with the more common words often having dozens.

I find myself asking the teachers at school questions along the lines of 'has any of your students ever learned Thai to the point at which local people can understand them?' - the answer being 'well... a couple of Chinese people maybe.'  Chinese, it seems, is grammatically very similar to Thai, although the vocabulary is quite distinct.  Well... studying remains a largely fun thing to do, and I continue to enjoy the culture class on Saturdays, they still manage to find a different thing for us to do every week, most recently various culturally relevant handicrafts - I have variously folded pandanus leaves to make decorous air fresheners, created a Chinese lantern from tissue paper, and cut up more paper to make a charming decoration for the Thai New Year celebration, Songkran.

Me and my funky moped.

Ah, Songkran.  I guess, if you do one thing in Thailand during your entire life, coming here for Songkran is probably that thing.  Falling in mid April, the very hottest part of the hot season, in the past this would have been primarily a religious festival, during which the people would visit the temple, make offerings, symbolically release birds or fish, and pour trickles of holy water onto the shoulders of Buddha statues or each other.  Well, all that still happens - indeed, I spend a fun afternoon watching a parade of floats, dancing, drumming and so forth, much of the procession representing the various local temples, and there is indeed much pouring of holy water onto shoulders.  Mostly though what goes on now is a massive water fight taking place over four or five days and encompassing the entire country...  I understand that many foreigners hide at home for the period, but I rather enjoy myself, I variously walk, cycle, and ride my moped around town, spraying water over locals and tourists alike, while getting soaked to the skin in turn, all good fun.  I don't have any photographs of the festivities though - maybe if I do this again I will get a waterproof camera!

A pleasant spot by the Ping.

Photos to go with this post can be found here

Chiang Mai : the 'Three Rs'

I don't think I was much of a burden to him.

Which stands of course for Reading, 'Riting and Riding Elephants!  All of which I am now able to do with more or less skill... honestly the elephant riding is the easiest of the three, and there are many options to do it around Chiang Mai, I'm not sure how many of the country's thousands of working pachyderms are here but it seems like a lot.  They seem happy enough to me for all the tales of cruelty you hear, though I guess you never know what goes on behind the scenes, I enjoy spending time with them anyway, if I'm going to do tourist things here - and I am - then this is perhaps my favourite.  Getting an elephant to myself for a bareback ride is a particular highlight, I manage to do some bathing with them too and even see a show, they are very talented I must say, playing football, the harmonica and even painting - though, looking at the photos later I rather suspect the trainer is putting in most of the creative thought.

The trainer is just... reassuring the elephant.

Mostly though I don't go in for the 'organised trip' sort of tourism, rather I just hop on my bike and head for some local attraction - often this means either a waterfall or garden, there being many examples of both nearby.  There seems to be a standard plan for the waterfalls, with a car park and then a footpath leading up along the river past various named levels, each with at least one fall and often a pool in which one can paddle or swim.  I think the level thing has some kind of religious symbolism... all very scenic anyway, and popular with the locals as well as tourists.  A favourite activity is to slide down the often quite high falls on your backside, what I believe is called canyoning by extreme sports fans... not dangerous at all I am sure, well, I give it a try once at least.

I slid down this.  Spanish dude included for scale.

As for the gardens, I have now found three, of the huge, landscaped, botanical variety in the neighbourhood.  Rajapruek to the south of Doi Suthep, and the Queen Sirikit Garden to the north, are both big enough that you can easily spend the entire day just walking about, or indeed both have a network of bus stops to help you get around.  The former's highlight is the array of gardens from around the world, whereas the latter excels on the botanical front - so many banana species - and also has a stunning canopy walkway.  Both have lots and lots of big greenhouses.  A few km along the main road from my condo is the Tweechol Botanic Garden, a little smaller but still huge, and a winding maze of topiary, lakes and canals, it also has an amusing zoo where you can feed massive animals such as camels and water buffalo.

Oh yeah, the reading and writing... hum.  A quick google for 'Thai Writing System' returns on the first page a video titled 'World's Most Complicated Writing System' - it maybe isn't that bad, but it sure isn't easy.  I've been working my way through learning it via self-study, whereas I see school has fully five books, that is five months of teaching, devoted to reading and writing.  I'd kind of assumed this was because written Thai has a somewhat different vocabulary to the 'street Thai' we've learned up 'til now, but while that may be true to an extent, I also think the writing system really is just that complex.

The Bhutan Garden at Rajapruek.

Seriously... there are some 44 consonants, including many apparent duplicates, for instance there are five 'K letters' and five 'T letters'.  This is partly because one way the writing system allows you to indicate what tone a syllable is pronounced in is via the choice of initial consonant.  Did you catch that 'one way'?  Yeah... in addition to this, Thai also has four tone marks.  Also a bunch of consonants are apparently only there because at some point the monks felt that the existing Thai alphabet was not able to properly reflect how some words are spelt in the original scripture, written in the ancient language Pali - so they added a bunch more letters.  And yes, the vowel system is even more complicated and arbitrary...

Banana terrace at Queen Sirikit Botanic Garden.

It must be said as well that now that I am able to read, slowly, a lot of the signs and adverts I see around town, the result is a little... disappointing.  Because so much of it is simply transliterated English - perhaps the most common word I see is ฟรี - that is, 'free'.  Looking at hotel or shop signs and hoping to learn the Thai word for 'place' or 'clinic', I am rewarded with 'pley' and 'kaliinik'.  I also can't help but laugh at how the Thais will always conscientiously transliterate a final consonant from English, even when they simply cannot say it - the reason here being that despite the ludicrous number of consonants in the language, there are actually only six acceptable consonant sounds at the end of a syllable.  So, often the final consonant will have a special 'silencer mark' written over it, such that, for instance, 'tent' becomes 'ten' in the Thai.  At other times, a consonant is used which would match the English if it was at the start of the syllable, but is pronounced quite differently at the end.  So 'cheese' becomes 'cheet' with a barely voiced T at the end.  All very odd and hard to get to grips with.

Still at the Queen Sirikit Garden, this will be the orchid house.

Photos to go with this post can be found here

Chiang Mai : Getting up to Speed

One of the many impressive floats at the flower festival.

Right then, I have now been here a little over six weeks - wow, time has flown by!  That will be the having fun I suppose, which I certainly have been, school is great, but still leaves me plenty of free time to just chill and make use of that massive pool, or get on my bike and explore the area.  There certainly is a lot to see around here, not just in the city itself but the surrounding country too, mountains, rivers and waterfalls of course, and indeed not a few temples.  I will definitely do a 'things to look at around Chiang Mai' post at some point.

There always seems to be something going on around here too - often many things at once in fact.  Just since the start of February we've had the wonderful flower festival, the Jai Thep music festival (a proper festival in a field with camping and even mud!), various celebrations of the Chinese New Year - it is the year of the doge, sorry dog now.  And barely a day goes by without one or other of the mall carparks near my condo being taken over by some sort of event, generally a mix of live music and open-air dining...

There was more than just the flowers.

So how is the language learning going?  Well - this is a very odd language from a Western perspective.  Many of the concepts we're used to are simply absent, there are no tenses, no cases, no declining of verbs at all, no gendered nouns, no adjectival agreement, no plurals even.  The same words are used for object and subject pronouns, or as possessives - not exactly articles, there are, again, no articles.  Even the idea of a distinction between verb, noun and adjective isn't really here... take the (very important) word 'sanuk', I can say 'Chiang Mai sanuk' - Chiang Mai is fun.  But also, 'pom sanuk tii Chiang Mai' - I have fun in Chiang Mai.  But that isn't to say there is no grammar at all... indeed in many ways the language is quite rigid, often a strict word order has to be adhered to, or there are rules along the lines of, you have to specify something, for instance, you cannot simply answer a question with 'it depends', but rather you must say 'it depends on '.

Jai Thep music festival.

I begin to get the feeling that it is a mistake to assume that because Thai lacks so many familiar grammatical elements, it must be simple - rather the complexity lies elsewhere.  One thing we've begun to touch on is the idea of 'classifiers' - as I say, Thai lacks plurals, but, if you are going to refer to a number of things, you can't simply say number - thing.  Rather the structure goes number - thing - classifier, for instance to say four chilli peppers I would say 'prik sii met' where 'met' is the classifier.  Apparently there are at least six hundred of these... not really looking forward to trying to remember lots of them, not least given they really don't add any useful information to what you are saying.  But by all accounts if you miss them out it is going to make it less likely that the locals will understand you...

Wat Haripunchai in Lamphun.

Given I'm getting around by bicycle, another thing I'm having to get to grips with is Thai traffic which is... interesting.  This country does not have a great reputation for driving, in fact statistically it ranks as one of the worst places in the world for road deaths, and honestly you can see why.  There are for sure plenty of people here who can drive, but there are also a lot who are really quite bad - indicators and indeed all lights are optional, people will drive on the wrong side of the road, and giving way is just not a thing - they do paint zebra crossings on the roads here, and you will sometimes see tourists standing folornly at the edge of one as cars stream by.  I guess a corollary of the 'no giving way' thing is the behaviour that I'm pretty confident is causing all those deaths, a very Thai thing which is to simply pull out into moving traffic without looking, the particular style in fact is to pull out, or away from the kerb, and then dawdle along for a few seconds doing, well, I am really not sure what.

At the Queen Chamadevi monument.

In fact though, on a bicycle, none of this is too bad.  Other people may not look before pulling out but I sure do, and I am also aware that they are going to do that... and there are plenty of upsides to riding here too.  The roads are generally very good, and everybody drives pretty damn slowly, in fact on my bike I am often one of the faster vehicles around, indeed I had to get used to cars sitting behind me, not in frustration as they would be back home, but simply because they are quite happy to drive at the same speed as me.  Road rage is just not a thing here at all, Thai culture massively frowns on both public display of emotion, particularly anger, and also criticising other people in any way.  So unlike back in England I don't get passing drivers yelling at me, and I just don't have to worry about some angry driver deciding to attack me for having the temerity to overtake him... bottom line then, I do feel pretty safe here.

Photos to go with this post can be found here