Sooooo many tentacles...

Another reader asked, “Tentacles next?”

You got it!

This story is actually from waaaaay back in January.  It’s appropriate, though, because this is the story of Chiang Mai’s Chinese New Year celebrations, and right now, there happens to be another festival going on – the Inthakin festival, which is in honour of the city’s 200-year-old sacred pillar.  It takes place over seven days at Wat Chedi Luang in the old city, and I was just planning to drive down there tonight to check it out, when two things hit at once:

a)      Rain!, and

b)      The realisation that Sunday night is Walking Street Market night, and the market is on the same road as Wat Chedi Luang, making driving insane and parking pretty much impossible.

So instead, I decided to get dinner locally.  I pulled on my astonishingly crappy 29-baht-in-your-choice-of-embarrassing-pastel-colours poncho from 7-11, parked Arcee, and – after lamenting the fact that most of the stalls on my street close really early on a Sunday – found myself stumbling into a sukiyaki place that I pass every day on my way to work.

I’d never tried Thai sukiyaki before.  It’s kind of like Chinese hotpot (and actually pretty different from Japanese sukiyaki, which has more in common with Thai barbecue, or mookata):  with Thai sukiyaki, you’re given a pot of broth over an open flame, and a whole array of raw meat and vegetables to play with.  I got some seafood, bacon, and (surprisingly good) beef, and by the end of the meal, the last of the soup tasted amazing with all the different juices mixed together.  The woman who ran the restaurant was terribly nice, as well, talking me through the menu in a mix of Thai and English, and bringing things out of the kitchen to show me when we couldn’t arrive at a decent translation together.  Awesome owner + spicy soup + an absolute mandate to play with your food in a leisurely way while watching the rain outside = perfect place for a wet evening. :)

At any rate, weather permitting, I’m going to go check out Inthakin tomorrow night instead, but let me tell you about Chinese New Year.

I’d heard a lot about Chiang Mai’s Chinese New Year celebrations, which take place in the city’s miniscule Chinatown, squeezed into the small maze of streets between the old city and Warrorot day market on the Ping River.  (It’s not really an advertised or defined “Chinatown” in the sense that many Western cities have one.  It’s a majority-Chinese neighbourhood, with a Chinese temple, and many of the actual shops are Chinese-run – but the people running the stalls at Warrorot and the neighbouring Night Bazaar are generally Thais and/or selling Thai crafts, which means it doesn’t feel very different from the rest of the city.  Although there is a big red gate.)

For two days, though, the entire neighbourhood was transformed:  all the shops were decked out in gleaming red lanterns, and a huge red-draped stage dominated Warrorot market, with smaller stages set up down the market’s side streets.  

On the evening I went, the crowd in Warrorot itself was so dense that it was almost impossible to move, but once I was able to break away, it was a lot of fun to wander through the smaller streets behind the market.

I don't know why I like this photo so much; I think it just captures the feeling of this neighbourhood really well.  That, and the Thai students entering warp speed in the foreground. :)

The usually sedate Chinese temple was lit up and full of worshippers, in a way that, for some reason, reminded me of a church during the Christmas Vigil:

(This kid playing with his new present probably cemented that impression.)

There was traditional Chinese music on the main stage, as well as piped in over speakers between performances, while the small stages hosted a variety of other performances.  I ended up catching part of a beauty pageant, with contestants in traditional dress (ranging from little girls up through young teenagers) doing classical dance numbers or parading around with fans, while gorgeous twentysomethings in slightly skimpier versions of traditional costumes interviewed them.  It was… somewhere between charming and indefinably skeezy, for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on.  Something about the way the contestants were presented as perfect, demure-yet-romanticised miniature women rather than girls, although I suppose that’s true of any child pageant.

For the occasion, the usual stalls in Warrorot market were replaced by stalls with red awnings and gold decorations, selling all kinds of food…

… all kinds of Thai food, that is.

Yeah, that came as kind of a surprise to me, too.  I know there’s a lot of mutual influence among different Asian cuisines, but there’s, “Oh, there are some Chinese dishes that are similar to Thai dishes,” and then there’s, “Dude, this is a plate of raad naa.  Not only that, it’s a plate of the same raad naa that you serve here every day, only this time you’re charging, like, 60 baht for it instead of 30 because you stuck some red streamers on your stall.”  There was even a stall dedicated to the many wonderful variations on the classic Northern Thai sausage.

None of this, obviously, stopped me from eating my own weight in dumplings.  Hey, it’s still a street fair, and certain things are expected. :)

My favourite food stall, though, was this one:

Grilled squid is a bit rarer than most kinds of street food (in Chiang Mai, at least – that’s one of the things I loved about being down in Bang Saen for my in-country training).  It’s also a little more expensive, but totally worth it.  I paid 120 baht for a whole squid, and proudly told the stallholder (a sceptical-looking young guy) that I wanted the hottest sauce he had.

What I hadn’t really bargained on is that 120 baht gets you a LOT of squid.  A huge bag of these giant, glorious chunks of squid, swimming in scorching green chilli sauce, that you somehow have to spear and eat with a big toothpick.  I spent the next half hour leaning casually against a building and smiling at passersby while I tried to discreetly choke down these enormous tentacles. :)

What I remember most vividly about that night, though, is feeling the first pang of real, uncomplicated homesickness for London as I crossed the bridge over the Ping on my way back home.  The lights reflecting in the water made me think of the view from Hungerford Bridge, and I suddenly missed the city that’s been my home for longer than any other.