Chiang Mai: First Impressions
From homesick to curiosity to discovering a prejudice deep within me, my first 48 hours in Chiang Mai.
Bake Room Hostel was a bit of a dump. My room was on the fourth floor and there was no lift. I heaved my 20kg suitcase up the stairs and entered a spacious double room. It had a private shower attached but the toilet and sink were in the corridor and shared. This was not what I had expected. I opened my suitcase to find a formal document placed on top of my packing cubes. The text was partially in English and partially in Chinese. I didn’t understand what it said but felt creeped out that some stranger had opened my suitcase, gone through my personal things and left a note behind. I snapped a picture - I don’t know why but I felt like I should - and then threw the piece of paper in the bin.
That night, I felt homesick and ended up in tears in my bedroom. What was I doing with life? I had no stability, no grounding, no direction. I didn’t have a partner or my own home, both of which I craved deeply; I didn’t feel financially or professionally successful, I would always be at risk of depression and anxiety and would have to monitor myself constantly to keep on top of it, the NHS was crumbling and I couldn’t rely on it for help, our politicians were greedy, corrupt and hell bent on running the country to the ground so I couldn’t have a home in London and the world was going to end in a couple of decades because of climate change and if I’m still alive then, I’d be too old, feeble and helpless to assert myself against it. I’d been feeling this way for two years now and it didn’t look like these emotions would dissipate anytime soon. Well, my climate change anxiety seemed to have subsided but the others were still very present in my mind and body. A part of me thought if I ran away to another country, I’d be able to handle feeling lost and ungrounded better because it was more logical to feel them in a foreign place, not while living at home with my mum sleeping down the hallway and my siblings scattered across east London, only a few miles away.
I had decided I would use my savings for this trip and had enough to cover me for more than six months but the thought of spending money without earning made me uncomfortable. I planned on freelancing as a writer/editor while travelling but didn’t feel too confident about it. I had the urge to come back to London and live a cliche life of working a 9-5, renting an overpriced house with a stranger and driving a car that burned a hole in my bank account because that's what I was used to and there was comfort in familiarity, no matter how miserable. I couldn’t help but share some of these things with Ken. But our relationship was new and he didn’t know how old and deep-rooted my turmoil was. He tried to help by reassuring me but underneath, I felt worse because I had revealed my messy side to him and I didn’t want him to see all that.
Sarah and Sacha had been checking in on me regularly throughout the entire journey to Chiang Mai. I'm certain this helped to prevent me from sinking into a low mood while travelling - I felt loved and cared for. Sarah happened to check in on me just then and my vague message had her immediately video calling me. She was with Noor who I had met twice before and liked, and they had just finished with the Palestine protest.
'Babes, a couple of months ago, you asked for the strength and freedom to solo travel and now you have it, be grateful for your privileges,' said Sarah.
'You solo travelling is a win for all of us women,' added Noor.
‘Most people are not as privileged as you to be taking off six months to travel,’ continued Sarah. ‘A lot of us are restrained by time, money, jobs, family and other commitments. In the future, you will look back at yourself and be really proud of what you did.’
I knew they were both right. Whenever I looked back at my 27-year-old self who jumped in the deep end and went solo travelling around Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangkok and Singapore for three months, a rush of pride travelled through my body. I’m thankful I gave myself such a wonderful gift.
The next day, I woke up at 3pm (9am UK time) and wandered the streets of Chiang Mai, looking for a place to eat an extremely late breakfast. The city was busy but easy going. Traffic was constant but moved slow. Hints of nostalgia rose to the surface as I inhaled petrol, heat, humidity, drain, Thai food and durian. The stripy red and white cracked curbs reminded me of Malaysia. But the wide-eyed-and-bushy-tailed perspective I had back then was not there. Of course it wouldn’t be. I was six years older, had already lost my solo-travel-virginity and my mood was teetering on a precarious ledge of disenchantment at the city, feeling lost in my own life and being in a foreign place. I came to Chiang Mai with baggage I wish I had lost in transit.
I stumbled upon a cute café not too far from my hostel. It was quiet, the seats had cushions. I could see myself taking off my shoes, sitting cross-legged and sipping a tea while allowing my mind to wander, maybe catching up with a friend or looking up things on my phone. I knew this was a place I would return to and was aware that I was fortunate to find it on my first day.
By the time I left the café, sunset had arrived. I wandered the streets of Chiang Mai, exploring the night markets and came upon a temple where I managed to meditate for twenty minutes. It wasn’t real meditation, I actually allowed my mind to roam, mostly thinking of Ken and how our initial meet would be when I returned to London many months later. I opened my eyes, looked to my right and caught a woman in the middle of taking a portrait of me. I flashed a polite smile and turned away. I didn’t mind - it was just unusual for me to be on the other end of a lens. I wondered how many other people had snapped photos of me without my acknowledgement the way I had done so thousands of times.
It was midnight and I figured I should head back to my hostel. Some Korean guys were sitting around a rectangular table on the patio, drinking. A guy and a girl sat indoors with drinks and snacks spread out around them.
‘Do you know if they serve breakfast here?’ I asked the girl.
Her name was Ellie, 28 years old and from Myanmar but she had been living in Thailand since her mid-teens. She didn’t know anything about breakfast. Her friend Tai was half Burmese and half Chinese. He was solo-travelling and they were celebrating the end of the alcohol-selling ban. Thailand was a Bhuddist-majority country and there were several days throughout the year when the sale of alcohol was banned. The 29th of October was Wan Khao Phansa - a time for monks and nuns to remain in temples and meditate. Alcohol is considered a stimulant and monks and nuns are forbidden from drinking it. As a sign of respect, the government banned the sale of alcohol for 24 hours but recently, reversed the law.
It was good to sit and talk with them - my first real conversation since landing in Thailand. Ellie was pretty but lacked self-esteem. She wanted to get plastic surgery on her nose to make it narrower.
‘A person’s beauty isn’t just one physical feature,’ I said. ‘When you look at someone, your brain takes in their entire face and if you find them attractive, it’s a combination of all their features and more, including things like the way they speak, smile or laugh, the way they think or the stuff they say.’
‘You’re so confident and comfortable in yourself,’ she said.
That wasn’t quite accurate but I was aware of rejecting compliments and being self-deprecating which was harmful to my self-esteem. I wanted to be confident and comfortable in my skin and therefore I was going to accept this compliment, helping me to believe it over time. Also, I recently learned having low self-esteem didn’t mean it applied to every part of you. You could be confident in one area of yourself and feel ashamed of another part. And self-esteem could fluctuate daily, weekly, annually depending on a number of factors such as relationships, food or achievements.
The more Ellie spoke, the more I started realising how harmful the beauty standards in Asia were. It was important to be fair-skinned, have a small and sharp or oval face shape and to possess a petite body frame. This message was projected onto Asian women everywhere. I knew this already but it was always some vague information in my head, overshadowed by my huge fascination of Asia and my deep lust to run away from the UK and move there.
Two weeks later, while absorbing the breathtaking view of Pai Canyon, I would finally realise a source of my anxiety (stemming from feeling lost and ungrounded) came from believing the grass was greener on the other side and wanting an entrance into another Asian culture, whether it was Japanese, Chinese or Vietnamese. The grass was not greener on the other side. Listening to Ellie, a south-east Asian woman who was impacted heavily by the unrealistic beauty standards pushed on to her by society and media really highlighted the toxicity for me. It made me feel… angry? Sad? Millions of women were being robbed of living happy, healthy lives for what? Someone else’s standard of beauty. I didn’t know for sure where this standard came from but I suspected it was from Europe. At least in the west, there was a push back for natural and diverse beauty. This didn’t seem to exist in the east.
Ellie’s elbow bumped into a guitar that had been left on the sofa. Tai extended his arm and picked it up.
‘Can either of you guys play?’ I asked.
Tai could. And Ellie could sing. They sang a beautiful rendition of Adele’s Someone Like You and a few other unknown songs. It was a gorgeous moment. Probably my first special travel experience.
Tai spoke some English and told me he had been to Bangladesh recently. I was surprised at first but then thought, well of course there’s going to be travel between neighbouring Asian countries, just like Brits move to Portugal or Spain. Bangladesh shared a border with Myanmar.
I wondered what it was like for people from these countries to live there, to move around and live in a bordering country that shared a similar level of wealth as them. There was something I needed to tackle - a deep-rooted perspective I had had for a long time which I had just begun to realise. I saw people from developing countries in a particular way - as poor. I subconsciously associated them with struggle. Moving from one poor country to another, in search of a better life, leaving their family behind, their priority being to earn money so they could survive. They probably didn’t have good dental care or they may have health issues festering in them, left untreated because they didn’t have access to good health care. These thoughts were not at the forefront of my mind, instead they were within a second, perhaps a third layer of my psyche. Despite my curiosity and fascination of life in these countries, my perspective was singular and prejudiced and I needed to shed this.