Homeward Bound

Unbelievable, but true. Our three months under the warm tropical sun of Chiang Mai is coming to an end already. Saturday morning we set out for an overnighter in Bangkok before embarking on the long trek back to Vancouver. Once we leave Bangkok, we have a four hour layover in Beijing, which makes our total travel time, airport to airport, just shy of twenty hours. I've loaded a bunch of movies on my laptop and phone, my Kindle is chock full of books to read and all my batteries are 100% charged. Today we'll go out and buy some airplane snacks to munch on while we're in the air and then we'll come home and pack our bags.

It's been a great three months and the weather has been typical except for about a 10 day period in January where we rarely saw the sun and had quite a but of rain. Very unseasonable. We've had some wonderful meals and made several restaurant discoveries, notably, the Reform Cafe at the Green Tiger House, Fuang Vegetarian and Aum near the Thai Pae Gate. Then there was the incredible Mixed Mushroom Burger at the Kharma Kitchen. Probably the best vegetarian burger I've ever eaten...ANYWHERE! Of course, my frequent go to place was Sangwiroon Vegetarian, where a plate of rice topped with three different curries or a nice bowl of veg Kao Soi would set me back only ฿35 (about $1.25CDN). On nights when I didn't know what to eat, I'd walk to a nearby street vendor and order a large plate of delicious and fresh made veg Pad Thai for ฿35.

And then there was the fruit and veggies. Muang Mai market was a bottomless cornucopia of bananas, mangoes, jackfruit, pineapple, watermelon, oranges, papaya and avocado. We would go there at least twice a week and walk home with our backpacks loaded with goodies. The mangoes this year improved as the months went by. At the end we were buying huge, perfectly ripe Atualfo mangoes for ฿40/kilo. We ate lots and lots of those! This year there was a lot more durian available, but our one purchase at ฿90/kilo was not a good experience. Our plan is to return during durian season one of these years and gorge ourselves on the King of Fruit for a month or so. But that'll be a story for another day.

Sunday mornings we would jump out of bed at 6:30 to make our way to the weekly farmers market at the JJ market located a fifteen minute walk from our apartment. It's an organic/pesticide free market where we could buy enough organic lettuce to last us the week for just under ฿100 (about $3.50 CDN). And believe me, we eat A LOT of lettuce! We also get juicing oranges for the week (3 kilos for ฿100), a wonderful sesame and soy vinaigrette for ฿100, bags of four large organic red or yellow peppers for ฿40, bags of 2 or 3 stalks of broccoli for ฿40 and softball size avocados for ฿80/kilo. Oh yeah, our big splurge there was these wonderful gluten and dairy free mushroom and tofu stuffed buns that cost ฿30 each! We'd usually buy four of them and eat them as our lunch every Sunday. At a dollar each they're dirt cheap by Canadian standards, but that's the cost of a whole meal at Sangwiroon!

We lived pretty well here, going for massages abut every ten days and having the odd Chiang beer from time to time. We joined a gym for the three month stay where we could work out and Brenda could do yoga so we could enjoy as much of the good food here without feeling guilty or gaining any weight. Personally, I've gained back a lot of the muscle I lost during last year's hospital visit, so I'm feeling pretty good about that.

It's going to be tough going home to the coolish Vancouver weather, but it'll be nice to see family and friends and to get back onto my bike. For a longer stay I'd consider buying one here, but for three months it just didn't make sense.

Brenda's kept track of our expenditures here and figured we've spent an average of about $1200.00 per month here. That includes accommodations, dining, groceries, gym memberships, clothing and other miscellaneous purchases, massages, transportation around town (we walked most of the time) and entertainment. Of course, we're still paying rent back home as well as the BC government insurance. travel insurance and our flights. Still, a pretty inexpensive way to spend three months away from the chill of a Canadian winter.

Of course, as great as this little excursion was, it was naturally made so much better by sharing it with my best friend, my partner, my lover and my one and only, Brenda. Life is so good with her by my side.

Going home we have the wonderful Vancouver spring weather just around the corner and lots of projects to tackle when we arrive. We have to find a contractor to renovate Brenda's Kitsilano condo so we can move in there this fall. Then we fly back East to downsize our belongings, move the remainder to Vancouver and sell our triplex in Ottawa. A joyous visit to Montreal is planned for June to attend my son Matthew's wedding and catch up with old friends. Then it's back to Ottawa to wrap up our business there, maybe re-unite with some old friends and band mates from the '70s at Bluesfest before going West again to our new home.

Pretty exciting times ahead!Leer más