We had a very good night’s sleep and now we are ready to hit the ground running. Or at least walking, as the case may be. After waking up with coffee on the balcony, we decide we need more, so we head to the closest cafe, Wako Bake, a mere 3 minute walk away, for cappuccino. Can’t break with a traveling tradition! There is a cute little courtyard out front complete with rocks and a fountain where we wake up even more with a lovely hot drink.

Then we are off to the grocery store for, what else, groceries. Originally we had planned to just walk over to the Rimping we normally visited when staying off Changklan road, but since this is all a new adventure, we figured we might as well explore different areas, choosing instead to walk over to the grocery store near the airport. It’s about the same distance and gives us a chance to walk in a totally different area. Which is nice because a) we an walk through the Chiang Mai Gate market in full swing and get the feel for it, which let me tell you, will definitely become our go to market. It isn’t as big and spread out as Warorot, but it has everything we could ever possibly need only a 5 minute walk away, and B) the walk lets us scope out the area for the Saturday walking street where we’ve not been for at least 10 years.

Arriving at the grocery store, it is about the same as our “normal” one, maybe a little smaller, but they have all that we need. Fruit – yay! Jackfruit even here! Apples – salad fixings, paper towels, bread – traditional sandwich bread is hard to come by here for some reason – and other miscellaneous items to keep us stocked for the next couple of days. Everything packed in our bags, we reverse course back to the house, stopping to peruse a restaurant menu that is super cheap and looks really good. It is a little too early to eat yet, so we file it away for our next grocery run when I’ll need wine which we won’t be able to purchase until after until 11am, which will be perfect timing for a lunch here. Continuing on, we spy a 20 baht store. What? Really? That’s $0.58 cents USD! Ok, they had 20, 30 and 100 baht items, and as it turns out 15 baht items, but still. You should have seen this place – it was enormous with widest variety of merchandise. Everything from plastic tables and stools to shoes to housewares to decorations to hardware. It was a Stevens dream! We grabbed a back up phone charging wire, another pack of 10 masks and a papaya salad peeler/cutter because ours at home is old and keeps breaking. What a find! We’re now thinking about what else we might possibly need for our next trip down to that side of town!

Stashing our groceries, we head back out for lunch at a cute little place we looked at yesterday called Always Thai. Ramshackle, open air, totally atmospheric, cute as hell; small kitchen – no wine pooh – but excellent Pad Thai and Fried Mama Noodles. We had the place to ourselves, enjoying good music on the speakers and an excellent meal all around – no wine notwithstanding, I shared the beer!

Now it is time to wander again. We choose to walk back over to Changklan to see what the situation is with the food market we used to enjoy outside of Outlaws and also the state of the Ansuran Night Market where we used to spend an enormous amount of time. On the way, not much has changed. The same stuffed animal/party store is still on the corner, most of the other stores are still there as well, but, what is new is…another 20 baht store. And this one is a true 20 baht store – everything is 20 baht. Including clothes. And jackets – real heavy jackets! It is crazy. Needless to say, we are enthralled and spend a ton of time rummaging around through this place. Ed decides he must have a shirt once he sees the display of Korean military and boy scout shirts displayed on racks. A search ensues and he ends up with this awesome Korean Autonomous Crime Prevention Association shirt, complete with badges sewn on the chest and arms, and 2 stars or crests or something on the epaulets. Too funny! We also pick up an egg slicer that has 3 different options. Just because. I mean, really, why not?

Silly shopping completed, we continue on our quest passing the book store which is still here, but noticing the coffee shop that had little furry animals you can pet is no longer there. A couple of the other local street type stall restaurants have survived, and of course Rudy’s Gecko Garden – or the Greasy Gecko as we have nicknamed it – is still alive and well. Also the little local snack store (that’s all I can think of to call it) on the corner before you reach the food market has survived. We of course can’t not stop there for our favorite rice cookie snacks – Watermelon juice Khaotan. Those things are my favorites and I can eat them by the bagful. The variety they sell is the best – and the most expensive. Ok, they are only 35 baht ($1 USD) for 24 of them, so expensive is relative, but still. Sort of like tradition to buy them there.

Then it is onto the square where Outlaws is located and the market. Oh, this makes me sad. Where once was a huge market with tons of food stalls now sits a small area, maybe 1/4 of its original size with the same reduced amounts of stalls. It breaks my heart. Ed has a different take, he views this as a success story as we had seen pictures of the lot when there was absolutely nothing here, no food stalls, nothing. The entire place was empty and abandoned. I know he is right, but it still causes a pain in my chest just walking around, seeing all this. Outlaws is still there, this we knew. But we also know that the guy who owned it when we used to come here, who we call Pierre, sold it and is no longer around. Again. Sad.

Moving on, we head down Changklan where most of the shops are still there, and people are beginning to set up for the night market. Almost missing the entrance to Ansuran, they have completely covered the market and the shops that line the alleyway entrance are closed up tight, it is a completely different world inside there. We were expecting this – although to be honest there are a lot more vendors than we had expected, many setting up for the evening. What is really shocking are the number of restaurants that are just gone. We can’t even begin to give a number. O’Malley’s, the venerable British pub, is fortunately still there as is the Halal Thai place next door (bizarre, we know). Further into the market one of the seafood restaurants looks like it is still open – at least there is someone sitting on their patio eating – a worker, but there nonetheless, and there is furniture out. But beyond that? Oh man, nothing. The Indian restaurant, the place the American guy owned with the bands, the Lebanese place. All completely shuttered. And the Bamboo bar? With Jessca? Gone – you can barely tell where it was! And Roadside Grill! OMG, we’d never expected them to be closed, but indeed they are. It is such a shock.

Stupid f’ing pandemic. That’s all I’ve got to say. That is publishable, that is. The people. The livelihoods lost. Brutal. And just mind boggling.

On the positive side, as we said, there are a ton of vendors. Which is heartwarming. And the Chiang Mai Cabaret (girly boys) is still operating! That is simply amazing and fantastic! So, bright spots on the horizon, but still. It is a very fortunate thing that we cannot stay in the same condos as we have for the past 14 years or so. It would have been a totally different experience over here and in my mind at least, not a good one. At least inside the moat we can explore and find new and different things. We never came into the old city much, so everything (with the exception of Dash) is fairly new to us. Makes this more like and adventure than a sad shadow of what our experiences used to be.

On that note, we left the Night Market. Walking up Loi Kroh road, past a shuttered Movenpick hotel (sigh) and on through what I call the Ex-Pat land of bars where there are tons and tons and tons of bars and restaurants that tend to get rowdy in the evening. A couple of the ones we remember are gone, not that we came here often, but we walked past enough. The Rock Me Burger is still there, which has one of the burgers Ed loves, although this visit we are trying a new place inside the moat. By now we are ready for a drink, to rest our weary legs and drown our (well, my at least) sorrows. Interestingly enough, there are a few bars that don’t have wine. That’s different. We finally find a nice little place with wine and a sweet little dog who comes out to greet us, sealing the deal.

Refreshed, we head back to our part of town, deciding to stop at the Wat Jet Lin, which we’ve now walked by a bunch (even though it is only day 2, it is right on our route in and out of our soi, on the opposite side of the road from Wat Muen Tum) and which is listed in Micky’s “orientation” book as having a “swamp.” We’re intrigued. We don’t have our “Wat clothes” with us (wrap skirt and shawl for me, elephant pants for Ed), so we can’t go into the Wat itself, but we can explore the grounds, walking past a great old stupa and taking pictures of the exterior of the Wat behind it.

Continuing through the grounds, we find the walkway to the “swamp.” A lovely and cool covered trellis that leads to viewing platforms over what turns out to be a fully stocked pond. It’s lovely and serene, with peaceful Thai music in the background, and best yet, we can buy fish food for 20 baht! Yes. Our afternoon entertainment has begun. These fish are monstrous, as you will see in the many videos we have taken. Feeding the fish. Feeding more fish. Stomping our feet to get the pigeons away. Feeding the fish still. It is too much fun!

Continuing along the trellised walk, we circle the pond, walking through a lovely garden area with these adorable gold buddha statues lining the walk. Then we make our way onto this bamboo walkway which moves and dips with your weight as you cross between the fish pond on the left and the lily pond on your right. Amazing, but a little bit frightening the way that bamboo walkway moves!

On the way out of the Wat, we notice this creepy and bizarre 5 eyed bear-like statue that is eating coal and then pooping out gold. What? Really? There is a whole huge long explanation, all in Thai of course, that when translated makes no sense whatsoever! Most of what we can glean is that there was a man who had mistresses and he loved one mistress more than his wife. They had a son together, but he was cursed or something and the legend was he would die when he was 20. The father had to bury him outside a cave and leave a “tattooed” animal, which he did. Then the “Mang” with 4 ears and 5 eyes appeared. It was muddled before, but not it is even more confusing as the villagers realize this is the boy that has come back to life as a monster? Confusing. And the eating coals? And pooping gold? Don’t know, only that the Mang wouldn’t eat anything at all until they built a fire and it ate the coals. In the morning when the Monks and villagers came back, there was a pile of gold. Hey, I don’t make this stuff up, I just report the translations!

And that put a fitting end to our afternoon explorations!

Later that evening, for dinner, we walked down to the Food Market at Chiang Mai Gate. Totally fun with tons of vendors. We settled on pork Gyoza, Fried chicken skewers with Korean BBQ sauce, a Chiang Mai sausage (not spicy version) and Khao Soi for Ed (who is in his glory with Khoa Soi). All was excellent, except that sausage, which was mostly rice and just not that great. But everything else was stellar and of course cheap as the dickens!

Heading back home, we noticed a bar on the corner of the street which hadn’t been open during the day. There is a guitarist inside and we mange to snag a spot right outside the front door where we can be outside, watching the world parade by, and also hear the music. Perfect, except no wine. This is becoming a thing. So, we share 2 big Leo beers and happily spend an hour or so on a very fun and busy street corner. Our kind of evening!

A quick walk home and we can relax on our much quieter balcony, then hit the hay as the jet lag is definitely creeping up on us. Tomorrow….the Wat crawl!