“Khrxbkhrạw pĕn h̄nụ̀ng nı p̄hl ngān chînxek k̄hxng ṭhrrmchāti”

~The family is one of nature’s masterpieces~ Thai proverb

I started the day heading out in search of coffee from the place I went to the day before. When I got there it was closed and curiously the hours said it should have been closed the morning before also. A café in a non-nightlife area that opens at three in the afternoon is unusual but there you go. Perhaps the whole thing is a delusion from drinking too much instant coffee. I ventured on and procured two coffees from a cannabis cafe further down the road. Amusingly they came with palm sugar in little drug baggies.

Today the full Haslett-Moore/Moore/Guzder/Rodenburg clan assembled in Chiang Mai for the coming wedding. Most of us met for brunch at a joint called the Forest Fern Café in the old town. It was a mainly Euro menu so mum took the chance to momentarily escape the spice I have been leading her to and ordered fish and chips. I went for pineapple fried rice served in a pineapple instead of a bowl which was fine in a very mild kind of way. The waitress explained they were out of pineapples and it would come in a normal bowl. Then when it arrived it was served in a pineapple. Something was lost in translation.

I come from the decidedly non-fecund end of the family but the next two cousins from me in age are doing their best to continue the family lineage so we had children from teens down to toddlers around the table. After eating we wandered old town for a bit and popped in to see the palatial strange Airbnb my Western Australian wing of family were renting and there I had a cup of good British tea! If I continue this way I will be wearing a safari hat and gaiters and reminiscing about Kipling before I know it.

We then returned to the hotel where nap/reading/writing commenced till my brother Toby arrived after spending a night in Bangkok. He had to jump through similar hoops to those which we passed through days before but he finally got his room. We then again wrestled with the ride share app and after 40 minutes of being bounced around drivers we got a car. I had found a restaurant online that did two dishes on my gastronomic Thailand list, Green Papaya Salad and North Thai sausages.  I copy and pasted the address into the app. The car took us on a curious root through the grounds of the derelict mall, down wee ally after wee ally , closer and closer to the mountains. Finally we ended up in a dark driveway of tropical suburbia. Something had gone wrong. After comparing phones it seemed something had gone wrong with the address in the app. The driver demanded more money to take us to the correct address. To be clear this didn’t seem like a con, just another lost in translation moment. My brother swiftly negotiated the extra required and we set about winding our way back into town. The plus being we got a bit of a tiki tour of parts of the city tourists wouldn’t usually see.

The restaurant was a very westerner focused outfit in the Nimman area. Nimman is known as a focal point for “digital nomads” . The sewers stink a little less, the cannabis wafts a little more, there are craft markets and bars that radiate pastel pink and turquoise. Eat Pray Love , you get the idea.

The Jarid is a boutique hotel restaurant, it was sparingly dotted with customers on our visit with some very loud very odd acoustic guitar piped music that had prolonged periods where it sounded like the guitar was being tuned. Masked staff hung on our every move. We had a feast of various tasty morsels and ticked off trying the sausage and papaya salad. Both were delicious. I also tried two Thai craft beers one of which , an IPA produced from a homebrew competition winning recipe, was very good.

The advice we were given by ‘everyone’ when coming here was to avoid the tuk-tuk autorickshaws and the red trucks. However, after so much trouble one way or another with the ride share apps, we decided to get a tuk tuk back to the hotel. Toby, mum and I all squeezed in, and we flew through the ally ways and throughfares, the driver negotiating the  traffic calmy between checking his phone for directions. We arrived home safely , quickly and cheaply. So there you go sometimes “everyone” is wrong.