Seen from the 7th floor of Kohler Pavilion. In the foreground, the arm that suspends the tram; OHSU's South Waterfront buildings in the middle distance. This mountain was one of the very first things I saw when I got off the airplane on my arrival in Portland, back in 1982.
This is the headland at the north end of Cannon Beach. The water in the foreground is Ecola Creek. We just learned, this last weekend, that Ecola is a Chinook Wawa word for whale.
I am leaving behind a lot of history that I never properly learned. It wasn't my history, but then what is? so that's no excuse. Resolve to do better in Thailand, which will be a good incentive to learn the language as quickly as I can. I'm already frustrated by the lack of English-language sources around things like the canals of Chiang Mai.
Like... ummm...
Artwork around the corner from my house.
As far as I can tell, there are no crows in Chiang Mai. There are crows in Thailand, a few species in fact, but evidently they have not taken over the urban environment the way Pacific NW crows have. No giant murders roosting in the downtown buildings and streaming across the sky at dawn and evening...
I don't have any pictures of Chiang Mai birds (birds are hard to photograph!) but I did a little exploring with the help of the Merlin Bird ID app. One of Merlin's nice features is it can identify birds by sound. Sadly, the database is not very complete: it said it could only sound ID about 30% of the birds in the Chiang Mai area.
Anyway. Boring birds first: rock dove (pigeon), common myna, red jungle fowl. No, seriously. People all over Chaing Mai keep chickens in (and out of) their yards, and a lot of them look just like this:
(image from Wikipedia)
Very close to wild type.
Spotted dove: this is a SE Asian endemic, very common in the city, and seems to coexist easily with the pigeons. This was the first bird I got by sound ID, the very first morning in the city. Picture from Wikipedia.
Red-whiskered bulbul
Also ID'd this one by sound: it seems to be quite common. I did get a good look at one but this image is also from Wikipedia.
Common kingfisher. I actually ID'd this one by sight. Can't mistake that flash of brilliant blue. Wikipedia image
Oriental magpie-robin (this is a very strange name for a bird, in many ways): also ID'd by sound but I did get to see one. Wikipedia image.
Miscellaneous swifts and swallows, all along the river: couldn't get a good enough look to tell what kind, and sound ID was not helpful.
And this:
This purports to be an Asian Koel. These birds are apparently everywhere in Chiang Mai: any place, any daylight hour, you're likely to hear them. But they're fiendishly hard to see! Merlin and other sources describe them as preferring the interiors of large trees with thick foliage - you don't see them sitting out on telephone wires, or anything like this.
This led me to declare, about three weeks in, that there is actually No Such Bird. I complained about a recurring auditory hallucination and muttered darkly "Birds aren't real..."
We did finally see one on our last full day in the city.
Back in Portland, I saw an old friend today whom I'm really going to miss...
This fella lives at 18th and Alberta and has watched over the neighborhood for many years.
Mentioned earlier that I had no idea about the canals, and generally there being water everywhere. I have to remember Thailand is in the wet tropics, not the dry tropics.
Case in point: The Mae Ping River flows through Chiang Mai from north to south. It doesn't look like much: significantly smaller than the Willamette, for example. But this river flooded in October 2024, and put a huge swath of Chiang Mai underwater.
Once we knew to look, the damage was visible everywhere. Sidewalks were heaved, storm drains filled in with silt and debris. The Mae Ping, unlike Pacific NW rivers, carries a huge amount of silt, and once the water receded there was a thick layer of dirt everywhere. In places you can see big mounds of it shoveled up out of the street and out of people's homes, and just left .
In the park where I took the picture of the flame tree, there's a small canal with fountains. The first few times we went there, the canal was dry and the bottom was full of dried mud, which was being dug out (bucket by bucket). The last time we stopped by there, the canal was full of water and the fountain was running again.
Here's a thing: Chiang Mai is flat. It's the flattest place I've ever lived, except maybe Minneapolis. We walked a lot (a lot even for me), and google maps walking directions inevitably said "Mostly flat." Topo maps of the city show basically no relief. So when the river came over its banks, which are diked up above the surrounding streets, it spread out... and spread out, and spread out.
And all the canals. I'm not kidding, there are nearly as many canals as main streets. They all apparently connect back to the Mae Ping, but with so little slope I am not sure how they maintain flow. There are pumping stations on at least some of the canals, for example around the old city and in the little park, so I guess the whole network keeps itself moving somehow.
Chiang Mai’s Canals
Little dragons, sleeping in the sun
you seem so tame. What works of hands,
what years of labor shaped this land?
Who knew when to call it done?
Do these sleeping dragons dream
of flowing free across the valleys
where now wind crooked streets and alleys?
Do canals remember they were streams?
Little dragons, sleeping in the mud,
caged in canals cut to human shape
do you hold a long longing for escape?
Do you dream thunder and wake in flood?
I cannot find anything about the history of these canals but I'm guessing the local peoples have been digging for irrigation and flood control since the beginning of the agricultural age. Chiang Mai was founded in 1296, and presumably the canal that moats the old city (which was the original city) was started around then and completed some years later. But I'm guessing the canal that brings water to the moat, called Khlong Mae Kha, at least partially predates the city, and was extended and expanded to supply the moat.
If you pull up Chiang Mai on google map and zoom in a little, you'll immediately see a perfect square. In the middle of a city whose streets are emphatically not straight. What's up with that?
It turns out the old city of Chiang Mai was surrounded by a canal that served as a moat, and inside that, was a massive brick wall. The wall is now mostly ruined, but the canal is still there.
Old City. northeast corner:
These trees are along the east side. I worry about the second one, it looks like it's going to fall into the canal if it isn't propped up or something.
Old City, North Gate:
Lastly - this is a relief map of the old city, with several of the important buildings shown in miniature. A little difficult to make out in the mix of light and shade.
Something in my bones feels at home in the tropics. And some trees greet me as old friends.
Frangipani. Lots of it around town, and many of the trees are like the ones I remember from Tanzania and also common ornamentals in Hawai'i. But the kind (species? cultivar?) that is most common here is a little different than I remember: the trunks are thicker, and the bark is a very shiny silver-grey, leaves more oblong and less pointed.
And some new friends...
This is at an elephant rescue and sanctuary in the mountains to the west of the city. Getting there was... hair-raising. I have not seen hairpin bends like that since the Rift wall through northern Tanzania.
But the road was paved (at least nominally) the whole way, which is more than I could say for most of the roads in Tanzania. They were doing repair work in places, as it's clear the roads wash out during the rainy season.
According to Wikipedia, Chiang Mai and the surrounding area are home to more than 300 temples. Certainly we have seen a lot: in the old city, there was one literally every couple of blocks, and they're sprinkled thickly throughout the rest of the city.
Gate to a temple complex, Wat Chai Mongkhon, built to resemble a stupa. Many of the temples we've seen have old (ancient) stupas on the grounds. Here's what that gate looks like from the inside:
The amount of land occupied by, and the labor and expense of maintaining, these temples... it's phenomenal. And what's more, they seem to be mostly working temples not just tourist attractions. We've heard sutras being recited and seen people praying. We joked that you could earn a lifetime of merit by visiting and praying in every temple in Chiang Mai - if you did it all on foot, it could take weeks.
Besides the religious functions, temple complexes seem to serve as neighborhood market and gathering places. This is a view of the courtyard at Wat Chai Mongkhon:
Food and merchandise stalls in the background on the left. Parking spaces to the right. Further around to the right there's a shop that sells candles and incense for people to offer in and outside the shrine:
You can see there's a constant flow of people lighting candles here. The candle in the front row of the left-hand burner, near the center, is one I lit to pray for our safe and speedy return to this place.
Religion seems woven into daily life here, in a way I have not seen anywhere else I've traveled. Many houses have little shrines in the front yard, like elaborate birdhouses, lovingly decorated, and often with fresh offerings of food or incense. And there are public shrines dotted around, at major intersections or in the parks and plazas where the night markets happen. Again, you often see offerings there: people use these shrines.
This shrine happens to be outside the Chiang Mai Marriott:
I don't have a lot of temple pictures, because... visually they're, well, kind of overwhelming. Thais have apparently never met a color they didn't like. The proportions of the buildings and statues are exquisite, but the colors are dizzying until you get used to it. This is from the grounds of a temple in the old city:
Temple and Town
Temple courtyard
Village square
Place of commerce
House of prayer.
House of worship
Marketplace
Daily life in
Sacred space.
So... Coffee. So far, seems to be high quality. We guess that it's largely imported from Vietnam. They have all the espresso drinks you find anywhere, plus f course the famous Thai iced coffee. Plus, something we have not seen anywhere else: Orange coffee. Coffee with some kind of orange concentrate - it's not orange syrup, it's unsweetened, which is nice.
Also, many many tea drinks and bubble tea drinks.
Chiang Mai reminds me of Dar es Salaam, in being a city that was not really built for cars. There's nothing resembling a grid, and many of the streets are tiny. Also, there's something about the architecture that I can't quite put my finger on.
This is a typical house - on a side street not far from our hotel
And because I promised - this is a bridge over the Ping River. It runs through the city from north to south. Much smaller than the Willamette.
looking almost straight up
A couple times per year, I go through all my stuff. By "stuff" I mean desk ornaments, trinkets, all the little things that decorate my personal/work space. Some things I like to have handy, to run my fingers over when I'm thinking, or just idly. Some I like to have around, but don't need to have within sight or within reach all the time.
Items get rotated in and out of storage, though there are a few that are always on my desk.
Winter break and New Year is one of the times that this usually happens; another is during summer, when I have some free time and the days are long. This year, it's all different. I'm looking through my stuff and deciding: what am I going to keep?
"Keep" means - eventually - "take to Thailand." At some point there will be a big crate or something shipped over. For this trip, we're of course limited to what the airlines will carry without charging us an arm and a leg (not much). So really, it's premature: nothing need be disposed of yet, and I can wait to make these decisions until after the pathfinding.
But that doesn't mean I don't think about it.
Before you read any further, say it aloud: "Wi-LA-mut"
The name is apparently either Clackamas or Kalapuya in origin, and one possible meaning is "Where the river ripples and runs fast." This river has been my companion in many contemplative hours.
Looking west across the river: Steel Bridge to the right, the north end of Waterfront Park across the way with downtown beyond. I'm standing on the Esplanade, at the top of the stairs leading down to the Steel Bridge's lower deck and pedestrian/bicycle crossing.
Looking south from the same spot: Burnside Bridge in the middle distance. Stormy day.
The Tilikum Bridge seen from the east end near OMSI. Public transit, bike, and pedestrian only.
Visiting Tilikum reminds me... three lines of my poetry are engraved in sidewalk blocks alongside the Orange Line light rail that passes over this bridge. One is at this stop: "electric lines charged full of souls."
The sun was setting...
...and the reflections twinkled like candles underwater
