The reason for me coming here to Chiang Mai was to celebrate my friend's 50th birthday. That is over with now and I have a day to recover from the crazy (and expected) hangover that I am currently enduring and just chill and wait for my flight back to Da Nang tomorrow afternoon.
It has been a wonderful experience being here and I don't just mean the extravagant party either. It was expected that this was going to be a fantastic time because my friend is rather affluent and he pulled out all the stops for his birthday. I regret to say that I didn't take a bunch of pictures at the event because I am just not that kind of person and I also don't normally like to put pictures of other people online without their permission. So while I do have a few pictures, I am not going to share them. You'll just have to take my word for it that it was great.
What I do want to talk about, is how being back here, just for a few days, has made me feel.
Chiang Mai is a reasonably populous city. It has roughly the same population as Da Nang, where I currently live. There are rules here though regarding construction. None of the buildings in certain areas are allowed to be taller than a certain size. This has something to do with none of the buildings being allowed to ever cast a shadow on temples or something like that but honestly I am not sure what the real reason is, I just know that it is that way.
The downtown area in the historic district has a ton of traffic as you would expect, but there is a real sense of order to it all despite the fact that the streets are packed.
Then there was one thing that I hadn't noticed when I was living here that has become incredibly apparent to me after living in Vietnam for as long as I have: Nobody is honking their horns.
In Vietnam, horn honking is one of the most annoying aspects of living or being there. It is something that everyone does all the time. it happens so much to the point where the sound no longer has any meaning. If you are walking or traveling anywhere the sound of horns honking will fill the air constantly. When I get a taxi to the bowling alley on Thursday, which is only about 5km from my house, the driver of the taxi will honk the horn 20-100 times on the way there and most of it doesn't really have any purpose. It is just an automatic response to arriving at anything in their proximity and sometimes they do it when nobody else is around. It is just something that they have gotten used to doing and it is extremely annoying. It is noise pollution to the highest degree and it causes me aggravation around the clock.
They also regularly mark off certain streets for some sort of pedestrian something or other and the people, the drivers that are here, actually comply with this. In Vietnam they just move the barricades and drive down these roads anyway. You may recall about how the Da Nang admins tried to establish a walking street nearby where I live and it only took about a month before they abandoned this plan because the Vietnamese were just driving on it anyway despite it being clearly marked that they were not to do so. People also park wherever the hell they want in Vietnam and this makes the sidewalks unusable for anyone walking.
The point I am getting to here is that while this might sound very rude, the drivers in Vietnam are assholes by default. I don't think this is even a conscious decision on their part, this is just the way the roads are and well, people tend to do what the rest of the flock is doing right?
I was just delighted to be walking around this city that has over a million people in it and tons of traffic, and it was quiet. I mean seriously quiet.
Unless it is the middle of the night like 3am or so, it is NEVER quiet in Da Nang. You are constantly dealing with construction noise because the buildings are never tall enough for them, loudspeakers that are entirely too loud, constant car horn beeping, and also people who set up their karaoke machines to a volume that AC/DC would be ok with for a show despite the fact that it is just a living room with a couple of grandmas in it. The Vietnamese just seem to gravitate towards incredible amounts of noise and being back here in Chiang Mai has brought this to the forefront of my attention. I took it for granted when I lived here.
The next thing is the food.
This is a random side-of-the-road eatery near my hotel. It sells only a few things and one of them is Khao Man Guy and it is just boiled chicken on rice with a truly unique and awesome sauce. It is available basically everywhere in the country. It is around $1-$2 no matter where you buy it and it is delightful. There are a hundred other things that are Thai staples that are available everywhere and are just as good.
I've lived in Vietnam for close to 6 years and I can't say that there is anything that I can point to and say "yep, that is awesome, get that." I'm not trying to say that all Vietnamese food is bad because that would be mean and untrue, it just isn't as good as Thai food. Really good Thai food is easy to find. In Vietnam when you find a truly good and unique restaurant it is a rarity.
Then there is the general friendliness of the people and I think a lot of this boils down the overall quiet nature of the city and country: In Vietnam everyone, including me, walks around with sound cancelling headphones on because of the noise. Therefore, if you just say "hi" to a stranger they are unlikely to hear you at all. Here, I have been saying hello to strangers and they have responded. The other day I ended up having a coffee with a stranger based solely upon this sort of greeting. By comparison, people have created bubbles of sorts in Vietnam so that they never speak to anyone and while I am not the kind of person that ever gets lonely, it can be that way and again, it all boils down to the place being so damn loud that you can't do anything else.
bottom line
This trip has made me kind of not like my life in Da Nang anymore. I feel as though I am just existing there, not really enjoying being there. It is cheap and the visas are easy in Vietnam, but I think that this trip has encouraged me to perhaps start to investigate how it is that I can get me and Nadi moved back to Thailand. There are visa options now that didn't exist when I first moved out in 2020.
The quiet alone is something that I think is extremely valuable. I can't so much as open my windows on my 9th floor apartment in Da Nang without having the incredible noise pollution ruin everything. I am in a hotel in a busy part of town and even with the windows open I can hear nothing. I was at a very busy intersection having a lunch yesterday for half an hour and hundreds of cars went by... NONE of them honked their horns.
Plus I can speak Thai. I have made no effort to learn Vietnamese.
We'll see I guess but this visit back here has kind of opened my eyes to how good I had it here and how Vietnam, as much as I praise it as often as I can, might not be the right place for me.