Steve’s sons say that Linux isn’t big here in Thailand. And indeed all of the Internet cafes that I’ve visited so far have been Windows-based.

But here in the cafe in Chiang Mai, it’s 100% Linux: about 20 terminals all running Caldera OpenLinux. And it works. Well. I’m typing this in Netscape under Linux, and it looks better than it does on my home PC.

By the way, Steve is writing his online column for the Bangkok Post next week about Travelling with Children, using our experiences with wee Oliver as a jumping off point. Stay tuned. You can read this weeks column to learn more about how Steve was buried at the Oriental Hotel this week.

This is my final report from the northern frontier in the small city of Chiang Mai (actually, it’s a rather large city, at least by Prince Edward Island standards). I’m sitting here in the air conditioned comfort of Cafe Internet, listening to a combination of the roar of tuk tuks and other traffic and some sort of steamy Thai soap opera in the background.

When we first thought of coming to Chiang Mai I was afraid it would be like Hamilton to Bangkok’s Toronto — a “junior city” with nothing in particular to recommend it (I grew up near Hamilton; it’s a nice place, but why would you ever want to visit?).

I need not have feared: Chiang Mai has a character all its own. Because it is built around an historic “old city” (still surrounded by a moat, and remnants of the old walls), it has an indentifiable downtown area, which gives it the sort of focus that you can’t find in sprawling Bangkok. You can actually walk around to tour Chiang Mai (although with the heat and the pollution, we’ve tried to avoid this) as everything is relatively close together.

For some odd reason, the government here in Chiang Mai decided to do away with public transit at some point in the recent future; the result is fleet of tuk tuks (three-wheeled LPG-fired motorcycles with a bench seat and roof) and pickup truck cum taxis, with bench seats on either side of the bed, and a roof overhead. The result is a lot of noise, a lot of pollution (not quite on Bangkok levels, yet), but also the ability to get anywhere, anytime, for about a dollar or less. Of course travelling in the back of an open pickup truck with motorcycles weaving in and around and the odd giant Japanese tour bus looming large is somewhat more frantic an experience than taking the TTC, but it works.

The night market in the city (literally a market that opens around 4:00 p.m. every night the length of the next street over from here) is the focus for a lot of traveller services: there are travel agents, tour companies, coffee shops, and so on, scattered all over the place. There’s even a giant artificial rock climbing wall. It’s not genuine Thai, but then again it’s hard to identify what that means anyway.

At the other end of the alley from our Guest House is a small travel/tour agency that we’ve used twice this week. The first time was yesterday on our tour of the crafts strip; today we used them again for a trip up into the mountains for the “Elephants at Work” tour. This was a straight-ahead touristic experience (this is a common adjective in tourist-oriented publications here, usually used in the negative sense, like “must less touristic,” when a tour costs more). We drove 45 minutes north of the city to the elephant grounds, which were actually quite amazing: just the sort of “lush tropical paradise” you would imagine to find in Thailand.

We arrived just before the crush of other tourists, and thus were able to go immediately to the elephant riding area, and additional cost, but one we felt obligated to bear given possible later scorn from Oliver of the “you took me all the way to see the elephants and didn’t let me ride one?”. Riding an elephant — a first for all three of us — was considerably more thrilling than we thought (my adjective: Catherine might use “terrifying”). We were up and down the side of the mountain, through a rushing stream, and back to base; took about 30 minutes. We were perched behind the driver in a little gondola that was strapped to the elephant’s back.

It was only mid-elephant-ride that we realized that we’d forgotten to pack extra film, so the experience won’t be well documented: we only had six snaps left on the camera. It will live on in our minds, however (no doubt Oliver will have dramatic elephants dreams until he’s 29).

After the thrill ride there was an interesting, although somewhat too circus-like “elephants at work” show, which nonetheless did impress for the sheer flexibility of the animals.

Post-elephant we stopped at an orchid and butterfly farm on our way down the mountain, and then back to town for a rest.

This afternoon Catherine and Oliver hired a car to take them out to another hill tribe craft coop while I wandered around town, checked email, read the paper and generally enjoyed some time alone.

Once it got dark, we hailed a tuk tuk and headed way, way across town (I know it was way, way across town as this was the negotiating tactic used by the tuk tuk driver to get me from 30 baht to 50 baht — roughly 1 dollar to about $1.50) to visit the Central Department Store, the only place we’ve seen diapers in quantities larger than the 4-packs you can buy at 7-11 (which is a hugh chain here; they even have a mail order catalogue where you can buy fridges and lawnmowers). The ride back was a much steeper 80 baht (about 4 dollars), but it’s hard to argue when you’re way, way across town!

Tomorrow we’re up early to take the train to Phitsanulok, a city midway between here and Bangkok. We’ll overnight there, or nearby, perhaps visit some ruins at Sukhothai, and then back to Bangkok on Sunday for a last couple of days before heading back to Canada on Wednesday.

This morning we took an organized craft tour, visiting a series of different factory shops along a particular road out of Chiang Mai that is known for this. In our case “organized” meant that it was the driver, a guide, and the three of us. And the guide looked after Oliver for the duration (I think he fell in love), so we were free to roam.

Despite our initial skepticism about the whole “see the workers, tour the air conditioned showroom, buy stuff” model, we had quite a nice time, and ended up buying some very nice pieces.

This afternoon Catherine made her own way to a hill tribe handcraft coop while Oliver and I slept and then visited with some prostitutes. But that’s another story.

There’s nothing like looking in on the snow-encrusted streets of Charlottetown, via the IslandCam while sitting in the swelter of northern Thailand. Makes the whole Internet thing appear even more freaky than it usually does.

Monday morning, faced with a sleepy Oliver (and thus sleepy selves), we slept later than usual, therein making the prospect of bus travel (10 hours) from Bangkok to Chiang Mai seem an insurmountable obstacle. So we plucked ourselves out to the airport and tried to book passage on Thai Airways instead.

As it turned out, this was harder than we imagined it would be, as the flights for Monday were all full and we had to fly standby. We were initially on the list for the 11:15 a.m. flight, but it flew full. Next was 12:15, but that was full too. Finally we got seats on the 1:15 p.m. flight, which required miltary-style precision to coordinate: get notification of our seats from the standby desk, take stamped chit across the terminal to the ticket office to buy tickets, come back to the standby desk to check our luggage and get boarding passes, then make our way to the gate. All in the 15 minutes remaining before the flight. But we did it.

It was during the run up to the 12:15 flight that we encountered Valerie Pringle, perky (her universal TV adjective) former co-host of Canada AM on television. From the look of her entourage, she’s in Thailand on some sort of assignment — camera gear and burly looking soundman types abounded. And on this day she didn’t make me proud to be Canadian. There we were all gathered at the standby desk — probably about 12 stressed out people waiting to see if our names would be called — and Valerie Pringle is hassling the clerk about how she can get her Aeroplan miles for the flight to Chiang Mai credited to her account. She made it be known that she is an Aeroplan Super-Elite member, and pulled out her special gold pass as proof. The level-headed clerk quite properly suggested that there might have been a better time to worry about such things, which appeared to result in considerable exasperation in Ms. Pringle. Later she and Catherine were standing side by each, and she moaned something about how “they need to get a better system than this.” All in all, she came across like a jerky prima dona.

Which stands in contrast to our day to day experiences in Thailand where people seem, if not efficient (although often they are) at least completely unflappable, and always in good humour. The Oliver love-fest continues: Oliver has now had conversations (so to speak) with police officers, security guards, monks, flight attendants, the boy who manned the shoe booth at our shoeless restaurant and countless others. Tonight I am out on the town by myself while Catherine and Oliver sleep, and I’m irked to find that without Oliver in front of me in a stroller, people’s eye’s no longer light up when I enter a room. Sigh.

The flight to Chiang Mai was uneventful. Thai Airways service is about 300% better than Air Canada’s on a comparable short-haul flight (i.e. they’re nice, and they actually still serve food). I was sitting beside an orange-robed young monk and was somewhat concerned that I might commit some religious faux pax (i.e. point my fork at him, or not point my fork at him, or something…) but I seemed to do okay. Catherine and Oliver were seated across the way and Oliver slept for the entire flight.

We’re staying here in Chiang Mai at the Galare Guest House which was recommended by a friend of my mother’s. It’s very plesant — a nice garden, on the river, decent restaurant, friendly and helpful staff. Chiang Mai is plesantly cooler than Bangkok, at least in the morning; afternoons get quite hot. Our Tuesday was spent eating lunch in a Chinese shophouse cum art gallery cum restaurant, then travelling my pickup truck taxi to a park/children’s playground where we rented a mat and sat beside a fetid pond for 1/2 hour in the shade of palm trees. Later we visited the largest temple in town, and had iced cappucino’s at a place called Cafe Chic.

Tomorrow we’re off to explore the wonders of the so-called “home industries” — silver, silk and other factories with demonstrations and factory shops.

I’m off to the Night Market tonight to see what I can see, a briefly single guy in a steamy equitorial paradise. Oh the possibilities.

If it’s not the heat that’ll kill you, it’s the heat: this is the theme of our time in Bangkok so far. We left snowy Halifax last Monday in the middle of a blizzard, with a wind chill of -30 C. Yesterday it was 34 C here. That’s a 5-day jump of 60 degrees in our surroundings.

Mostly what this means is that we have to learn to pace ourselves, take frequent breaks, douse wee Oliver with water, and head out early in the morning. No crazy New York-style travelling here: walk slowly, stay in the shade, don’t breath in too much of the street-level pollution.

Both Catherine and I have had a couple of “melt down” instances since we arrived, thankfully not at the same time. Sometimes the heat and the humidity and the crazy urbanity of it all just gets to you. I think we’re both getting better at spotting the signs and warding off the worst, though. That’s a Good Thing.

Yesterday we managed to get out and buy Oliver a sun hat and a pair of sandals, went to the Government-sponsored crafts marketplace, and eat lunch. Otherwise we slept, ate, drank, repeat. Last night Michelle, Steve’s wife, kindly babysat Oliver while Catherine and I headed out to dinner. Unfortunately we broke the cardinal “before you head out into the crazy humid heat of the night, have some idea where you’re going” rule, and in desparation ended up eating at a western-style barbeque place called “Sizzler” where we had mediocre burgers. Oliver slept throughout his visit with Steve and Michelle, although I did catch him watching CNN while reclining on the couch while we debriefed our hosts after dinner.

This morning we headed off very early to the Chatuchak Weekend Market, which is quite simply the largest, most crowded marketplace either of us have ever seen. To imagine it, in some small way, take the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market, raise the temperatire 30 degrees, make it 100 times bigger (really), and include everything from fighting hens to goldfish to bolts of silk to orchids. Surprisingly, we found the market easy to navigate — although we only saw maybe 1/16 of it — and Catherine honed her haggling skills and got 12 meteres of Thai silk for about $10.

This afternoon we’re off with Steve and Michelle to their Sunday church meeting, then to the closed-off Silom Street which has been described to us as street party cum children’s festival.

Tomorrow we’re off to Chiang Mai in the north, and then later in the week south to the beach before returning to Bangkok next weekend in prepartion for our flight home.

Many more adventures to be had, I’m sure…

Steve asked how I’m accessing the Internet here in Bangkok.

Right beside our hotel, by coincidence, is a 24 hour Internet/video game centre that charges 10 baht (about 50 cents) for 30 minutes of Internet. The bandwidth feels about 56K, but it’s hard to tell because I’m mostly accessing sites that are on the other side of the world.

The weirdest thing about surfing here is that most of the other people around me are actively engaged in killing each other through various virtual methods; as I type this, there is the sound of constant machine gun fire, a woman’s voice calmly saying “Unit Ready” and “Unit Locked” every couple of seconds, and the occassional speech from a GI Joe-like commander in chief.

Hot and humid today in Bangkok, where it’s 11:00 p.m. on Thursday evening as I write this, and something like 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning back home.

So we have lived Thursday and our neighbours and friends at home have it to come.

Today was our “get the lay of the land day.” Steve (as Harold is called by everyone — somethings you can’t learn via email) introduced us to his wife Michelle, and their Korean friend Susan, and we all went up to the Sky Train together.

The Sky Train is a wonderful piece of Bangkok’s public transportation network — indeed it’s part of complex series of things that led Steve and Michelle back to Bangkok from California a couple of years ago. It is essentially an elevated transit system, similar to the one in Vancouver in both design and name (but cleaner and better run here). In a city as congested as Bangkok (and truth be told, it doesn’t appear as congested as the guidebooks would have you believe), something like the Sky Train is a tool for social revolution; while it’s obvious that it hasn’t completely caught on yet, it’s also obvious that it’s starting to have a dramatic impact on the way that the people of Bankgkok get around.

Sky Train lessons done, we headed to the Oriental Hotel in the riverfront, where one of Steve’s books, At Home in Asia, is being buried in a time capsule this week. In the lobby of the hotel, while Steve was up with PR folks, Catherine and I and Oliver plunked ourselves down.

Now keep in mind that the Oriental Hotel was 10 times voted the best hotel in the world. And there we gruffy three sat, Oliver wanting to putter around, Catherine going hunting for a bottle of water. And we felt at home. The staff came over and picked up Oliver and carried him around, showed him the lily pond fountain. And when we left they all waved at Oliver.

This is a constant theme here so far: my son is more popular than I am. Everywhere we go — everywhere — Oliver is treated like a prince. At restaurants he is spirited away from the table so as to not need fuss while we eat. On the riverboats he flirted with the ticket taker. At the grocery store the clerk looked blankly at we when I walked in, and then when she spotted Oliver on my back, her face lit up brightly.

And it works at airports and in customs lines too — faced with a line of some 500 people at Bangkok International last night we were spirited ahead by an official to the special “Diplomatic” line.

After the Oriential Hotel, we headed out to the street for a bowl of miso soup, and then out onto the river. Another of Bangkok’s transportation methods is riverboat — ferry boats that run up and down the river stopping at various places. The fare is 10 baht — about 50 cents — and the experience is indescibable but to say that Oliver didn’t fall off.

This last point is relevant because last night Steve told us that the only thing we had to worry about was the water. In my bleary-headed post-flight fog, I said “falling in, or drinking it?” Both he and Catherine looked at me like I was an idiot. Which, of course, I was.

After the river, we Sky Trained back to our hotel for a rest, and then joined Michelle, Susan and later a couple of guys, Sri and Sunam, from Sri Lanka, for a spaghetti dinner. So there we were, three Canadians, a Korean, a Philipinno (albeit with a Thai passport) and Korean, talking about hamburgers, Anne of Green Gables (nobody had heard of), snow (everybody had heard of) and Quebec separation. This is why it’s good to travel.

After supper we took Steve’s advice and travelled the 5 blocks back to our hotel by tuk tuk (basically a 3-wheeled motorcycle with a passenger compartment in the back), Oliver asleep for the whole thing. And this is where Catherine and Oliver are, hopefully enjoying their first Thai sound sleep, as I write. And where I must now go and join them.

More later.