Day three of the buying trip turned out to be a very good one.  I hopped on my scooter and headed out of town to this village where a few of my vendors are.  The first stop was at a place that imports antiques from Burma, Pakistan and China.  There I was looking at these great vegetable dyed Pakistani beds.  As a bed they are pretty useless for Westerners;  they are made out of a wood round frame that mortises into the bed legs themselves, and then the bed is made up of woven string.  For me, its all about the legs.  They are done in these beautiful colors that you only get from vegetable dyes - a dying technique that disappeared in the late 1800’s (its now back in some upper end rug weaving, but certainly not in the Pakistani bed world). I was interested in turning them into lamps - a similar thing that we do with the Southern Indian version of vegetable dyed bed legs that you may have seen on our web site.  They also have these wonderful - and hard to come by being from Pakistan - intricately morticed door grilles that would have been a panel above a door.  Imagine geometric lace work in wood.  Unfortunately they dod not have any of the old deco bentwood chair sets that I have bought from them in the past, but they seemed to think they would be able to find some for me.

The next stop was with my friend that I get these curly vine sculptures from.  They go into the woods in central Thailand (a trip that I wanted to go on this time, but didn’t have enough time), find what some people refer to as strangler vines and cut them off the trees.  they then take them back up to his place here, dry them in a kiln of sorts, and then we decide whether we want certain pieces bleached - giving them a nice white appearance, or lightly waxed, making them look more natural.  Either way they are a great sculptural piece.  Think a somewhat stretched out section of a slinky, except made of vines an on a stand.  I also get some beautiful organic shaped pieces of “dead fall” wood.  That means all the pieces are from dead trees that they have harvested from the woods around the country.  From small table top pieces on stands to huge 10 ft tall ones. 

Next it was on to this other place that makes some beautiful furniture, again out of reclaimed and dead fall wood.  I think I tried describing this in an earlier entry but here goes again.  Picture the root section of a tree that is right before the root becomes the trunk.  It still has that root appearance, but is more solid rather than branchy, often with all sorts of swirling odd shaped parts.  Then take a big saw and cut it into a shoe box shaped buffet.  This would give you the 6 flat surfaces, but with the parts of the roots weaving in and out “below” the plane of the cut. . . . ok, its very hard to describe, but when I get a photo up, it will all make sense.

The guy I get the curly vines and wood on a stand pieces from to make some more selections. 

AFter that, the trip back into town on the scooter, clean off the layer of soot from the curly vine kiln that inevitable gets onto you, and its off to dinner to that great hotel on the river, the Chedi, for another great meal.  STarting out with the cool salad with Thai spices, then off to another culinary continent with a little chicken tikka (they chef studied in Indian food apparently and is well known for it).  That with a nice piece of paratha (a type of Indian bread), some spicy Indian pickle and raitha - the indian cucumber sauce and a pot of tea made the meal.  Add to that the architectural beauty of the hotel behind me and the serenity of the main river in Chiang Mai flowing below me with the evening boat racers practicing up and down the river made for a great last dinner on Chiang Mai, which is exactly what I was thinking until the jazz band started up.  The pianist and the guy with the snare drum, the stand up base - they were all good.  Cut a nice rhythm, good volume good mellow pace.  Cue the saxophonist.  Think of someone trying to play a sax softly in that small jazz clubby way, then have them do it badly in a sort of spasmodic short of breath trying to be quiet, then make them a half a tone out of tune.  The whole time.  For those of you that are music fans, this is was enough to curdle milk.  Perhaps the best way to think of it is think of a out of key Karaoke singer who on the one hand is very quiet during the parts he doesn’t know, and then blares out - perfectly out of key - the parts that he does know.  Think of it that way, put them 15 ft away from your up until that point serene dinner table and you are getting there.  Lesson learned.  Don’t go to the Cheddi if you hear a quintet warming up.  Or at least get a drink before you order to either give you a chance to leave, or to have yet another drink to help get the sax player in tune.  I did neither, but in retrospect, should have.

Oh well.  Back to the night bazaar to buy a couple t-shirts for friends, and to finalize some purchases of interesting Meau tribal jewelry from the south of China.  After that it was off to the the weekly Friday night Thai boxing matches.  Its always worth a look.  A small tin roof stadium where the locals come every Friday to watch a card of usually around 8-10 matches make their way through the evening.  Its quite a site.  A combination of the Thais that are obviously there every week and tourists - mainly the back packer crowd.  The tourists have a section that is sort of gated off for them in front t of the ring, and then on the other side of the ring are all the Thais standing cheering on their fighter.  In-between is sort of a détente area where Thais and tourists are evenly spread.  I don’t know why this always amuses me that the tourists are in essence corralled in their own little ring side pen.  Its not of their own choice, they seem to be herded into there as if to protect them from the ever more boisterous and drunk Thai crowd on the other side of the ring.   By the end of the night, both factions are drunk, but the western crowd is still somewhat subdued and the Thai crowd is uncharacteristically quite loud, kind of a facinating role reversal if you think about it.


Today I have been wandering around town on foot, having turned in my scooter.  I actually spent quite a bit of time picking out some very nice jewelry for the shop.  Pieces at a friend's place here in that I have always liked, and always bought something for my wife.  It only dawned on me that I should bring some back to the shop and put it out.  So we shall see how that goes. 

Now its just killing time waiting to head off to the airport, fly back to Bangkok this evening, and then up well before the crack of dawn at am to get the am flight to Tokyo and then the back breaker 12-14 hour flight from Tokyo to Minneapolis, and it looks like my chances of getting upgraded as I did no the way out are pretty slim.  All I can say is after doing this flight 4 times a year, there are only so many times you can or should tough it through in coach, although there is little choice on my part as business class is so much more money.  I have to rely purely on the whim and kindness of the upgrade gods.  We shall see.