Chiang Mai Realizations
You have to leave to understand where you’ve been
The magic of moving to the other side of the planet is the challenge of coping with a foreign environment and assimilating into a completely new culture. From a personal growth standpoint, this cultivates an adaptive personality and an appreciation for diversity. You also have to learn to brush off some uncomfortable situations.
If you are like me and have only really lived in one place or region for most of your life, you’ll inevitably spend the adjustment period comparing your new home with the
Below is a list of the differences between Pittsburgh and Chiang Mai that I have found most salient over the last week.
Small Meals
Serving sizes are much smaller in Thailand. A standard evening would involve walking through a market and placing 3–7 orders at different stalls., drawing out the eating process as you walk and chew. Since no one wants to carry leftovers around, the portions are built to be completely devoured.
You could easily overeat if you wanted to do so. The prices are so low, you could feast for the price of a Chipotle burrito.
But I’ve found myself having 4–6 smaller meals throughout the day and almost never eating past the point of satiation. I’m hoping this is a habit I can continue to reinforce and maintain upon my inevitable return to the States.
Walking everywhere
Despite occasionally having a 40–50 minute walk to the market, we’ve been skipping tuk-tuks for long walks. This offers us an opportunity to explore the city and discover new restaurants, markets, and shops.
This will seem perfectly natural to residents of New York or San Francisco, but it is far from reality in Pittsburgh.
Traffic
Despite a population of nearly 400,000 people, traffic lights in Chiang Mai are few and far between. The streets are congested with autos, tuk-tuks and bikes from sun up to sun down.
We’ve heard Bangkok is even worse.
This can make crossing the street, at times, a perilous mission. A conservative crosser could wait for 10 minutes without a single opening in which to proceed. Daily, we have trained ourselves to look for small openings that we can slip through.
Aggressive, experienced Thai residents will just start walking across a three lane road and trust drivers to dodge around them. The key is a consistent pace that enables drivers to anticipate your trajectory. I’m completely serious.
I have a whole new appreciation for the relative safety of walking a “busy” section of Pittsburgh.
Cleanliness
We have found the food to be good, but the streets and bathrooms are a crapshoot. A ten minute walk through the city will leave your shoes and clothes with a thin layer of dirt attached to everything.
The pollution is noticeable but not untenable.
We are very conscious to only drink from bottled water sources. Apparently, this isn’t much better than Pittsburgh.
Red Bull & Other Assorted Brands
When Ashley and I visited Asia in April, we hit Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong, three of the most westernized, modern metropolises in Asia. Yet, it was startling to see familiar brands like H&M and Victoria’s Secret while we walked the streets. It made the world feel really small.
One of the biggest appeals of visiting Asia’s southeastern countries, like Thailand and Vietnam, was the promise of escaping the relentless creep of multinational corporations into our consciousness.
Chiang Mai has mostly delivered on that promise. The only recognizable brands that we’ve seen are Burger King, KFC, McDonald’s, and Red Bull. We have not tried any of them and don’t have any desire to do so.
“Same, same, but different”
On Tuesday, Ashley and I took a cooking class and toured one of the local food markets. We learned all day from a Thai woman who had lived for a while in the US and has a degree in chemistry.
The class fostered a deep appreciation for the complexity of Thai cuisine and the beauty of open air markets. Everything is wonderfully fresh and vibrant.
During the cooking portion, Niti (our instructor) explained a peculiar Thai cultural phenomenon.
On a single street in Chiang Mai, it is not uncommon for 3–4 coffee or pad thai shops to be clustered together. You might see this in the States with car dealership, but rarely with restaurants.
In Thai, there is a turn of phrase that translates to English as “same, same, but different”. The embedded meaning is, “I work in the same category, but do things with my own unique style.”
A local Thai will visit a specific area for a specific dish and choose a particular style upon arrival after looking at the different shops. This freedom, to do things your own way, is a highly valued aspect of Thai culture.
I’ve chosen specifically to keep political commentary out of these posts. I’m taking a brief recess to say the following;
In the digital world, I see too many conversations devolve to hysterics and adversarial side-picking. We need to learn how to understand and converse with the other side in a productive way. I have friends who identify as liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and everything in between. This intersection allow me to construct a more well-rounded worldview in my personal quest for wisdom. When I do disagree with a friend, we are able to amicably debate, then go share a meal.
Seeing the humanity in others and empathizing with those whose views we do not share, is the foundation of peaceful communities. Be kind. Every day. Affect change on the micro. That is the only thing you can actually control.
Because in the end, we are all just the same, same, but different.
