This is my last post about Chiang Mai.

Since 2010, we’ve spent about 10 months of it in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We keep leaving. We keep saying good-bye. Then, we hit a wall. Egypt last year. Beijing this winter. We need to recuperate, relax, and just go home.

I’ve written so much about Chiang Mai on this blog, mostly because I happened to travel there more often than anywhere else (we spent three months in India, two months in China but Thailand has been the longest by far).  So much so, that I get at least one email a week asking for Chiang Mai travel advice.  I’m always a little weary of recommending Chiang Mai, because it’s not necessary where you go to go somewhere.  It’s more like the place you go to recover from everywhere else.  One blogger visited six weeks into her year-long around-the-world trip and she seemed bored out of her mind.  ”You guys just eat lunch for two hours?  Don’t you have somewhere to go?  Something to do?”  It’s beyond laid-back and the travelers here, especially the ones that stay a little longer are often a year, or more into their trips.  By the time we make it to Chiang Mai we’re reveling in how delicious it is to sit still for a moment.  It’s the soft place you land when you need a break.

So we return to Chiang Mai.  I love the culture, the flexible attitude, the self-reliance that makes things like traffic laws not rules per se but suggestions, the assumption being that we’re all grown up enough to not crash into each other just because we want to make a u-turn.  I love the Thai cool-heart, the Buddhist influenced mind-set that takes the English expression, “Don’t sweat the small stuff — and it’s all small stuff” to its extreme logical conclusion.  I love the food, probably one the best cuisines in the world, right up there with French, Italian, Japanese and Indian.  (I won’t speculate on who would actually be number one).

Chiang Mai itself is smoggy and over-touristed in parts.  Outside of the city can seem like a never-ending strip mall, crammed with repair shops and electronic stores, random medical clinics and wholesale retail outlets.  The neighborhoods are lovely though, little winding side streets and Lanna style-houses, with a style of home furnishing that has been so ripped off in the West, I flash back to decorating my first apartment at Pier One Imports.  Fish ponds outside of homes are common, as are spirit houses, with little offerings to Buddha.  I love it when they offer an orange Fanta and include the straw, it’s a level of consideration that you can almost miss.

The countryside is beautiful.  The people are quick to laugh.  Having fun, “Sanuk” for the sake of having fun, is a national pass time.  That means traveling with children is an opportunity for the restaurant staff to stop their work and chase your son around while you eat.  There are monks everywhere.  They wear orange robes and can often be seen walking around town and sometimes texting on their cell phones.  They get priority seating in the airport lounge.  In the grocery story there are gift baskets, pre-made with basics like soap and toothpaste, wrapped in gold, specifically for the monks.  In a country where almost everyone is born Thai Buddhist, I have never seen even a hint of cynicism about it.

It’s extremely easy to live in Chiang Mai.  There are tiny apartments available — all you need if you’re used to living out of your backpack — for $150/mo.  Internet is everywhere.  There are malls and Apple stores, you can get your camera fixed, your Macbook replaced, your waterlogged iPhone repaired, rent a motorbike and get your teeth cleaned for 25% of the cost back home plus it’s all within a 10 minute drive.

So naturally we left.  Again.

I’m trying to reconcile this love I have of Chiang Mai and my reoccurring desire to leave anyway.  I think I made some sense of it in Sri Lanka, the day after we left, where we spent a single day at a beach resort in Colombo.  It happened that we booked a room at a resort that was actually closed.  The entire resort was for a Sri Lankan wedding, and while we didn’t know at first what was going on, we did think it was strange the way the hemmed and hawed about our reservation.

My not-so-covert attempt at zooming in and grabbing a photo. The bride glared at me after this shot. Oops!

“What in the world?” I asked Drew.

They weren’t speaking English, but I kept hearing them say, “Agoda!” in disbelief.  It wasn’t until we were in our room and saw the full wedding party — it looked like two wedding parties actually, there were so many people — lined up on the grass by the pool and taking pictures.  There were six photographers.

Holy crap.

We spent most of the day drinking beers on our balcony and spying on the wedding.  It was kind of cool to see a Sri Lankan wedding, something I’ll probably never see again, and everyone dressed so lavishly, even the men wore bright-colored ties to match the woman’s traditional dresses.

Drew is much more stealth than me. Isn't this a nice tropical resort? Just don't leave your room, there's a wedding going on.

I had a feeling that I’ve had many times in Thailand.  I was enjoying myself, but I was on the outside.  This wasn’t my wedding or my friend’s wedding, I couldn’t wish the bride well in her language and I certainly wasn’t invited.  Through chance I got to experience something new, but I was a stranger peering in.  I was beginning to wonder if all travel isn’t just a sanctioned version of being a peeping-tom.

This feeling sums up how I feel about Thailand.  There’s a kindness there, but I’ve always felt this distance.  Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see a lot fraternizing of locals and visitors in Thailand, at least outside of couples.  I never had a bunch of Thai friends.  I love Thailand but sometimes it feels more like watching, than being a connected part of the community.  It’s the very subtle tug on my heart that makes me want to keep going.

So we left.  Experience has taught me that I have to also add this part: for now.

We’re rested, we’re ready and we’re heading out to another great adventure.  This time, something completely different.  Beirut.

Thanks Chiang Mai, and Dan (& your lovely new wife Lindsey), I hope you’ll keep the lights on for us.  Congratulations on your (non-Sri Lankan, but just as beautiful) wedding!

This post is a bit belated, since I took the last month off from writing to sulk, read two dozen books, drop off the face of the planet, complain to my friends, pick myself back up, figure out a plan — all while being propped up by my husband, who apparently will suffer through almost anything to get Thai food.

Okay, so here goes: we left China.  Five months earlier than planned.  I didn’t learn fluent Mandarin, I didn’t make any friends, I didn’t get a wild story out of it or anything.  We spent a ton of money on our apartment, hired language tutors and domestic help.  We were like corporate expats, living in Beijing, compartmentalizing our lives as much every VP of Asian Development Blah De Da that lived in our building. We were in the expat bubble.

Beijing wasn’t working out.  I know there are a lot of people who will read this and think, “Well, DUH.”  Believe me I know.  Beijing in the winter.  What was I thinking?

One of Cole's early (unsuccessful) Escape-from-China attempts

So we left.  Predictably, given we didn’t know what else to do, we headed back to Chiang Mai, Thailand to regroup.  And by regroup, I mean, cough our asses off, because after the intense literally-off-the-charts pollution in China, where else would you go except to Northern Thailand during the one month of the year when they burn off their fields and the pollution skyrockets until the rainy season begins a few weeks later?  Apparently, we’re hardcore now.  People are driving around the old city with face masks on and we’re all like, “Mmmm, breathe in that fresh, slightly smokey, air.” China does that to you.

So what happened?

There where three things pulling on me in Beijing: family, work and the city.  I realized I could write and attend to Cole or I could learn the language and see the city.  But I couldn’t do all the things I wanted to do.  Cole comes first, then work, and finally when I realized that while I could make Beijing “work” I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it the way I wanted, and as a writer, stories about sitting in the 25th floor apartment and cramming Mandarin vocab while watching Xi Yang Yang with Cole wasn’t exactly the dynamic content I had hoped for.  I think when you travel you have to get out and meet people not directly on your payroll (revolutionary, I know).  Cole, the weather, and the city all conspired against me.  I couldn’t do it all, and finally after two months of denial, I realized that we’d have to do China some other time.

We snuck away like fugitives and didn’t tell anyone what we were doing until we were out.  It would have been exciting except I think we were all so shell-shocked.  One moment, sitting in the ashen cityscape of Beijing, the next, lounging by the Ping river under a palm tree in Thailand.  It was all entirely too easy, and later, when Cole was dancing in the booth at the restaurant, from joy, pure joy, of taking a sip of a watermelon shake I ordered him, it was hard to not feel a little relieved.

Cole diet: pound half a watermelon shake and then finger paint with your food.

We left Beijing.  Holy crap.

What about Mandarin?

Mandarin will have to wait.

However, I did get that language-moment I wanted, just one, but I was happy for it.  Just before we left, the three of us were in a taxi on our way into town.  We had the address written in Chinese characters, tucked in Drew’s pocket, and after he handed it over to the driver, the assailing stream of Mandarin hit Drew like a high pressure hose between the eyes.  I leaned over and translated, “He says he knows the street, but not the building, so he can take us to this address, but he doesn’t know this specific place,” and then I said to the driver, “Good, fine,” in Mandarin a few times and we were on our way.

It was kind of bad ass. Well at least my husband was impressed.

I didn’t think when I started studying Chinese that it would happen for me.  That moment of spontaneous translation, where your brain takes over, and for me, I heard the Chinese word, but instantly knew the English translation.  I didn’t get very far in my studies, but I did learn that as scary and difficult as Chinese sounds, it’s really just like any language.  If you study it, practice it, listen to it and use it, eventually, your brain gets sick of doing all the hard work of actively translating it, and says, “well since you insist on continuing to use this, I guess I’ll store it for you, that way I don’t have run all over the place looking for vocabulary every time you want to order coffee.”  And bam, you just have it, for now, until you don’t use it anymore and you brain clears it out to store plot lines to Game of Thrones or something (not that I spent the last month reading 4,000 pages of Lannister-Stark plots lines or anything, eherm).

The end result: I learned that I could learn Chinese. Really, anyone could be pretty good at Chinese if they got serious about it.  I’m not a natural at this, so if I can meander my way through tones, Chinese characters, difficult to pronounce sounds and the challenge of memorizing, I can’t imagine anyone who couldn’t. For me personally, it has shifted my perspective of languages as being mystical, challenging beasts that only a few gifted polyglots could tame, into a very practical skill set with a specific method for learning. It’s no different from learning how to program software or fix a car. The path to learning is the same: you have to do it to learn it.

Honestly, I think Drew just missed his favorite Thai breakfast: spicy noodle soup.

Now what?

Now, we go somewhere else.  We learn from this.  We tweak the design.  We do it better next time.  No one said traveling with a toddler was going to be easy.  No one said being a mom and a writer is easy either.  It’s not!  But we had fun in China (despite the setbacks) and I’m quite sure it’ll still be there when we’re ready to go back. I liked China and Mandarin and the people and the food, but for us, right now, with a small kid and all of our commitments it was too much. That sucks to admit, but I think my family is happier for it.

I love this quote from Ira Glass, and I really love the animated version below. I think it applies to anything that you want to do at a professional level. Your desire to do it is what sets you apart from everyone else. Your ability comes sharpening that desire until you get better.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

(Found via Brainpickings.org)