Crossing the road in Chaing Mai, Thailand, might be a death-defying act, but if you survive, there’s a huge array of plant-based food outlets that will keep you healthy until you brave your next attempt.

There are dedicated pedestrian crossings, of course, but they’re relatively few and far between, as Catherine and I discovered on our visit there in November. To be fair, we were well warned that traffic could be challenging, but we found an easily transferable trick in dealing with it that I’ll share in a moment.

Looking back on it now, though, any inconvenience we ever experienced with traffic is infinitesimal compared to the amazing time we had. Unlike thousands of other travellers, Chaing Mai was never on our dream list, but now I understand now why it’s such a “must-see” destination for so many.

This was both a holiday and a special-purpose trip for us. Our son James was set to marry born and bred local Naphatsanan Yongsiriungruang (Nap for short), who is of both Thai and Chinese descent.

Nap set the wedding day to miss the rainy season, which worked brilliantly. Except for a two-hour stretch in Bangkok, we experienced perfect weather every day, with temperatures between 32 and 38⁰C.

Heat hopping

Coming from a New Zealand winter, the temperature range wasn’t an easy adjustment, but after a long walk, our daughter Louise returned with the ideal solution. You don’t walk, she said; you hop – between 7/11 stores, which are everywhere and beautifully air-conditioned.

For the wedding venue owners, though, this event came with an unexpected challenge. Three weeks prior, their business was knee-deep underwater. The rainy season might have ended to suit the wedding date, but a continuous downpour a month earlier forced the Ping River to rise to its highest-ever recorded level.

The outcome was disastrous for many small business owners, but to their great credit, the wedding venue owners, friends of Nap’s family, made every effort to honour the booking they’d arranged. Officially, the business was still closed to the public.

The wedding service was simple, elegant and wonderfully memorable. The food was fabulous. Thailand is classed as the second most vegetarian country in the world. Plant-based dishes are naturally part of the traditional cuisine, but with the arrival of more Europeans, meat is taking over a larger proportion of the plate.

We’d had our first introduction to local food at a market shortly after arriving in the city. We weren’t disappointed in the food but weren’t so impressed by a bolshie young woman vlogger who decided to film us.

The family warned us we would likely encounter these people, and I can understand why they don’t always impress the locals. Some vloggers are downright pushy and rude. One of the tricks (of their trade) is to take over a garment shop, change all the prices on the rack, and say online, “See, I sell to you for the same price as the shop!”

At the time of writing, 10 Thai Baht equated to .51c NZD or .30c USD, and you can easily buy a shirt or a meal from 30 Baht upwards. The vloggers do very well.

There are so many aspects to this fascinating trip, and I hardly think I’ll do justice to all of them, but I hope, here, I can capture some of the more remarkable features of this experience – the pictures will have to do the rest.

Bangkok and Chaing Mai

Heading to the wedding

Well, if you’ve ever wanted to fully understand the meaning of the expression ‘batshit crazy’, try crossing a road anywhere in Chaing Mai the day before its famous annual Lantern Festival. It’s packed beyond belief.

But, as the saying goes, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, and it dawned on us that the young people standing politely behind us at the crossing point could make it over the road a lot faster than we could.

Thank God they understood English and were amused by our explanation that we, being of the almost older (in fact, a lot older) bracket, had every chance of tripping if we rushed between cars. “You go first,” I said. To my delight, they did, and I thank my plant-based diet for giving me the energy to keep up with them.

The reason for crossing the road at this point had to do with the fact that two Grab (Uber) drivers had cancelled on us, possibly because of the traffic or because the pickup point was difficult.

We made it across, puffed and laughing like kids. Then, a remarkable thing happened. A Tuk Tuk glided up to the sidewalk at just the right moment, and its driver shot me the raised eyebrow Kiwi wave … like ‘sup mate’. I responded in the same manner, and he beamed a broad smile. “Yes, he’s the one,” I said, and we climbed in.

I’d been hankering to ride in one of these vehicles for days but had no idea that the wedding venue was still 40 minutes away, at full speed, and on a busy highway with a driver who needed us to shout him the road directions off Google Maps. Catherine loved it but wasn’t so happy about the way it affected her professionally styled hair or the way the wind shamelessly blew her dress about.

12 hours in China

After the wedding and back in Bangkok for two nights, we emerged from the underground train station about 30 metres from our hotel in the heart of Chinatown. What a fascinating experience. Great food, great people and many memorable sights.

On a walk out on our last evening in Thailand, we experienced a sight I doubt I’ll ever forget. There, in the middle of the city, we saw bats flying into trees at a Buddhist temple. These creatures were as large, if not bigger, than any seagull I’ve come across and absolutely mesmerized us and several other passers-by.

Early the next morning, we were on a two-hour flight to China, followed by a 12-hour layover in Guangzhou before taking the final leg home. We wanted to see something of China, and we’re so glad we took that first nervous step outside the airport.

I don’t know why I was more nervous than usual as we fronted up to customs officials to ask what we needed before stepping outside. We knew we didn’t need a Viza, but there’s always that chance we’d missed something.

All our fears disappeared, however, when we were met with a hearty laugh and a big smile from a uniformed officer who said in perfect English, “Ah, you guys are New Zealanders. You can go anywhere. How long are you staying?” Twelve hours, we responded. He laughed again and said we should stay for at least a week! “And get out of the city. It’s much nicer further out,” he said.

Another underground train ride and forty-five minutes later, we stood on a spacious walkway in a beautifully modern city centre, which was amazingly quiet despite masses of traffic all around. Almost all the vehicles were electric.

It was such a short visit, but it provided a treasure trove of memories. We visited a tiny fraction of an underground mall that was almost the size of the Auckland CBD. You can gauge its size by the pictures we took of the lighted walkway and park space on top of it. Mall entrances were everywhere.

Thanks to modern technology language was never a barrier in China or Thailand. If you can’t understand a menu, a building sign or the local language, Google Translate is a big help.

We were under the impression that Google would not be available in China, but perhaps because we were hooked through Spark NZ’s roaming service, we received wider access than we expected. Not that it was ever a problem, of course. In twelve hours, how hard is it to stay off Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.?

And herein lies a question. What was it that made me so nervous about China? Was it a prejudice I’d grown up with? Or, perhaps, did it have something to do with comments I read in Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus on the way over?

I mean, all we did was stop over in China for a time and enjoy every moment of it. Still, I couldn’t help but reflect that I was too young to travel behind what was once called the Iron Curtain. Never did I expect the world would one day be divided by a silicon curtain instead.

The wedding