Today was my last acupuncture treatment and it occurred this morning at 9:00 am. I told the doctor that I couldn’t tell if the treatments were doing anything positive at all. She understood, and said that my nerves could be to far damage to respond to acupuncture. Today was her last shot for credibility and Dr. Rungrat knew that. She got aggressive with the needles and really went after it. I almost jumped out of my skin when the first penetration punctured my buttocks. The following six needles didn’t get any less painful and she turned up the volume on the electric current. A monk offering last rites would not have been surprising to see pop up at my bedside. As usual the first fifteen minutes were agony. I’m in pain lying on my side and I can’t adjust my body to see if another position would be any better. The two nurses standing next to me stopped giggling. Thirty minutes later I scraped myself off the table, my eyeballs felt swollen and boiled and my hip and lower back did not want to budge. Dr. Rungrat suggested I rest today, no Pilates. If I think these treatments are helping me, I should come back tomorrow and schedule appointments for Wednesday, Friday and Monday. If not, she was sorry, and said she did everything she could, I might need an operation after all. There was only one word that ran through my brain, Yuck.
The Power House Gym was on the way out of town so I stopped by and cancelled my Pilates appointment. Then I kept heading northwest out of town. It was an overcast day with scattered intermittent showers. I thought it would be a good day to find the Pong Deud Hot Springs and soak my body, relax, and reflect on my physical condition. According to the map the hot springs was about ninety kilometers outside of Chiang Mai with a couple of lakes, the town of Mae Malai, and the Mae Ta Man elephant ranch spaced nicely as distractions along on the way.
Meanwhile, my social life may be perking up. I secretly knew a shinny blue set of wheels and the Beach Boys signing away in my imagination would do the trick. A women named YO contacted me via the DateinAsia dating site. I mention only her because out of the dozen daily emails I get she was the only one that I considered meeting. Mostly, I’m bombarded by a tsunami of Pilipino women that jam the airways selecting me as the warm soul they will extract from loneliness if I would release them from the bonds off poverty. The Beach Boy’s gave way to Bobby -- It ain’t me babe, it ain’t me you’re looking for.
YO seemed like a nice safe distraction. YO is a thirty-two year old graduate student form the University of Chiang Mai with a Masters degree in Agriculture. There was not one sexy thing about her photograph. She was more of the brainy nerdy type, with a figure like the Liberty bell. She had broad shoulders a narrow waist and big hips, like so many northern Thai women, the product of a thousand years of genes working in the rice fields. But something sounded interesting about her and attracted me. Emily Deatherage would be especially proud. After my last breakup with Lydia, her advice was I should date fat women. This is as close as you’re going to get Emily. Besides, this could be a chance of a lifetime, I couldn’t imagine going another day without an in depth discussion of, The art and science of seed perching in Chiang Mai County beginning in the early 1900’s.
In addition to YO, I had a very nice mature women offer to take me to dinner this Friday. I’d tell you her name but I don’t know it. She works across the street from the hotel in a small shop with a sign that reads, Thai Message School. It’s also where I drop off my laundry and got a haircut last week. My future date is a bit of a clown with fine bronze skin, and the physical presence of a seasoned athlete. I noticed her finely shaped buttocks on more than one occasion. She started a teasing game when she saw me getting on my Honda for the first time and offered to change her business to a driving school, because I needed one. Since I arrived at Chiang Mai she has stood me up on two message appointments and lost my laundry once. I must have really left an impression. Last night she apologized profusely in front of another employee about forgetting my message again. I gave her a hard time, and hit her with the ultimate, below the female belt, blow. I suggested that maybe she was getting old and losing her mind. She immediately offered another girl, a better masseuse, she admitted, if I would wait ten minutes. No way, I responded – just find my Fruit of the Looms and I’ll be on my way. This was all communicated with smiles, broken English and laughter.
It must have been the sarcastic remarks that won her heart, because she said she was leaving for Bangkok to visit her daughter until Friday but wanted to make it up to me. How about a home cooked dinner next Friday? I reluctantly confirmed, indicating one condition --- I only like Thai food – what were you planning to make?
* * *
As long as there are mountains and jungles there is hope, I thought to myself as my little Honda headed northwest through the drizzling rain. The drive out of town was on a congested divided highway, two lanes in each direction with a side shoulder for bicycles and motorbikes. The exhaust fumes were deadly and my eyes began inching, my throat stung with a poisonous venom. My left turn onto route 1095 at Mai Malai was the reprieve I was looking for – it turned into a narrow paved road with a high center crown and no striping. There wasn’t any traffic to speak of and the narrow asphalt road twisted into the heart of the jungle like the ferns and vines at the base of the adjacent trees. Everything here seemed to grow and flourish easily with nothing being cut or grazed. The high chirping squawks of the birds sang in a broken harmony of freedom. Water was abundant in streams and gullies. This is exactly what I was looking for -- scooting to a place I’ve never been with all my possessions on my back and feeling free. My gloomy mood lifted and I no longer gave my back problems a second thought. I felt a lightness of spirit, I felt stronger – and once again like Slaughter House 5, I regressed back in time to my youth. When I was younger I’d be doing this on my bike with fifty pounds of panniers and a map thirty days old stained from beer and coffee. But alas, this Honda isn’t bad.
I broke for lunch at a small nameless restaurant on the side of the road. I’m amazed at the quality of the food and the inexpensive prices. I had my standard fare of wide noodles, associated vegetables, pork, curry and soybean, along with an orange soda that I seem to gravitate too in third world countries, for a total price of 50 baht.
I never made it to the hot springs; I kept getting distracted at little footpaths that popped out of the jungle wall. I would stop and follow for one hundred meters or so into the jungle and find a spot to sit and think. Just for the adventure of it. It reminded me of a place and a time so long ago – when I would walk along a footpath so narrow your elbows would brush against the ferns and old boughs, where mankind had yet to exist. Within fifteen minutes the sun came out with a powerful blaze – brighter than anything I ever remembered and with it came a profound reassuring lift of my spirit.
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