depressed as I boarded the plane to fly out of Brisbane, but at the same time I felt strangely powerful â even invulnerable. I was ready to die for my newfound cause, and as a result I felt like nothing anyone could say or do could scare me.
My sister worked for Emirates Airlines, and she had come through with a flight to Singapore; business class, no less. When I got there I bought an onward flight to Thailand. I had decided to go to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand rather than to Bangkok, as I'd learned that Chiang Mai was a hub for trafficked kids.
Flying into Chiang Mai I could see rugged bush-covered hills that stretched away to the border with Burma. The ground was a patchwork of shades of that vivid emerald green that is so peculiar to Asia. This is a wilder part of Thailand; tourists come to the north to get closer to nature, rather than lie on beaches. You could trek through the jungle, ride an elephant and, if you were that way inclined, you could buy a child.
The city itself is a jumble of the old and new, office blocks and shopping centres interspersed between tin-roofed shacks, bars and traditional Thai teak houses. The city is surrounded by walls â ancient fortifications built to keep invaders from Burma out â and while these have largely crumbled, some sections and key gates have been preserved. A moat also runs around the outside of the city, giving it something of an exotic feel.
Reading my guidebook on the plane I learned that Chiang Mai city has a population of nearly one million people, more than half the total population of Chiang Mai province. Its name means ânew cityâ, although it's anything but. King Mengrai founded the city in 1296, and it succeeded Chiang Rai as the capital of the Lanna kingdom. These days Chiang Mai is a thriving, bustling regional city with bars and late-night restaurants everywhere, but clustered in particularly large numbers on either side of the moat's eastern flank, in the Thapae Gate area along Loy Kroh Road.
I got a tuk tuk from the airport into town and booked myself into a room in a traditional teak guest house where a number of different Thai families and couples lived. My room cost me the equivalent of about sixty Australian dollars a month. At the time the average wage in Thailand was the equivalent of about a hundred and sixty Australian dollars a month. A meal might cost about $1.20. I had decided to go for traditional accommodation as I didn't want to have anything to do with western backpackers and I wanted to limit my contact with expats; I needed to immerse myself in the local culture and start learning the language as soon as possible.
My lodgings were spartan but clean. Each pair of rooms shared a bathroom, consisting of a squat toilet and hand-held shower. Each room had an internal door providing access to the bathroom. To avoid embarrassment, the trick was to latch the neighbour's door when you entered the bathroom so that you wouldn't be disturbed, and then unlatch it when you were finished, locking your own door when you were back in your room. Unsurprisingly, all of the residents, including me, sometimes forgot to lock or unlock the door. I had Thais burst in on me a couple of times and at other times I couldn't get into the bathroom because the next-door people had latched my door shut when they were in there and then forgotten to unlock it. It was as comedic as it was frustrating.
Unfortunately, I soon learned that Thai people love television. They watch it all day and all night, at high volume. Sometimes I'd lie in bed with the pillow over my ears trying to drown out the noise coming through the thin wooden walls at three in the morning.
Near to my guest house was a travel agency that doubled as a language school. I met one of the English teachers, a Thai woman who called herself Anne (Thais sometimes anglicise their names), and asked her to start teaching me Thai. I tried to speak the language at every possible
My sister worked for Emirates Airlines, and she had come through with a flight to Singapore; business class, no less. When I got there I bought an onward flight to Thailand. I had decided to go to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand rather than to Bangkok, as I'd learned that Chiang Mai was a hub for trafficked kids.
Flying into Chiang Mai I could see rugged bush-covered hills that stretched away to the border with Burma. The ground was a patchwork of shades of that vivid emerald green that is so peculiar to Asia. This is a wilder part of Thailand; tourists come to the north to get closer to nature, rather than lie on beaches. You could trek through the jungle, ride an elephant and, if you were that way inclined, you could buy a child.
The city itself is a jumble of the old and new, office blocks and shopping centres interspersed between tin-roofed shacks, bars and traditional Thai teak houses. The city is surrounded by walls â ancient fortifications built to keep invaders from Burma out â and while these have largely crumbled, some sections and key gates have been preserved. A moat also runs around the outside of the city, giving it something of an exotic feel.
Reading my guidebook on the plane I learned that Chiang Mai city has a population of nearly one million people, more than half the total population of Chiang Mai province. Its name means ânew cityâ, although it's anything but. King Mengrai founded the city in 1296, and it succeeded Chiang Rai as the capital of the Lanna kingdom. These days Chiang Mai is a thriving, bustling regional city with bars and late-night restaurants everywhere, but clustered in particularly large numbers on either side of the moat's eastern flank, in the Thapae Gate area along Loy Kroh Road.
I got a tuk tuk from the airport into town and booked myself into a room in a traditional teak guest house where a number of different Thai families and couples lived. My room cost me the equivalent of about sixty Australian dollars a month. At the time the average wage in Thailand was the equivalent of about a hundred and sixty Australian dollars a month. A meal might cost about $1.20. I had decided to go for traditional accommodation as I didn't want to have anything to do with western backpackers and I wanted to limit my contact with expats; I needed to immerse myself in the local culture and start learning the language as soon as possible.
My lodgings were spartan but clean. Each pair of rooms shared a bathroom, consisting of a squat toilet and hand-held shower. Each room had an internal door providing access to the bathroom. To avoid embarrassment, the trick was to latch the neighbour's door when you entered the bathroom so that you wouldn't be disturbed, and then unlatch it when you were finished, locking your own door when you were back in your room. Unsurprisingly, all of the residents, including me, sometimes forgot to lock or unlock the door. I had Thais burst in on me a couple of times and at other times I couldn't get into the bathroom because the next-door people had latched my door shut when they were in there and then forgotten to unlock it. It was as comedic as it was frustrating.
Unfortunately, I soon learned that Thai people love television. They watch it all day and all night, at high volume. Sometimes I'd lie in bed with the pillow over my ears trying to drown out the noise coming through the thin wooden walls at three in the morning.
Near to my guest house was a travel agency that doubled as a language school. I met one of the English teachers, a Thai woman who called herself Anne (Thais sometimes anglicise their names), and asked her to start teaching me Thai. I tried to speak the language at every possible
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