Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Snap Judgments

Voila! ... The BAB Chiang Mai Volunteer House/Office. Current place of work and life.





And introducing .. Don and Porn. Don is a legal intern with BAB and a student at Chiang Mai University, and Porn is the woman who runs the house here. She handles everything - buying office furniture, interpreting for the apartment hunt, cooking.. 
generally taking care of business.



ME in Chiang Mai. Wandering the neighbourhood:



And outside the wall of the old city:



The lonely planet section on Chiang Mai lists roughly 20 Wats under the Sights section. This is one of them. The others are similar I think. I'm not really a Wat person.



A street in the old city. Note the BEAUTIFUL FLOWER/TREE.



And finally, last but not least, because it amuses me - The "Tourist" Candy Bar.



Anyways, the title of the post - snap judgments - has been on my mind a lot lately. Chiang Mai is a great place for people watching, especially in the tourist area. From my recent people watching expeditions I've come up with a few classic categories of traveler, such as:

The Beige Pragmatic Traveler: identifiable by their khaki shorts, funcational sandals, fanny pack and easily accessible map.

The Euro Neon Traveler: noted for their bold clashing colors, chain smoking and indignant expression.

The Embracing-the-traveling-a-little-too-much-traveler: easily the most stand-out of the groups. Noted for: adopting native styles of dress within 5 minutes of arrival, dreadlocks or shaved heads, bright flowly gaucho pants, excessive journal writing etc.

Then in Chiang Mai you have the retiree crowd, with a disproportoinate number of older single white men. But that is a whole different crowd that can be subdivided - perhaps I will attempt it some other time. 

 

1 comment:

Verena said...

I like this snap judgements section. I would like photos to go with corresponding descriptions. The end.