Next stop: Chiang Mai, Thailand

Walking down Rachadamnoen Road through the historic heart of Chiang Mai

Seoul, South Korea, was the opening act of this two-week Asia vacation.  And it was an awesome incredible wonderful opening act.  But now is time for the headliner attraction:  Thailand.

Welcome to Chiang Mai indeed.  This is only my second time in Asia and my first visit to Thailand. That puts Thailand in the books as my 43rd country visited.

I am staying at the Lee Chiang Hotel.  I've not yet met Lee.

That was a joke.  His hotel, I mean, the hotel, is in a quiet residential area of Chiang Mai.

I signed up for one of those "free walking tours," where you pay by tips at the end of the tour.  The group is supposed to meet at 9:00 a.m. at the Tha Phae Gate on the east side of the historic inner city of Chiang Mai.  The historic inner city is a square with a moat around the perimeter.

I'm staying on the west side of the city, but the historic core is not that big.  It's about a 20 minute walk across town, and that's even with allowing time for tourist photography.

The main "boulevard," such as it is, through the heart of the historic core is Rachadamnoen Road.

Lots of overhead electrical wiring for a historic district.

One building I can positively identify is the provincial police headquarters building.

There's also a separate "tourist police" force, which I am guessing looks out for drunk tourists wandering aimlessly after dark.  The "tourist police" apparently also have an excellent command of the international language of global tourism:  English.

Not sure who this is a shrine to, but, unfortunately, with police work, there's always a shrine to be had.  And that's true throughout the world.

I made it to the Tha Phae Gate before 9:00 a.m.  It was packed with tourists and pigeons and tourists playing with pigeons.

Yes.  That's a thing at the Tha Phae Gate.  Tourists feed the pigeons and coax the dirty filthy creatures to land on their arms and shoulders.  Every so often someone makes a very loud noise -- apparently on purpose -- and the pigeons fly up but not away.  When the pigeons fly, you see a cascade of seeds, feathers, and possibly -- at least it looked like it to me -- pigeon droppings.  Good times.

What I did not see was a "free walking tour" guide.  I should have asked the tourism police.

Usually at these "free walking tour" meeting sites, there is someone with a clipboard or a phone checking people in.  Saw none of that.  Or the guide is dressed in some logo wear or is carrying some distinctive object.  Yellow umbrellas are popular globally for this.  Saw none of that, too.

This is Tha Phae Road heading away from Tha Phae Gate, toward the river.  Cool.

I waited around for about 15 or 20 minutes and it looked like I was stood up.

It also looked like this was not a very stout defensive gate.  Good thing Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes never attacked here.  This gate would have slowed the assault by about a tenth of a second, max.

Anyway, with no guide to guide me on my free walking tour, I realized that I had a phone with google maps on it.  I was going to do my own free walking tour.  And I wasn't going to have to tip anyone at the end.  I got so many great pictures that each stop on the walking tour is worth its own blog post.

Seoul Kiss (Good-bye)

This could be a street scene along Sambong-ro.
Hard to tell for sure as street-naming in Seoul does not follow American street-naming conventions,
as streets change names at intersections and side streets perpendicular to the main street get the sane name as the main street.

Last half-day in Seoul.  And I got to say:  what a great city.  I wish I had spent more time here than one full and two partial days I scheduled.  I didn't know.  Why didn't somebody tell me?

This is a series of random observations on my way out of town.  First of all, the cleanliness.

Seoul is a very clean city.  There is no litter anywhere.  But just try and find a trash can.  How does a city stay so clean when there is like, two trash cans, on the streets of a city of several million.  Las Vegas does not have nearly enough trash cans and we pay the price in litter everywhere.  Not Seoul. 

Second observation.  This is fast food in Seoul:

Street food.  I hardly saw any fast food.  There was a Burger King near my hotel.

Home of the whopper, you say?  Not just any Whopper.  This one is Home of the Bulgogi Whopper.  I had to try one.  The city does have all the international coffee chains (Starbucks, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf), and the donut franchises (Dunkin, Krispy Kreme), but I did not see a McDonald's or a Wendy's or any of the bland pizza chains.  I did see a Tim Horton's.  And a Jimmy John's.  But this is not a fast food town.

I did wander over to Gwanghwamun to pay a last visit to King Sejong:

But there was a political demonstration of some sort happening:

Lots of South Korean and U.S. flags being waved.  But amplified voices that sounded really really angry, which is rarely a good scene.  The crowd even held placards with an English language slogan familiar to many of us:  Stop the Steal.  I am guessing had to do with recent events whereby the South Korean president declared martial law and then was impeached by the legislature, unanimously I believe.  But I don't know.  I just that when a U.S. tourist sees a political demonstration in a foreign country:  get away from it.

And where did I get away to?  Lunch!

This was an outlet of the same Korean restaurant at which I ate in the upscale shopping mall in Dongdaemun Design Plaza.  With the untranslatable name.  This is basically a Korean diner, serving the Korean equivalent of diner food.  So what did I have?

In the orange dish are the Korean essentials:  kim chi and picked Korean radish.  The radish was excellent.  The kim chi?  It's an acquired taste that I am still in the process of acquiring.  This was a bit on the fresh side as it has not fermented into full funkiness yet.  In the red basket, deep-fried seaweed rolls.  Filled with rice.  The main course was pork cutlet, known to you eaters of Japanese food as tonkatsu.  Only this was tonkatsu with a twist.  And the twist was a bit of Wisconsin.  Gooey melty cheese!  Almost like a pork parmigiana, only with tonkatsu sauce and not marinara.  And in the front was a cole slaw with a dressing that tasted a lot like Marzetti's.  And Marzetti's is the best slaw dressing in the world.

What's my final verdict on Seoul?  I want to come back.  This is not really a sightseeing city, although there are sights to see.  It's more an "absorb the atmosphere" city.  And there's more to absorb.  Off to my next destination.