In spring 2010, after coming back from Boston, I started thinking about going abroad. A college classmate who was doing a PhD in the US suggested I take the GRE and apply for a fully funded computer science PhD there. I had no appetite for a PhD, but I also had no idea what else to do — mostly because I had no money — so I agreed to take the GRE first.
Without any real motivation, I barely studied after registering, and the score showed it. My classmate said that score would not get me full funding at a good school; it might only work at a weaker one, and she suggested I retake it. For some reason I have forgotten, she recommended taking the test in Thailand instead of China.
I quickly booked a round-trip ticket to Bangkok for late May and early June 2011. Still uninterested in a PhD, I did not study again. As May approached, I had not even scheduled the GRE. But the ticket was booked, so I might as well go to Thailand for a holiday.
The first overseas vacation
Thanks to my first job at a foreign company, I had 15 days of annual leave, so I planned 10 days in Thailand: one week in Bangkok and three days in Chiang Mai.
I prepared seriously, which meant:
- booking a guesthouse run by two Taiwanese women
- searching for a list of common tourist scams in Thailand
- booking accommodation in Chiang Mai
That was it. I did not even exchange money. I flew there with a VISA credit card and nothing else.
That trip started the travel habit I still have: sleep half the day, play half the day. I cannot handle a special-forces-style itinerary. It is not just a matter of wanting to; my body simply does not cooperate. If I do one intense day, the next day is ruined, so on average I still get only half a day of effective sightseeing. I would rather play for half a day every day and feel comfortable.
Late May in Thailand was already very hot. I only needed short sleeves or dresses. The two Taiwanese women running the guesthouse told me I really should exchange some Thai baht to make things easier.
Eating in Bangkok
I woke up close to noon every day and went to the guesthouse for the breakfast they provided. Sometimes I ate rice noodles downstairs. A mobile vendor sold them right outside the guesthouse, and the taste was not like Vietnamese pho, which has spread around the world from Southeast Asia. The broth was much richer than pho. I never found that noodle dish again in Thai restaurants anywhere else. The topping was duck neck, which surprised me a lot. In 2011, duck neck still seemed like a Wuhan specialty rather than a nationwide snack. Finding it with rice noodles in Thailand was an unexpected delight.
Bangkok was excellent for eating. I never needed to carry water when I went out; coconut water and other juices on the street were extremely cheap. For lunch and dinner I went to night markets for seafood fried rice. By the day I left, I finally could not stand the daily spice and seasoning anymore. My last two meals were sandwiches from 7-Eleven.
One step away from a scam
As I said, before going to Thailand I searched for a comprehensive guide to tourist scams there. They were all fairly similar, mostly staged consumption traps. I thought I had memorized them, I was not joining any tours, and I was just wandering alone, so I should be fine.
One day, while sitting in the sun at a temple, I met a local man who chatted with me in broken English. He asked whether I liked Thailand and told me there was another especially good attraction nearby, some temple or other. In the 2010s, a certain travel legend was popular online: famous sights had all become too commercialized, and to really experience a place you had to visit small spots known only to locals. When I heard his description, I felt I had discovered a treasure and asked him how to get there.
I have to say, the scams of more than a decade ago were still quite plain. This man, who claimed to be a local tuk-tuk driver, said he could take me there. I got in and asked how much it cost. He said it was free.
A tuk-tuk is a bit like the mamu three-wheeled motor rickshaws that were once common in Hubei in the 2000s — I do not know whether they still exist now. In 2011, the common street transport in Thailand was the tuk-tuk and motorcycle taxis. If the driver had charged me a little, I might not have become alert. If he had been in some other profession and offered me a lift because he was going the same way, I might not have been suspicious either. But a driver offering to take me somewhere for free was not right.
Then I remembered that in the scam guides, those staged consumption traps often began with a trip to an attraction like this.
I was already in the vehicle, and my brain raced to work out how to get away. I had come to Thailand alone, but earlier in the conversation, for some reason I still cannot recall, I had said I was traveling with a friend who was resting at the hotel while I wandered alone. That story helped. I immediately told the tuk-tuk driver that my friend resting at the hotel had sent me a message saying she felt unwell, and I needed to get back to check on her.
The driver was disappointed. He tried repeatedly to persuade me, saying the attraction had limited opening hours, that if I did not go today it would be closed tomorrow, and that my time in Bangkok was limited, so I might never see it in my life. I insisted on returning to the hotel. He had to drop me at a nearby pier. The scammers of those years were still relatively innocent — when the soft sell failed, he simply gave up.
A crash course in Thai history and politics
The main sights in Bangkok are the various royal palaces and temples. As I looked at them, I crammed a lot of Thai history, from King Taksin to Rama IX. After I got back, I even wrote a blog post about Thai history. Because I forgot to renew the server for my earliest blog, that little explainer disappeared with the wind. I toured very casually and did not take many photos. When I was organizing my hard drive, I could not even find any photos from Thailand.
Thailand happened to have an election in early July 2011. I was there in late May, and from Bangkok to Chiang Mai there were campaign advertisements everywhere. Rama IX was still on the throne, but Thailand had frequent coups. The crown prince — now Rama X — had a very poor reputation, and there were widespread rumors that the Thai succession would end there. In 2011, a Thai-American citizen was arrested for carrying a banned royal biography, and the United States lodged a protest with Thailand. That was how I learned that Thailand has a very severe lese-majeste law.
In Bangkok I met a Thai guide who spoke English and curiously asked her whether it was really forbidden to say bad things about the king. She warned me that, for safety, I should not say them. Perhaps because it was an election year, I remember Thais at the time being very willing to talk about politics. A cleaning auntie working at the Chiang Mai guesthouse happily told me she was going to vote for Yingluck. I asked why she was voting for Yingluck. The auntie gestured and explained: Yingluck was Thaksin’s sister. During Thaksin’s time in power, ordinary people like her had more job opportunities. That offended many people’s interests, which led to Thaksin being removed by a coup, so she was going to vote for his sister.
I quickly crammed the history of Thaksin’s rule. I found that northern Thailand really was his stronghold. He was so popular that after he was ousted and went into exile, any family member they put forward could win. When a military coup declared his party illegal, they formed a new party and put forward a new person. When another coup declared the new party illegal, they formed another party and put forward another person. Before Yingluck ran, her brother-in-law — Thaksin’s brother-in-law — had already served a term as prime minister.
My understanding of Thai politics and economics is not deep, and the knowledge I crammed came mainly from Wikipedia. Thaksin’s full name is Thaksin Shinawatra. The Wikipedia content was mixed — if anything, more criticism than praise — and described him as a very populist politician. But if the comparison is with the military and the royal palace behind it, perhaps only that type of politician could rise and fight back.
(Writing this, I looked it up again and found that the current prime minister of Thailand is Thaksin’s daughter, who took office in 2024. In the 2023 Thai election, the party with the most votes was Move Forward, which advocates social democracy and progressivism; it won 38.01% of the popular vote. Thai people were already moving forward, but the Thai military used the same method to declare the party illegal and forcibly dissolve it. Pheu Thai, organized by Thaksin’s allies, came second with 28.86%.)
The auntie at the Chiang Mai guesthouse in 2011 gave me my first direct and clear education about the right to vote. More than a decade has passed, and I often think of her.
Taking the train in Thailand
Another vivid memory is taking the train in Thailand. I bought a sleeper ticket from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, departing at night and arriving the next morning. My calculation was neat: leave at night, sleep through, and check into the Chiang Mai guesthouse the next morning, without wasting daytime hours.
Then the train was late. Through my best efforts to communicate with the people waiting around me, I finally understood that train delays in Thailand at that time were commonplace. Two hours was the starting point, four hours was normal, and a train that was not canceled counted as a victory.
I really dislike the way some Chinese people now proudly brag about how amazing their high-speed rail is, as if it can beat Europe and America and kick Asia, Africa, and Latin America around. In the 1990s, delays and late trains on Chinese railways were still very common. In the 1990s, when I went to school in the city, I traveled back to my hometown during winter and summer vacations with relatives and people from the same village in freight train cars. I was not yet ten. The adults led me as we waited, and I did not know the exact time. I only knew that a coal train would stop there, and if there were empty cars, some people could squeeze in. I squatted in the freight car with the adults from my village all the way to the station in my hometown town, then walked a few li back to the village. In 2024, in Henan, women migrant workers took a refrigerated truck home to save money, and dry ice sublimation caused them to suffocate to death. When I saw that news, I remembered traveling home in a coal train with the adults from my village when I was little. Surviving to now has required a fair amount of luck.
It has not been long since we developed ourselves, yet some people act arrogantly as if they do not know the road they came from. 🙄
That day the train was four hours late and moved very slowly. By the time I reached Chiang Mai, it was already the next afternoon. At that time, sleeper berths in China were barely wide enough for one person to lie flat; at night it was hard even to turn over. Thai sleeper trains had only two levels, upper and lower, and were very spacious, so I actually slept quite well at night. The next morning I messaged the Chiang Mai guesthouse owner to apologize that my train was late and I would not check in until the afternoon. Her reply was very kind. The gist was that delays were normal, and the fact that the train had not been canceled meant I was lucky.
Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai was already very popular in the 2010s. There were many white people on the streets, riding motorbikes up mountains and to the sea. They may have been an early batch of digital nomads, though at that time they were not very digital — just nomads.
I stayed three days and confirmed that Chiang Mai was not for me. Public transport there was not developed, and many locals and tourists rode motorbikes. The main travel activities were outdoor and wild-adventure types, which really did not suit me. After walking a few loops around the old city, I simply shrank back to the guesthouse and sat in the sun.
There was nothing wrong with sitting in the sun at the guesthouse, of course — but I could do that in an air-conditioned shopping mall in Hangzhou. There was really no need to spend a large sum of money to go to Chiang Mai for it.
In recent years I often hear people say that going on vacation is about finding a place temporarily cut off from work or current life, a short-term escape and separation. That solution has never worked for me. I like the idiom pull the firewood from under the cauldron; I only like solving problems at the root. Of course there are many root causes in this world that I truly cannot solve, but for problems in my own life, I must trace them to the source. Whoever creates the problem, I solve them. A problem can remain unsolved for a while, but I must have a plan. Without a plan I cannot sleep, and no matter where I escape to, I still cannot sleep.
Before I went to Chiang Mai, the introductions I saw online described it as a hidden paradise. It was indeed not my paradise.