Taxi's -- a late post from Chiang Mai

We were on our own this evening, so we decided to venture out to see what Chiang Mai looked like at night.

There’s a lot going on. It’s not as hectic or as full as hustle and bustle as Bangkok, but there’s a fairly large tourist population around, as well as lots of locals that are more than happy to engage in commerce with you, should you have a need for something.

We were just window shopping, so there was a lot of, “No, thank you,” but they never seemed to take it personally.

In walking around, it gave us a chance to talk about and reflect on some of the things we’d learned, and that Tuu had taught us. As might be imagined, Eddie grilled him about healthcare.

We found out that their school system is much like ours, 6 years of primary school, 6 of secondary and 4 years for a Bachelor’s degree. If you want to be a nurse, it takes 6 years, and if you want to be a doctor it takes 8 years.

Tuu has friends who are nurses (which like in the US is predominantly a female profession), and was of the opinion that it is a very hard job, although it pays very well because of the overtime involved.

Most people work 8 a.m. to 4:00 p.m, six days a week. Government employees are the exception, working 8 to 5, only 5 days a week.

A nurse will make about 15,000 Baht monthly – that’s roughly $450 US – but they get overtime for working private duty afterwards. This lets them jack up their income, although of course, they’re working killer hours to make that money.

After we’d walked around a bit, it was time to head back to our hotel. At first, we looked for a taxi but none were to be found. We were told that traditional taxis like we were used to were sometimes hard to come by in Chiang Mai, and since it was approaching 10:00 at night apparently they’d all gone off duty.

A shopkeeper, sensing our plight said, “You take Redcap. Is OK. No problem.”

A redcap, to be distinguished from a Tuk-Tuk, is essentially a pickup with a camper shell on the back, but is open on the sides. Where you might have had a window, it’s open air and there’s no tailgate. That means you may suck up a bit of diesel fumes, but hey, we’ve all got a few brain cells to spare, right?

The guy helped us flag one down, we showed him on a map where we were going (having figured out that most don’t read English and many can’t read the native language, either) and climbed in the back.

You can’t get a ride like this at Disneyland, especially not for 80 Baht ($2.43). It wasn’t scary at all as long as you held on, and we could follow the map well enough to figure out that we were generally going in the right direction. When you want to get the driver’s attention, you push a button on the ceiling and it rings a bell up front.

Thus we fell into bed with visions of tomorrow’s Elephant Adventure dancing in our heads.