The Old City and The Giant Prawn.

My shabby room, complete with a Tom and Jerry pillow case! 

Cleaning service!

Colorful pork buns@the floating market

I left Koh Tao on an afternoon boat. It was like leaving home, Ali and a bad ass English couple I was lucky enough to befriend saw me off. Sweetening the goodbye with the chance I might get to see them in Chiang Mai. 

Walking down the streets, I saw people I knew, Georgie and Lydia, best friends seeing the world, Phillip who partied too hard every night but took beautiful pictures. The woman who moved from Australia to start her life over, working at the corner cafe. It's so easy to find a life, to open a window onto the beautiful going on's that belong to a piece of land. It's personal and intimate and once you see it you can't help but hold the sweetness, close.

On the boat ride I sat next to an English bloke who had clearly done too many balloons of laughing gas in the weeks prior. 

He told me everything from the flavor of his cousins wedding cake, the sewer systems he works on back home, his high blood pressure and getting locked out of his room the night before. 

We bumped into the dock and with a kiss on the cheek, we went our separate ways, happy strangers once again. But I can never not know that his cousin had a three tear cheese cake at her wedding. 

Is there any way to meet a fellow human, and in even the smallest of ways, be changed forever? 

The trains here are wonderful. They keep an element of surprise alive inside us all. My first train pulled up 3 hours early and still arrived 2 hours late. My next train was 3 hours late and left from a completely different terminal.  

It's great fun. 

My ticket was for Arythata. It was Thailand's grand capital from 1300s-1700s back when the country was lovingly called Siam. 

Ayutthaya is filled with Wats, ruins and history.   

I spent my first day on the back of a Thai boy's motorbike speeding through a whirlwind temple tour. 

He was happy to have someone to speak English with and I got an insider view and a history lesson. 

My next day I went to one of Thailand's most famous floating markets. Where elephant taxis lumbered by. I couldn't help but freeze, I stood by the gate for 20 minutes, just watching the way they moved. Incredible! 

While waiting to cross a roundabout, I spotted another tourist. His bike, like mine, was too small for his body with a big rusty basket tied to the bars. 

He made a right turn and pulled up next to me.

"So where are we going?" 

His name was Alain, from Tuscany. 

He was in Thailand 4 days before flying to Sidney, without a job, apartment or connections, to start a life. 

We went to a leaning stupa and wandered. He said "I believe in trees, maybe they're a good religion..." 

We walked into a quart yard, there were roosters statues maybe 7ft tall. Then there were small ones, medium sized ones, we came to a road lined with thousands on brightly colored rooster... 

I couldn't tell you what or why... 

And we were not under he influence of illegal substances. 

Alain told me Ayutthaya was famous for a type of giant prawn. Bigger than a lobster, tougher and oh so delicious! There was a fish market outside of town, he heard, that sold them. 

We had a prawn drawing contest, trying to think of what they actually looked like.

Off on our shady, rented bikes. Not knowing where we were going. In search of the giant prawn. 

Person after person we stopped and showed them the hand drawn prawn. 

They nodded and made hand gestures as if to say "Just cross the railroad tracks, passed the 7/11, make a u-turn on the freeway, go under the bridge, pass the old man on the left and then you, my friend, shall find the giant prawns you seek." 

The back tire on my beautiful bike finally gave way to the years of abuse. Giving my bike a thumping sound of fresh meat smacking the butcher block. 

The gestures got shorter the longer we traveled. Until while asking an old man on the left, two guys pulled up on their motorbike, grabbed the prawn picture out of his hands and waved us on. As we peddled behind them Alain asked "Do they want to make deal with us? I don't know, they are friendly people but they do not have friendly faces." 

But like the Thai people have proven to me, they were kind for no good reason and helpful because we were in need. The fish market had been found. It was authentic, to say the least. Not another whitie in the crowd, just locals treating themselves to a fresh seafood dinner. 

We spent another 45 minutes walking around, looking in tanks of shrimp, squid, and the array of sea life. Asking "No, no, no the big one. We're looking for the BIG one." 

Alas, the elusive giant prawn remains a mystery, a mere story to inspire children towards slumber. 

Being Italian and loving seafood, Alain ordered a whole BBQed squid, a pound of shrimp, rice, curried crab, seafood soup and beers. 

We made our way home, again relying on kind, helpful strangers. 

On my way home I stopped at the train station.

"Dii chan bpai Chiang Mai." 

I have a ticket on a morning train bound for northern Chang Mai. 14 hours, 700km and a whole lotta time to...snac-think, I meant think!