Phrao

I'm sitting in the cool of the restaurant at Doi Farang resort. Breakfast is over and the sun is beginning to emerge from behind the rain laden clouds. It will not be cool for long. The mountains are still wreathed in the cloud which renders the sky the colour of pensioners hair. When they finally emerge from their cloak they will be quite unlike the mountains of New Zealand but much larger, grander, jagged and seeming physically impossible as if they were thrown up by some giant in the throws of a tantrum.

It's good to be back in one of the places that I feel at home and to fall asleep to the night sounds of the lizards and insects which to me form the definitive soundtrack of this country.

Arriving in Chiang Mai on a flight from Bangkok I'd survived a landing in which the pilot attempted to drive the aircraft through the tarmac and from my seat I saw the insides of a 737 flex in alarming ways. WhatI find even more alarming is that they will turn the thing around and fly it again after subjecting it to these stresses. When we stop at the terminal the pilot, in the understatement of the decade, apologises for'the bumpy landing'. Two days later my spine is still aching from the impact.

My first action in Chiang Mai is to hire a bike and ride up to Phrao. The bike quickly demonstrates it's various limitations and proves to have an eighty kilometre per hour maximum safe speed. It also has a problem with the cooling system and a nasty oil leak but it gets us there OK in the end. 

I soak in the pleasantly warm water of the pool at Doi Farang, a cold beer within easy reach. My companion is splashing around in the shallow end and I've given up on a half hearted attempt at teaching her swim. I lie back and watch the light play on the eastern hills through the trees of the resort. To the west across the valley the mountains are hidden in dirty black cloud. Lightening dances and the sky grumbles. Not long now and we'll have to leave the pool as the covers must go on before the rain.

Soon the heavens open. We shelter in our bungalow and watch the lightening, now almost directly overhead. The nearest strike is instantaneous with the thunder and the sound is identical to a bomb going off on an American war movie; a screaming rush and then a deafening crash.