Chiang Mai: The Pig Roast Crowd

This past Saturday I went to a pig roast. It was a going-away party given by the couple that used to own the Pirates Cove. They are leaving to tour around on their Harley, then go back to the US for five months or so. After that they will head south, Mexico into Central America, then on to South America. He's retired from the Navy, some sort of underwater demolition work. After he retired they lived on a sailboat and went up and down the East Coast. Then they decided they were ready to settle down, and bought the bar. They were wrong.

The pig roast guy set up on the sidewalk and served roast pork, potato salad, and rolls. The pig was free, but we had to buy our drinks. I had two scotch rocks. These days that's practically enough to put me under. My drinking days are over. Somewhere in my middle forties I just lost the ability to handle alcohol. My theory is that we are all allocated a certain number of drinks (or alcohol units, as Bridget Jones would put it) in our lifetime. Due to a couple of clusters of heavy drinking years, I used all mine up around the time I turned 44.

Anyway, I was sitting at a table with some people, looking around, and realized how different they are from the people I usually meet. I don't hang out in bars, for one thing. I go to this one for the wi-fi. So I'm looking around. Major tattoos. One guy has a Mohawk that looks more like a palomino's mane. There are a few people who teach ESL (English as a Second Language). They keep their tattoos where they can be covered by a short-sleeved shirt. There were also a couple of old men with young Thai girlfriends or wives.

I started to wonder. When did Mohawks come back? They remind me of high school, when getting one was good for a week's suspension. Isn't this the third time around? The late fifties, the punk era, and now? Maybe they are immortal, like platform shoes. You can just never quite kill them off.

So I'm sitting there thinking that I don't really like tattoos. I hate motorcycles, motorbikes, motorscooters, even mopeds. I find the idea of the old men with the young girlfriends off-putting. I'm in a strange place, for me. Yet everyone is really quite normal. It's me and my old-lady biases that are out of place.

I guess travel is broadening my horizons in ways I never imagined.