SENDING LIGHT AND HOPE UP INTO THE DARK

This evening here in Chiang Mai a bunch of us sent light up into the dark. What am I saying? you ask. Well there's an amazing phenomenon here, a kind of cross between a balloon and a firecracker, that you can buy to celebrate an event or just for fun. It's made of paper, a large sack like a balloon nearly four feet in diameter, but with an opening below it. Underneath hangs a paraffin lamp. You light the lamp, holding the paper globe away from the flame and over it. The hot air from the flame fills the ballooning paper, inflates it, and then eventually lifts it into the air, where it floats upward.

Some days here there are a lot of these being launched, other days there's the occasional one or two drifting in the night sky.

Gary and Trish had bought the lantern, shaped like a monkey's face, to honour the baby daughter than Boom and Jayan had four months ago. We were all there, lighting the lantern or watching, The baby was happy and oblivious of the fuss. Once the paraffin was lit, we stood there holding the paper away from the flame and waiting for the hot air to inflate it. In that slightly anxioous moment the moneky's face seemed to leer at our hopefulness. (Of course there's the idea that if it inflates and floats well up into the sky, it's a harbinger of good luck; a failure to rise up is the reverse, so there is a little tension around these lightings.)

Finally we let the lantern go, and up it floated, brilliantly light against the dark sky, the growing crescent moon the only decor. It floated over toward the apartment building and seemed to hover, hesitantly. Argh! Would it get caught on a balcony? Surely not! Would it rise up over and beyond the building? Perhaps? And yet? Eventually, after some heart in mouth moments, it drifted up onto the rroof and then on up into the midnight blue sky from there.

So she's well launched, this lovely baby!

All this light and fire in the dark comes just three weeks after another time of light in the dark in Chiang Mai, this one Loy Kratong. Chiang Mai is a big place for Loy Kratong, a festival of lights at the full moon in November. A kratong is traditionally a small leaf raft with a candle on it. Now you can buy elaborate kratongs of course, but at its origin it's a simple candle on a leaf Each person launches a kratong, sets it floating down a stream or river. Bad deeds and bad luck float down the river on the little raft, freeing each of us. It's a lovely concept, and a relief too.

Now what are we going to do with this freedom?

Talking today with Tiger, a man in his eighties who settled here in Chiang Mai about twenty years ago, I was reminded of how differently each of us engage with the world and with the future. Tiger set off from the UK, after retiring in his fifties, to travel and engage with the world. He didn't have a plan. Eventually, a good ten years later, he settled here in Chiang Mai. But he started out with the confidence that he'd find his way, and also with the urge to be surprised, to not-know and to find out and trust to luck that what was coming next would be interesting.

Another approach at retirement or even any time in life, is to try to make sure, to tie things down and aim for certainty. I sort of understand that urge for security, the wish to have a sure outcome. But how uninteresting, too. If the future consists only of what I have planned for it, then it's llimited to what I can imagine, and that's so puny compared to all the possibilities the world has to offer (possibilties good and bad, yes, I agree, but wonderfully unknown and infinite).

So when we launch a little raft with a candle on it, or send a fire-powered paper lantern up into the dark sky, we're gambling and hoping, launching ourselves metaphorically into the future, eyes open, hope surging, fingers crossed, that the light will float on upward and that we will have good luck and find our way.

YIELDING WITH GRACE AS WE MOVE FORWARD

The sky is a welcome soft blue, the air soft with a tinge of coolness, the sun generously warming: Chiang Mai in January. I feel so fortunate to be here.

Yesterday, as I was in the main big market (the name has vanished from my brain as I write this), I was reminded of how different things are here. Of course there's the climate, and the amazing variety of fresh fruit (dragonfruit, jackfruit, papaya, etc etc) and vegetables (where to begin listing them???) as well as aromatics (galangal, krachai, lemongrass, lime leaves, beautiful small purple shallots and on and on). But the more profound difference is how people conduct themselves in the street.

The market feels like a maze, at least the first times you visit, but is actually organised as a grid of lanes and side alleys, with covered areas in between, where trucks loaded with produce sit in rows parked, waiting for buyers, and rows of small stalls offer food, tools, and more food, of every description.

The alleys and lanes are lined with shops and impromptu sellers of everything from meat or frogs or fish or produce, to sticky rice with sankaya, or grilled pork on a stick. And the narrow space down the centre of the alleys and lanes is packed with people on foot, as well as the occasional motorcycle and even more difficult-to-digest truck. Some people push a trolley that carries a huge basket, into which they load masses of raw food as they work their way through their shopping list; these are people buying for restaurants and street vendors. Others are there to shop for just a household's daily needs. And apart from these buyers, there are also guys carrying huge loads or pushing carts loaded to the max, bringing supplies or produce into the market.

The difficulty is that the crowds, moving in all directions, with their awkward loads, mean that no-one gets anywhere very easily or quickly. There's a lot of stopping and waiting, while a truck extricates itself from a side-lane, or two guys with trolleys headed in opposite directions thread their way past each other.

In North America and in many places in Europe, this would lead to shouting and swearing, frustration and intensity. In the market here in Chiang Mai, people just accommodate: they pause, let the other guy through, step aside, weave in and out in a kind of unorchestrated very mindful and complex ballet, pause to joke with a friend or a stranger in passing. It's a lovely entertaining and enlightening human spectacle.

Out on the roads here, the approach is the same. People pass even when they can see another car coming, not to court a head-on disaster, but because they know they can rely on the other guy to slow a little to let them get by. And the other guy, instead of honking in outrage, does in fact yield.

Foreigners who have business dealings in Thailand can be heard to complain about this lack of sharp edges. It leads people to think that Thais cannot be relied on. But yes, they can. It's just that their priority tends to be to avoid conflict (or collisions) and to try to accommodate differences or inconveniences, rather than fighting them head-on.

And for the foreigner who spends any time here, it is a great lesson in "jai yen" - keeping a cool heart rather than getting heated over short-term frustrations.

The Year of the Rat is coming to an end. It's been a big one for us, with the publishing of Beyond the Great Wall and lots of personal changes and new horizons. I'm hoping for a lighter-hearted less pressured new year, myself. May your next year be as you dream it should be.