Led by the Blind

Close to an hour's ride east of Chiang Mai, the superhighway narrows to a scarce-traveled two-lane road.  A dirt access track veers up and around through bamboo forest to the base of an imposing black buttress rearing forth from the valley floor. Fallen bamboo leaves lay a golden blanket over steps set into the red dirt hill, leading past an unmarked stone chute through which we squeeze down, pushing packs ahead of us. We duck through a low tunnel, bypassing resting bats to emerge in a tall, slender sweeping chamber. In silence cut only by our breath and clinking metal on rock, route illuminated by sun streaming through natural skylights high overhead, we climb to the light.

Crazy horse, the center of climbing in northern Thailand, lies near Mae On, a quiet town nestled in a broad valley surrounded by rolling mountains. An outcrop jutting from the buttress distinctly resembling a horse's head watches over the parking lot, water refill station and toilets. Trails and ladders snake up and around the buttress, where massive stalactites frame archways, yawning caves offer an escape from the heat and high outcrops look into the distance over the surrounding land. A rocky path leads 20 minutes up a steep hillside past monkeys feeding in the bamboo to Heart Wall-- an imposing, overhung athletic expanse covered in tufas (and millions of ladybugs), offering blessed shelter from the scorching sun throughout the day. Other walls remind me more of home, offering spiderwebbing cracks and bulges or runs of less-vertical rock for which ascension requires a simple combination of friction and faith.

A stone's throw from the access road waits Jira, the local climber's homestay and restaurant. The food is cheap– Nyeung Yao, the owner, makes $2.50 pots of curry and plates of chicken big enough to serve as lunch and dinner combined. The lodging is comfortable-- ranging from $3 open-air "princess beds" protected by mosquito nets to proper rooms and bungalows, hot showers and free water refills included. The scenery is stunning-- a gently sloping meadow borders on fruit orchards and faces the sunrise over low mountains. And the people are a proper family. Nyeung Yao takes care of me like a mother. "I give you tent tonight," she tells me. "Everyone else is a man. Man, man, man, man. It is not good for you to sleep surrounded by men." As for everyone else: we're a modgepodge mix from all over the place. We sleep until the sun wakes us. We drink proper coffee from monster percolators until the clouds clear from our minds. We pack food (Nyeung Yao packs us meals in takeout tubs), split gear and hike to the crag together. We climb, and celebrate, and curse, and fall, and succeed, and climb some more. We reminisce and look forward and dream over iced tea and beer and vats of chicken coconut soup at the end of the day.

And the next day, we do it again.

As much as I love to climb, though, if climbing was all I did when I travel, I would miss out on so much the world has to offer.

On my first rest day I head into the city to Chiang Mai's annual flower festival, where thousands of people line the street to watch high school marching bands and floats constructed of flowers parade through the streets in an oddly imperial, less-comercialized version of New Year's Day in Pasadena. Street vendors sell toy dragons next to cotton candy, floats stop for crowds to flood the avenue and take selfies, and men regaled in gold costume and crowns wave from platforms amongst floral elephants, dragons and harpies.

I also take a week to learn massage from a blind man. Mr. Nat and his colleagues work out of an... atypical massage parlor, for lack of better phrasing. It has a clinical feel, simple metal beds with blue mattresses and sheets spaced for ease of movement, separated if need be by curtains you'd expect to find in a hospital. Chatter and laughter fill the room as noise and stories take place of sight in the masseurs' world.

Mr. Nat is childlike, perpetually happy and giddy, and loves to sing. His thumbs are thick and calloused from practicing massage day after day. Nat throws me off the deep end, teaching through touch, demonstrating technique on a friend, then on me, and then having me repeat the practice on himself. He's so capable, and feels so acutely what I'm doing, that at times I find myself forgetting that he's blind.

It's frustrating, at first-- Nat teaches and describes things through feel. Sometimes there's a slight language barrier, and sometimes finding specific places in the muscle is just plain hard. By the end of the week, though, I'm able to decipher individual lines, to feel when i'm in the right place or not... most of the time. Nat shows me lines and pressure points and techniques throughout the body, utilizing my hands and fingers, then goes over everything again using elbows and knees. I learn to use my body to brace and direct pressure, pressing between muscles in what tends to be described as painful, but therapeutic. If it doesn't hurt, he tells me–– a deep, good hurt that makes you want to cry, I'm not pressing hard enough.

He receives visitors throughout the week as we work. Ramsey, a crazy perpetual traveler brimming with energy, stops in a couple of times to say hi and checks over my position, adjusting posture Nat can't see. This is not a back rub, he tells me. It's ok to make people cry!

Point noted.

An, a Vietnamese girl learning massage in a different school, offers herself as a practice partner "outside of class." Together we head to a park in the Old City's southwest corner filled with an eclectic mix of travelers, locals and expats walking slacklines, practicing acroyoga and massage, spinning poi, playing flutes and meditating next to a pond crossed by bright white bridges. It's like I've walked into Monday Funday, except it's an everyday occurrence and cops don't tell you to take slacklines down.

We don't get a lot of practice in, but I walk some lines by a pond and enjoy finding some balance until the sun goes down and mosquitos emerge. At the end of the week, I say goodbye to Mr. Nat. He shakes my hand and says, in the simplest of ways, "Thank you for trusting the blind."