Never Let Your Computer Crash In Southeast Asia.
It will crash spectacularly. And although there may be Apple certified service centers, that doesn't mean they carry parts. Actually, you can be guaranteed they'll have to ship the parts in, but by the time the parts arrive you'll be in another city. Or province. Or country. Which will also take up to six weeks to order parts, apparently available only in Singapore. Road trip, anyone?
The "New City" of Chiang Mai lies in a broad valley amongst northern Thailand's rolling mountains. A crumbling brick wall approximately 2 km square surrounds the Old City, a bustling mass of twisting streets and brick alleys that proves a cross between classic SE Asia and hippy Portland... really it's pretty much Southeast Asian Hippy Portland on Steroids. In a good way. The area brims with guesthouses, motorbike rental shops, massage parlors and temples, and street food markets are never more than a block away. Organic cafés and coffee shops (bring your own takeaway container!) sit across the street from secondhand stores full of flowered shirt-dresses and leather jackets.
In true fashion the city greets me with low clouds, light rain, and Portland-style bone-penetrating cold in some sort of record-low weather system. After two nights sleeping huddled in every coat, scarf, and extra layer I can scrounge from my bag (thai hostels are truly unequipped for the cold), weather clears and the sun shines bright.
I spend my first few days in the area simply orienting myself with existing once again in the more-developed world. My search for a computer repair shop takes me into no fewer than three mega malls. I find sports shops and department stores, food courts and cinemas. I lose myself in the aisles of a supermarket, finding western-style hair products, navel oranges, and girhadelli chocolate chips. I sit in coffee shops at tables made of fish tanks framed by leopard-print sofas, reconstructing my resume and beginning to search for jobs once more on a borrowed computer while I sip $1 coconut shakes from mason jars. I eat fresh strawberries for the first time in a year and a half, and indulge in Tex Mex for the first time in even longer. 
And I do touristy things. I pile into a songathew, an open-backed red truck and hurl up tight, twisting curves to visit Doi Suethep- Northern Thailand's most important temple, overlooking the city from a perch high on a nearby mountain. I duck into one the city's ubiquitous family massage parlors, paying less than six dollars for an hour's deep massage. I walk the city's Sunday Night Market, stopping to watch a man blow glass into gold-crested dragons. 
My search for temporary work while I'm in the area takes me to CMRCA, Chiang Mai's local climbing custodians, gear shop and adventure education hub. Their staff prove one of the most genuine and welcoming families I've come across, happy to chat about mutual connections and local climbing and geek out on gear. On my friend Noel's last night in the city, we caravan in motorbikes to a restaurant where a waiter dumps a massive bucket of marinated seafood onto a plastic- shrouded table in front of us. Guarded by plastic gloves and bibs, we dig in, making short work of the mountain of food. We, this mix of Thai and Foreign, guys and girls, English- speaking or not, laugh and trade stories and steal seafood from each others' piles, and I begin forming those connections I search for, finding people with whom to laugh and celebrate simply living through my few weeks in Chiang Mai. 
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