Much like the ‘Smoke Season’ which obscures the very real transformation of the Northern Thai Air Quality from excellent to unhealthy for two months of agricultural burning, the euphemistic ‘Green Season’ attempts to disguise the rainy season as something you might actually enjoy…
And, in fact, it just rains sporadically and quite unpredictably, occasionally becoming a downpour… In 10 days here, I got caught out only once, on the first evening as I attempted to walk to town and got caught (with raincoat) in a real soaker. This is big sky country, a valley surrounded by hills, where blue skies in one direction are regularly matched by storm clouds here there and everywhere else.
Sun shining on the main road into town,dark clouds threatening elsewhere.
Eating a great breakfast at the Lemon Thyme Cafe, I noticed that many of the patrons looked somehow Israeli .Later, I found that the cafe featured a rear entrance a bit further along and a back patio and dining room… full of the supposed Israeli’s. This brought back memories of 2 previous 3 month bicycle tours in India in 2011 or so, where I visited a backpacker haven on both trips, Hampi in Southern Central India and Leh, Capital of Ladakh in the far north of India on the former Tibetan border.
In both of these places there was a large, and separate, Israeli presence, mostly young people who had completed their mandatory military service and were rewarded with a vacation in a country where the were not outwardly unpopular. In Hampi, the Israeli’s lived across the river from everyone else, and in Leh, a further journey up the main road brought you into the Israeli enclave.
But of course they were, keeping to themselves, ‘guarded’ by orthodox rebs all in black with long curls hanging down. And all former military or police… most of the backpackers kept away from them and the Indians were full of complaints. But that was then. The behavior of Israelis in those years was bad and frowned upon, but it wasn’t genocide. One young Israeli tried to explain to me that “Indians are just like Palestinians. They are children, and it is our job to care of these children”.
And now we have the Genocide, the wanton killing and destruction, land theft, cold blooded murders and on and on. And here are the Israeli’s getting their R&R on the ‘Banana Pancake Trail.’ Same as it always was. And we have the Chabad House in Pai to see to their religious needs. They’ve taken care of ‘the children’.
A strange article:
Ni Dieu Ni Maitre 
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