Word: chiangs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that's the quizzical response many Thais give when foreigners ask for information about this quaint, little burg set in a pastoral mountain valley 135 kilometers northwest of Chiang Mai. "You mean Phrae?" they ask. No. The savvy foreigners mean Pai, which, until recently, was one of northern Thailand's better-kept secrets...
...cloistered region until the Japanese carved out a dirt transportation trail from Chiang Mai to Burma during World War II. Back then, the journey Pai-ward from Chiang Mai took three to seven days by elephant or on horseback. That was the route taken by former Kuomintang soldiers and their families who fled China after the communist takeover in 1949. The immigrants now own many of the charming teakwood houses and businesses in the four-road town; local Thais disparagingly call them jiin ha (galloping Chinese...
...this day, getting to Pai demands initiative. The Thai government widened and paved the endless series of hairpin bends in 1980, but the stomach-churning journey from Chiang Mai still takes two to three hours by private van. Adventurous budget travelers were the first foreigners attracted to Pai's idyllic isolation, burbling streams, cylindrical haystacks and manicured fields of garlic and soybeans. If you overlook the thatched-roof bamboo huts, Muslim mosque?some of the KMT were Muslim Chinese?and Buddhist temples, the place looks almost like a Monet painting...
...motorbikes or jeeps and explore the several temples, waterfalls and hot springs scattered throughout the valley. Or you can just hang out. "The distractions here are the ones you make for yourself," says Daniel Eiland, a twentysomething Thai-American musician at Latino Swimming Pool who moved to Pai from Chiang Mai several years ago. A wander through the daily afternoon market on Rungsiyanon Road offers a great window on Pai-style multiculturalism. Wizened Karen hill-tribe grandmas with dark turbans wrapped around their heads sell hand-embroidered crafts on the sidewalk. Teenage Lisu girls in their traditional vivid tunics...
...about defining the Hong Kong action movie. Such swaggering epics as The Savage 5, Shaolin Avengers and The Five Venoms filled theater and TV screens around the world, schooling a generation in the intricacies of righteous machismo. He made stars of Jimmy Wang Yu, Ti Lung, David Chiang and Alexander Fu Sheng, and mentored his assistant director (later action master) John Woo. When Chang died June 22, at 79, from pneumonia, the Shaw Brothers studios paid for the funeral of its most prolific, pioneering auteur. In Hong Kong, movie spirits are at half-mast...