Wandering around Chiang Mai reunites me with kawaii-cuteness, sparks a chocolate tasting, and leads me to reminisce about my dancing queen days…I mean, nights.

These little piggies went to Moshi Moshi.

Wall of stuffed piglets in Moshi Moshi. They are adorably clad in onesies topped with cow-horns and bear-ears because, why not? 

Pablo’s heaven

Seeing all these stuffed toys smushed together, I could only think of Pablo, my deceased darling once-in-a-lifetime Golden Retriever. To say he loved stuffed animals is an understatement. He was the patron saint, the Mother Theresa of stuffed toys, and loved them whether the leg or tail was missing. He would gently fit them in his mouth, promptly plop down on his doggie bed, clasp his giant paws around the toy and “meditate”. With his mouth on the stuffed animal, he would close his eyes and enter a deep state for hours.

This wall of stuffed piglets is Pablo-heaven. Sending this up to you big guy!

Chocolate comparison: Keep the main thing the main thing

I have known about Siamaya Chocolate for years. They are a Chiang Mai company that embodies “local only” in the truest sense: from the cocoa beans, to the sugars, the graphic designers, and the paper. By sourcing exclusively local ingredients, they are able to boast a niche product, but it also makes it very expensive. This bar costs the equivalent of $4.60, which is why I never purchased it before. However, seeing it on sale for 15%, I finally decided to fork over the baht and give it a try.

The quality of the wrapper is luxurious; heavy, and finished in a smooth matte. The artwork suits the local niche product. The chocolate bar itself, although it looked good, it just didn’t taste good. I wanted to like it. I haven’t met a dark chocolate that I haven’t liked, and I’ve tried tons of brands. I even supported locally made chocolate in India, which uses cocoa beans from Indian farmers. Dark chocolate with coconut oil was a luxurious afternoon treat.

Siamaya’s 85% dark chocolate smelled strangely of ammonia, and tasted both sharp and sour, like strong cheddar cheese. It definitely was not a flavor profile I was expecting. I will pass on Siamaya and stick with international brands such as Lindt, Heidi’s, Green & Blacks, and Ritter.

Ritter is a German company, their 81% dark chocolate features cocoa beans from Ghana, and their chocolate bars are sold in supermarkets in Thailand, so it is truly multi-national. The paper is thin and the graphics plain, but I’m not buying it to eat the wrapper. Keep the main thing the main thing, and the main thing is the chocolate! The flavor profile is rich, strong, and fairly bitter. I think of it as letting a shot of espresso melt on my tongue, but since it’s divided into squares, I let several espresso-squares melt on my tongue, or espresso-rows… . Plus, it’s nearly $2 cheaper than Siamaya, so it was easy to talk myself into buying several bars at once.

Wandering around, I discovered this Buddha posed at the front of the store.

These visual surprises make walking around without an agenda a reward in itself.

Wandering around again, I passed this restaurant employing the homophone “MEET MEAT”.

Cute clubbers

I’m assuming that MEET MEAT is a place for ordering food, but it could be an establishment that would fit in perfectly on Folsom Street, San Francisco. There was a period of time when I lived in San Francisco, that my friends and I clubbed the hottest and the not hottest gay bars in the city—we weren’t picky.

One time, my friend David and I were hand-picked by the club photographer to pose for photos. The next week, our faces were plastered on their flyers. There we were, embracing and laughing, exuding wholesome, homegrown cute-cute-cute vibes. Now if that doesn’t sell tickets, I don’t know what will. Apparently it did, because the club promoters took it to the next level.

A month later, my friend David slammed the SF Weekly on my desk (we worked for the same company) and said, “Look! They cut me out, but they kept you!” His tone was a mixture of hurt, jealousy, and accusatory. As if I had any editorial authority! I looked at the ad.

David’s face was sliced out of our cheek-to-cheek pose, cutting off my Siamese-twin, leaving me by myself on an advertisement for Q-Club, a new lesbian bar opening up. Since I had signed away my rights, no one asked permission to use my image, and I didn’t get paid either. I wasn’t even invited to the grand opening! And to David, no offense, you just have a Y-chromosome. 

No matter, David and I were out the next weekend, not at Q-Club, but being our own cute-club-dancing queens on a different dance floor.