The Greatest Lie Part 15

"It has gotten very strict here: very dangerous. Even your friends can turn into enemies."

"Thanks for the advice," I said. Tran and I hobbled to a tuk-tuk and rode to our cheap hotel room, where we downed Vicodin and recuperated, listening to Thai language study tapes. We didn't even go out the next night: we didn't feel well enough check out Tiffany or the Alcazar, and we had to wake up early the next day.

The next morning we departed on a Thai Air flight to Chiang Mai. As we took off, Tran commented, "Phuket was not like I remembered it. It's really dead: too hot, too few sexy tourists, and too many scary cops."

"Not just dead: ying ting," I commented.

A couple of bumpy hours later, we landed at Chiang Mai, a quaint provincial capital nestled in the foothills of towering, verdant tropical mountains. The sharp green peaks, seen through layers of cloud and mist, gave the landscape the appearance of a Japanese landcape painting. The mountain air is cool by Thai standards, and the population is more relaxed and rustic than the bustling populations of Bangkok or the frantic sybarites of Phuket and Kho Samui. Instead of the bulldozed, concrete-covered, and despoiled paradise of Phuket, Chiang Mai seemed a place of primitive charm and lush, hilly beauty.

Tran and I rode a cab through palmy suburbs, and then through terraced rice fields to the house that our friend Nancee had rented for us as our home base this summer. She had been proud of the bargain price. When we got there, we saw why it had been so inexpensive: it was a two-room wooden shack built on a hillside in the outskirts of town, near Chiang Mai University's science campus, Suansak Two. Chickens scratched nervously in the dirt yard as the taxi driver hauled our bags up the stairs.

"Alexandra, Tran, I missed you so much! I'm so happy now." She smiled brightly and hugged us warmly. She had had her sex-change surgery a few months before and her features had softened noticeably. Nancee looked curvier and more feminine; the absence of testosterone from her body had improved her looks as much as it had improved mine after my SRS. She had let her hair return to its natural black, instead of the brassy hue that she had worn when I met her.