Journeys with Jenny and Cole: Chiang Mai

When we left you last we were about to head out for a night on the town in Chiang Mai. We started things off with a little jaunt down the street to dinner. One thing that is easy to forget when walking on the skinny sidewalks of Chiang Mai is that traffic in Thailand travels on the left side of the road so you have to look the wrong way to cross the street. After a short walk we ended up choosing the Riverside Pub and Restaurant. It was a cool little British pub themed Thai restaurant that seemed to be owned by a British ex-patriot. The food was delicious. We had an all vegetarian dinner complete with Tom Kha Hed (coconut soup with mushrooms- HOT), fried spring rolls, Pad Se Ew (large flat noodles in light sauce with veggies), and Green Curry fried rice (also hot but not as hot as the soup). As we dined we were serenaded by live local musicians playing all the american hits from back in the day including a few by the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. All in all it was an excellent meal and much easier to find than in our location in Bangkok.

After dinner we snagged a Tuk Tuk (basically a scooter with passengers in the back) and headed to the Night Bazaar near downtown Chiang Mai. This night market had almost anything you could ask for. We strolled around and took it all in. We thought about some little elephant figurines that were everywhere but eventually settled on some pants for Jenny and a Singha beer t-shirt for me. Jenny did all the negotiating and I stood there like the rookie that I am. Jenny's pants are purdy sweet though, they are kind of poofy like Aladdin pants, very stylish. We didn't stick around too much longer we just grabbed a pineapple smoothie and called it a night and got a red truck (taxi pickup with a topper and bench seating) back to our resort.

These are the tuk tuks

As opposed to a cheaper but potentially more sketchy red truck

This morning started off early with a little breakfast before we got picked up for our cooking class. As always there was an assortment of juices and fruits. Jenny got a vegetable omelet and I got coconut waffles and green curry scrambled eggs which were awesome. But the highlight of the breakfast were the Thai desserts. They were sweet sticky rice and fruits steamed together and wrapped in banana leaves and any description of them here does not do them justice.

All that fine breakfast eatery aside, what we did next is the highlight of the trip so far. Jenny scoured the internet while she was planning the trip and found a vegetarian cooking class in town, called May Kaidee. They picked us up from the resort and took us deep into the old city. The old city is really cool with a surrounding moat and remnants of an old city wall. The old city portion of town is a perfect square outlined by these features. After we arrived at the class the first order of business was to head to the market for a crash course in Thai flavors. The market was crazy with all kinds of food being cooked and vegetables and meats being sold. Our teacher explained that lemongrass, thai ginger, and kaffir leaves were the most important ingredients in Thai food. She bought us some tempura pumpkin which was awesome and we sampled some pumpkin dessert. Then it was time to get down to business. During the class we chopped our vegetables and cooked up 10 dishes including pumpkin hummus, phad thai, phad se ew, green curry, papaya salad (for the salad they use the young green papaya, not the ripe orange fruit), Tom Yum and Tom Kah (different kinds of soup). The class lasted from 8:30 AM until about noon. The food was amazing and they bagged up the rest for dinner tonight. We can't wait to get home and give some of these a try because most of them took less than ten minutes to prepare and I could nom asian food any day of the week.

The rest of the day has been fairly uneventful. We went to the bus station to buy our tickets to Utaraditt. We leave tomorrow for the Elephant sanctuary. We were able to buy the bus tickets after I had a mini meltdown about the language barrier. Good thing Jenny kicks butt at traveling. On the way back we paid a red truck guy to take us to our hotel and he must have really not understood because he dropped us off like 8 blocks from our street even though we pointed it out on the map. Good thing we weren't too far off course and were able to walk back. After that I hit up the pool (which was freezing) and am now sitting here writing this. As I do Jenny is getting her feet worked over by some nice ladies down at the resort spa, which is a purdy nice reward for putting this all together. But don't think for a second that it will be the last massage on this trip and I don't even have to be the one to do it!

-Cole

P.s. we also did laundry in the sink, lets give that a few days and see how it turns out.