Chiang Mai - lazy days

  Chiang Mai, Thailand
Thursday, July 5, 2007

Chiang Mai

Made it from Phnom Penh to Bangkok to Chiang Mai - arriving about 3pm. Taxi to Roong Ruang Hotel where we had stayed before. Airport "taxi meter" is a rip-off - 122 baht for what should be ~60 baht. Best to walk out to airport entrance and catch tuk-tuk there. Anyway, we checked in to Roong Ruang - the room a little grotty. David pointed out that when he and I stayed there before we had spent the previous night at the grottier Midtown GH ($5 double), so the RR seemed great at the time. We had a look at a new hotel (Lanna Hotel) across the street and decided to move there the next day. Dinner at a place that serves Italian, Mexican, and other Western foods - and David showing how much he's missing Western fare after 10 months in Cambodia. He had a bacon avocado cheeseburger and immediately made plans to come back the next day for a salad. We talked of bookstores, coffee houses, spending time with friends, things of home.

05 Rotha and others

 
Comfortable night at RR and in the morning breakfast at Thai place where David and I ate several times in 2005 - scrambled eggs, toast, and Nescafe style coffee for 40 baht (about $1.20).
 
Moved hotels, rested, took songthaew (pick-up truck taxi) to a mall to get some things for Leslie (I left some essentials in our left luggage in BK airport). There was a small, okay food court near where we went in. Then, after walking around we found an amazing food court (amazing to me, not to Leslie). We got tom yum from two different places and in both cases it was nothing like what we expected. Mine was 35 baht (~$1USD) and had ground pork, sliced chicken, shrimp, fish balls, noodles, and all kinds of other good things, put together by a meticulous woman - don't you just love it when people take pride and care in what they do. Dave and I each got a box of sticky rice with mango (yet another obsession) for 35 baht/box - best price and best taste so far. I got another box on the way out. The sticky rice and mango was right across from the man selling "cricket little" - fried little crickets (actually, I think they were roaches), fried silk worms, and other delicacies (for someone else).
 
Dinner at same place as before, the Art Café - salad, pizza - alright. Tomorrow, I take an all-day cooking course.
 
We've ended up on the same street and same block as before. Good Thai restaurant (Phon Non), Art Café, JJ's (java and juice), a bar open to the street with a pretty good band playing that old-time rock & roll, Eco-Tour, pizza place, 20 baht pad Thai street place, roti from a street cart for 10-20 baht.

12 market

 
Sign at entrance to the Supreme Guest House down one of the nearby sois: "No entry for drugdealers, missionaries, and pedophiles!"
 
Songthaew with sign on the side that says "Monkey School" - alright!
 
Cooking class: took songthaew to a house outside of town. Class was on a covered patio behind the house. There were 10 Australians, Brits, and Irish; and 1 Korean, and 1 Texan. The Australians, etc. talked incessantly and (mostly) unintelligibly about soccer.  We each had a place to chop vegetables, etc, and a gas burner for wok and pan.

(While I'm writing this into my little notebook I carry everywhere, I'm listening to the Ipod (Hotel California again) and flashing on Sophea and I rockin' with our air guitars at David's great birthday party - what a fine time.)

I made or learned how to make pad Thai, panang, red & green curry, tom kha, tom yum, chicken with cashews, drunken noodles, papaya salad, and the crown of it all, sticky rice with mango. Most of these things I've made in the past, but in every case in this class, I learned something of value.

15 cooking class

 
Back to the hotel for a rest, then walk down the street for some 20 baht pad Thai and 15 baht roti (with banana and sweet milk) on the sidewalk. This pad Thai place was where David and I had eaten several times before and I remembered it as the best pad Thai we'd had - but questioned my memory until we had it again: it is the best.
 
Leslie on the phone to Cathay Pacific to change the time of our flight. When she told the agent what seats we want, he said, "Oh my God, madam!" "What?" "Those seats are not available." "Oh."
 
Leslie stopped in at a silver shop on Tha Phae Road to ask where she might find gold earrings similar to the ones in the shop. David and I had a good laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Oops, joke's on us. Leslie got the name of a market where there are some gold  

16 wat on street where we're staying

stores, and directions, and the name of the market written in Thai. So today we walked to the Warojrot Market, which turned out to be a good market with all kinds of shops and stalls - food, gold, clothes, housewares, everyday things - and on one the streets leading to the market, plenty of quality hill tribe things. In the former times good hill tribe things could be found at the Chiang Mai night market, but now the night market is totally tourist-oriented with vast amounts of tribal copy things sold by person after person - same same, but not different. I bought a knife for fruit carving, a mesh bag for steaming sticky rice (WooHoo!), and some other everyday things. A man in the market went waay out of his way to help me find the mesh bag. Thank you.

Lunch: tom kha, pat si euw, and chicken with basil. Dinner pad Thai again and roti again.
 
Happy 4th of July. Leslie was reviewing a few of our freedoms - really a lot - from freedom to criticize our leaders to freedom to have healthy babies to freedom to go to school free. Here's to the men and women fighting for the U.S.

Tomorrow we're headed to Laos - Luang Prabang - so it may be a few days before the next post. David is supposed to rendevous with his friends, Ben and Magera, who will be coming off a 36 hour bus ride - Hanoi to LP. I'm sure they'll be in good shape.

18 fish, dried, very fragrant if you know

 
Only those who've ridden Bangkok's Sky Train will have a chance at a clue what this is about (actually, nobody will get it - this is for you, Leslie): "Chitlom - Nana"