Chaing Mai - SONGKRAN Festival

Trip Start Nov 21, 2007
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Trip End Oct 01, 2008


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Monday, April 14, 2008

Chaing Mai has lots of fun things too do, but Jana really wanted to take a cooking class while in Thailand and Dean (our leader) suggested Chaing Mai Thai Cookery School. So, after unloading from the train, we headed out of town for our demonstrations and cooking class. First, we made a stop at the local market to see some of the essential items in our cooking. Thai people use different seasonings like fish sauce, curry paste, shrimp paste as well as things we are more accustomed to like ginger and garlic. We made four different dishes Tom Yam Goong (spicy shrimp soup), Gaeng Kheo Wan Gai (green curry with chicken), Phad Thai, Khanom Kluay (steamed banana cake). Each course, the chef would show us how it was really done and then we would all go to our proper stations and have a go at it! They made it super easy because all the preparation had been done, but hey, the food came out great! Layton even ate his entire steamed banana cake too! It was really great to see what ingredients go into some of our favorite Thai foods our over night train car
our over night train car
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Chaing Mai is one of the main places for the Songkran festival. Locals from all over Thailand travel from all over to celebrate specifically in Chaing Mai. So, we do as the locals do...buy water guns and get wet! We don't have lots of pictures because we did not trust the waterproof bags we had for a pure dousing...but let us just tell you that it was W-E-T. Total strangers would dump a COLD bucket of water on you with no remorse. People would yell out Sawat dee Pii Mi (pee my) or Happy New Year as they would send icy water down your back! It was really fun to see how much they got into the celebration, but it took us many days to get us all dried out!


Finally, we had a nice evening at the local night market. These markets have just about anything you could want...massage, cheap jewelry and clothes, pirated DVDs and CDs, fake Tiffany jewels (with a blue box and bag to boot!) and great lanterns. Jana even saw some MAC makeup too, but who needs make up in this heat! Layton got a nice neck massage while Jana just wandered through the market for a bit.
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