Three Unlikelihoods!

• Namaste32's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Chiang Mai

Trip Start Jul 09, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Aug 19, 2008 Next
Entry

  Chiang Mai, Thailand
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

     To keep you reading, the three unlikelihoods aforementioned are: Susan eats bugs, Nick contemplates marriage, and Nick's parents are proven right (really?!). So after getting up and being ready at 8:30, we began our daily wait for Justin & Co. (who are ALWAYS late, much to our chagrin - but we love them anyways) by booking our trek through the Chiang Mai valley for Friday. Good thing we did too, because Paisarn (in keeping along the lines of what we've heard from other guesthouses in Chiang Mai) gets uber-pissed when you book stuff through people besides the place you're staying. We heard about one guy who got yelled at by the owner, proceeded to step on a 100 baht bill to show his disregard for the hotel's money, and almost ended up getting into a fist fight with the owner who kept yelling that the king was "his father" and he was disrepecting "his father!" Have we mentioned how much they love the king here, yet? Since we were about to leave for a cooking course through somebody else (covertly, mind you), we thought it best to at least book our trek through them.   
      So after finally getting picked up we were driven to the market where we met Sue, our guide for the rest of the day. Sue was a tiny Thai lady (is there any other kind?) with a tremendous knowledge of both Thai ingredients and preparation as well as a rapier wit. After a demonstration on the different kinds of rice and how to make coconut milk, she released us into this market, which was one of the most awesome experiences we've had in Thailand:
1) We've seen evidence of this before, but Nick's (and Susan's to a lesser extent) ignorance of the fruit in the world came to a head when we eyed and tried over a dozen kinds of  fruit we had never seen before. We're talking mini-lychees, rambutans, tamarinds, snakefruit, dragonfruit, custard apples, baby bananas and jackfruit, plus some others we never figured out. Nick's favorite that he tried was either a type of lychee or maybe another fruit called a longan. Susan was mesmerized by the prettiness of the dragonfruit and artichoke-ness of the custard apple, although upon a taste test later they proved to more or less be tasty but mild (think like a mild kiwi and a drier pear with more seeds, respectively).   
2) The overall deliciousness of the market, between all the fresh fruit and vegetables, the fresh roasted meats and other produce, plus all sorts of other raw materials which confused and awed us, were very illuminating and made us even hungrier than we were in preparation for a long day of eating.  Susan screamed when one of the fish practically jumped towards her (how American) and also at the bucket of live frogs waiting to be eaten!
3) At the far end of the market, near the meat, was a vendor selling a variety of fried bugs. BUGS! So being as American as we were, we figured we had to try them. So complete with many pictures of our various emotional preparations, swallowing, and reactions, we managed to try some small crickets. After this went over relatively easily (Nick declared them an adequate snack food and continued to munch down a 20 baht bag of them on the way to the farm), Susan and Justin stepped up to the plate and ate a large grasshopper. Thankfully, the inside was not gooey (there would have been much vomming had it been) and after clearing the tougher legs out of their teeth (unfortch, we are not joking here) they were declared hardcore champion bug eaters of the highest order and we filed back into the truck for our ride to the farm.        
     Justin and friends really did their homework, because the organic farm at which we took our cooking classes was excellent. It was well out of the city, clean, and very well run. There were three different kitchens and eating areas, plus rows and rows of Thai herbs, vegetables, and fruit, all of which are grown organically and exclusively for the use of the farm  in cooking classes. Sue began the day by walking us through the farm, showing us what plants yield what flavors in Thai cooking, and we were allowed to tear off leaves or pick as much fruit as wanted in order to sample tastes and smells. Sweet! Then we went to the kitchen where we began cooking. Beforehand, we had to select one of three dishes from each course of a five course meal, so many times there were different instructions going around for many of us, but Sue's excellent direction and the ease of the Thai cooking experience made for a lovely day. We barely even noticed the lack of napkins (that's something Thailand really needs to work on), as the food was all so good. We kept having to remind ourselves that we had made it ourselves! You all should be very excited to try our new Thai cooking skills! We ended up stuffed and had to take things home we were so full, but we all somehow made room for the mango sticky rice we all made at the end, which was somewhere between heavenly and Nick's Grandma's homeade apple pie.  At the end of the day, we were all given recipe books of what we had made, so we can try things out when we get home (although Susan has doubts about the location of an Asian market needed to pick up ingedients anywhere near Breckenridge). Nick contemplated inviting Sue back to the US for marraige, but instead elected to tip her and we went on our way happily back to the city.         
     After arranging to meet with Justin and friends for a last night to remember (we would never see any of them except T again in Southeast Asia), our tardiness and confusion left us out of luck in regards to actually finding them. How did all you oldies live before cell phones?! How we longed to make a call to our dear friends and perhaps send a text message (a solitary text message!) verifying our friends' location. Alas, it was not to be, and we went home disappointed, as Nick rued his parents' warning that he would miss his cell phone dearly (it took a week though). Tomorrow is a relaxing day in CM and then we're off to our trek and the elephants (which Susan has undoubtedly been dreaming about since our first live encounter in Bangkok - actually, who are we kidding -since we planned this trip).

Print this entry Share Chiang Mai hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry