November 6 - 11 Chiang Mai
We have arrived in beautiful Chiang Mai, Thailand this morning, twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Our flight on the low cost carrier Air Asia was pretty good. The seats were a little cramped, but since the plane was only about 20% full, we weren't stepping on each others' toes nor were we fighting with passengers in front of us not to recline their seats. One other good thing was that the seats were leather. Now they weren't the super soft Italian leather that you see in high end furniture, but they were leather nevertheless. One thing about leather over cloth, it is cheaper and easier to clean, and low-cost airlines have certainly cornered the market on cheaper.
In Chiang Mai, we have selected a relatively clean guesthouse called Eagle House 2. We have a double room with air conditioning, which is apparently a treat for some guesthouses around here. There is a nice courtyard outside where we can catch up on our best of 35 Canasta match! If the tips and rules as laid out on the posters around the guesthouse are enforced, this might end up being a pretty good spot to spend the next six days.
If all goes according to plan, we will take a Thai cooking class on each of Monday and Wednesday, and we will head to the mountain villages for a one day trek on Tuesday. Tamalyn will take a few Thai massages and we'll just lay low for Thursday and Friday, before heading down to Bangkok on Saturday night.
November 7 - Cooking Class #1
We signed up for a cooking class at The Chilli Club, the cooking school which is part of the Eagle House 2 experience. Our chef/instructor, Mr. Sutt, has been teaching Thai cooking to foreigners for over ten years. He is one of the most expressive individuals that I have ever met. He has a voice that is tailor-made for cartoons on TV, and his facial expressions rival those of Gilbert Godfried.
Lucky for us, there were only two others taking the class with us, which essentially made it a private lesson. The other couple, Josh and Julie (fellow Canadians) have spent the last year in Ireland and are spending a month in Thailand before relocating to Canada just before Christmas.
Our first task was to select dishes that we would prepare. We were each allotted five dishes and Tamalyn & I each selected a curry, a stir-fry, a soup, a snack and a dessert. Tamalyn selected a red curry, stir fried chicken with ginger, chicken in coconut milk soup, and mangoes & sticky rice for desert. I had a green curry, Chiang Mai curry and paste for a stir-fry, hot and sour prawn soup, and bananas in coconut milk for dessert. Everyone in the class had to agree on one deep fried snack, and we unanimously selected the deep fried spring rolls.
After selecting our dishes, we went on a field trip to the local market to purchase the necessary ingredients need to prepare our masterpieces. Here, Mr. Sutt gave us detailed information and explanations of the various fruit & vegetables, herbs, fish & meats and of course the all-important chillies.
Mr. Sutt said that since we were a small group, we had the option of either buying coconut milk and cream or making our own. Well, you know what we chose! He asked the vendor to put an entire drained coconut through a grinder to produce a finely chopped coconut. Once back, we poured two cups of hot water over the coconut and let it sit for about an hour. We then picked up handfuls of the soaked coconut and squished out all of the liquid. This created the light coconut cream. Two more cups of hot water were once again added to the coconut. We squished the coconut again and this produced...yup...the coconut milk. We used some of the coconut cream in the next recipe and left the rest to sit and separate for a couple of hours. Later in the day, we skimmed the heavy cream from the surface and used that in our dessert. Very fun and cool. It reminded Tamalyn of making mud pies and of her aunties who used to separate cream from the fresh cows' milk.
Back at the kitchen, we got down to business and started chopping. Once all of the ingredients were ready, we headed to the woks, fired up the gas cookers, and started sizzlin'. Within minutes, we were sitting down and enjoying our first culinary creation, a steaming bowl of hot & sour prawn soup and a bowl of chicken in coconut milk soup. Who would have believed that we could prepare something so delicious in so little time!
This pretty well summed up the entire day: Cut. Cook. Chow. Cut. Cook. Chow. etc.
If there is one complaint about our day of cooking, it's that we made so much food that we were both supremely stuffed with fabulous Thai food. We had each consumed more food today than we had on any other day since our fantastic meal at Moyo in the wine country near Cape Town. We can't wait to try our new found skills on all of our friends and family back home!
Not needing to find a place for dinner (who could ingest anything after a whole day of marathon eating?) we sat in the courtyard and started another Canasta game. Within minutes, the heavens opened and it started to pour. We were treated to another South-East Asia light-show. It rained hard for about forty-five minutes. We began to worry about our trek which was planned for the following day. We braved the rain and headed for the internet café, about seventy-five metres down the road from our guesthouse. Yahoo!Weather's forecast for Chiang Mai freaked us out. The five day forecast was for scattered thunder showers each and every day. We couldn't believe it. Our good weather luck had finally run out. We wimped out and cancelled our trek. We couldn't foresee ourselves spending a full day hiking in the rain, trudging along in mud and slop.
Later in the evening, we played cards with a Kiwi who has been travelling for the past five years and is planning on travelling for another five years. Don't worry everyone; we most certainly will not travel for five years! Maybe four. OK already, just kidding.
November 8 - Oh what a beautiful morning.......
Sure enough, the weather forecast didn't materialize, at least not in the morning. The sun was shining and we needed to make sure that the sunscreen was adequately applied! Oh to be a meteorologist. The only job where you can be wrong most of the time and still keep your job!
After treating ourselves to a sleep-in (OK, lie-in for the Brits out there!), we headed out around noon. Thanks to Marcia's recommendation, we headed for the Wororoj Market, Chiang-Mai's huge covered market. This market was mind-boggling - clothing, dishes, fish, fruit, vegetables, lanterns, toys, toiletries, household products. You name it, it was there. We couldn't walk out empty handed, so we picked up some cashew nuts to hold us over until lunchtime. 75 Baht (about 2 Canadian dollars) got us 250 g's (about a ½ pound) of fresh cashews. Oh to have these prices back home.
From the covered market, we started to head towards the Night Bazaar, until it dawned on us that the Night Bazaar wouldn't be up and alive until much later this afternoon, if not until early this evening. So we started to make our way back towards the Old City, which is where The Eagle House 2 is located. Along the way, we decided to stop for lunch at a quaint little restaurant called Noi's Kitchen. Behind the first couple of tables near the front were many tables spread out in a courtyard type of setting, with plenty of trees and flowers surrounding the tables. The area was even open to the sky, which made for a peaceful environment to sit down and have a Thai lunch. Again, the curries were the flavour of the day for me, as I had some Northern Thai Pork, and Tamalyn decided on a bowl of Tom Yum Noodle soup. Thanks Marcia for the recommendation, we both agree that the Tom Yum was delicious! Oops, we almost forgot to mention the fresh orange and banana shakes that we had; fresh fruit, a bit of milk, and ice cubes all blended into a frothy shake: naturally sinful. You should "thai it, you'll like it!" (Recognize that Lynn?)
Along our walk this afternoon, we did notice that the stereotype of the Thai people being a culture that enjoys smiling appeared to be accurate. Rarely did we encounter a local who would not smile when greeting us. Everyone seemed so happy-go-lucky. From the taxi drivers that tried to entice us (even after we declined their solicitation) to the staff at internet cafés to the clerks at the convenience stores. It seems that smiling is the national pastime.
Our lunch must have been very enjoyable, as the time seemed to fly right by. We had time to quickly check our e-mails just after leaving Noi's Kitchen, and then it was time to head for the Night Bazaar. We sauntered through much of the market, mutually agreeing that it was a good thing that we weren't heading right back home from here, as we would likely need to purchase another backpack or a suitcase. There were so many items that we could have purchased, from Thai silk table runners, to wooden placemats with matching chopsticks, to wooden lantern frames. There were also quite a few knock-off designer goods that seem to be prevalent in most street markets. From $3 Tommy Hilfiger t-shirts, to $5 Louis Vuitton bags.
At one point, we stopped at a stall that was hosted by the Chiang Mai University. They have made some fruit wine and have bottled four different varieties to market. They had leechi wine, apple wine, ginseng wine, so of course, we had to try a glass of wine each. Heck, it was for a good cause, wasn't it?
Heading back at the end of the evening, we came across a McDonald's. Although we didn't order anything to eat, we did pop in to see what the local item was on the menu. Apparently, it was a BBQ pork sandwich that neither of us had seen before. We also noticed that after factoring in the foreign currency exchange, the cost of a small soft ice cream was the cheapest that we have come across in our nearly three months of travelling. The small ice cream cone was 5 Baht, which worked out to about 15 cents. Even if it was this cheap, we still managed to leave McDonald's without spending any money.
Getting back to the Eagle House 2, we called it a night, dreaming of more Thai culinary masterpieces to be prepared in the morning.
November 9 - Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School
Both the Rough Guides and the Lonely Planet travel books proclaimed that the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School (CMTCS) was the best of the cooking schools in Chiang Mai. Contrary to the Chilli Club which allowed us to select the items we would prepare, the CMTCS has a set menu. They cook the same items on a five day rotating basis, so if you wanted to go through 5 consecutive days, you would learn how to prepare all of the dishes that CMTCS provide for their students. We selected "Day 4" as this menu offered the dishes that we liked the most.
Today, we would prepare Yellow Curry with Chicken, Steamed Fish in Banana Leaves, Chicken with Cashew Nuts, Fried Big Noodles with Sweet Soy Sauce, Spicy Prawn Salad North-Eastern Style, and Bananas in Coconut Milk. There's no doubt that the Chicken with Cashew Nuts sealed the deal for me, and I think Tamalyn was done in by the Steamed Fish in Banana Leaves.
We were nine people in the class today, but since we would all be making the same dishes, it didn't seem like we were that big of a group. Again, the day started with a trip to the market, but even this was different than our field trip with Mr. Sutt on Monday. Today, the class leaders had each of the students personally pick out the ingredients, even trying to communicate with the market clerks in Thai. Keeping to their smiling good-natured demeanour, the Thai clerks didn't bat an eyelash as most of us butchered the pronunciation of the Thai words assigned to each of us. Such polite people! I had to pick up two dozens eggs, "kai kai" or something like that.
Back to the class room, the rest of the day was very much like the first cooking class. Prepare the ingredients, cook the food, and eat the creations. It's a good thing that today is the last day that Tamalyn & I would be doing a cooking course, as neither one of us could sustain this much eating again. Our appetites just could not keep this up for days on end or rather, our waistbands!
Getting back to our guesthouse after preparing and devouring the six dishes including the dessert, we decided to book our trek for tomorrow. We decided that even if it did rain, the chance to ride a Thai elephant (which is much tamer than an African elephant, incidentally), the chance to drift down a river on a bamboo raft, and the chance to see a hill tribe village in the mountains north of Chiang Mai far out-weighed getting a little ( a lot?) wet. We could always dry out back at Eagle House 2, couldn't we?
November 10 - Brown Water Rafting and other adventures
Seven am already? Couldn't be. Our first thoughts were to roll over and trek another day until we remembered that we'd already paid! That got us up alright! We drove about one hour southwest of the city to ................... This was the location for our hike. Luckily for us, the heat had subsided so we only had to endure mid-20 degree temperatures; however, about 10 minutes into our hike, we were all sweating like pigs! Must have been the added element of humidity in this wooded mountain side. A few more minutes found us at a river. No problem! There was a bridge. A bridge...hmmm...I guess you could call it that. It made the "Wiggly Foot Bridge" at the Calgary Zoo seem like a very stable structure.
Anyways, this bridge was only wide enough for one person, it had a suspension bridge structure of wires which meant that at some points there was nothing to hold onto. This would be fine if the bridge didn't move with each of my footsteps and then in another direction with each other person's footsteps. Oh, did we mention that the walkway was made of bamboo sticks and that there were some spots that were rather sparse? The only thing that didn't make me lose my breakfast was that it would only be about a 10m fall into the muddy river. Silly isn't it? If it was 50m, then I would have been very nervous and would have had to take baby steps to get across. After successfully reaching the other side, we realized that the rest of the way to the hilltribe village would be uphill. More sweating!
The trek up the slippery and crude path was very peaceful and refreshing. After walking around in busy Chiang Mai with all sorts of mopeds, trucks, and tuk-tuks, it felt so good to suck in a deep breath of fresh mountain air. We could almost taste the green in the air! After a couple of short breaks and an hour of hiking, we arrived at the village.
This village depicts life in the more remote hilltribe villages. This village is not only a stop along the one-day treks, but also serves as an overnight stop along the longer 3 and 4 day treks. All of these visitors and their fat foreign wallets have changed the village as you can imagine. There is a tiny museum showing elements of "the olden days", one house is a "show home", and there is the ever present tourist market. Having said all of that, it was still very rustic.
The show home was a fancier version of the homes in which the villagers lived. This one had partitions for two bedrooms with simple bamboo platform beds. There are no windows due to the cool winters up here in the hills. There is a back and front door. The front door is mostly used. The back door can be used in two ways: by men whenever they wish and when they have to take out a dead body. As they are very spiritual people, believing in gods of nature, they see it as bad luck to allow a dead body to leave through the front door. As in many traditional cultures, the women are not regarded very highly and polygamy is still practiced.
I always find it funny that although the women do not have many rights they are the ones that hold the fort together, so to speak. They do all of the cleaning, child rearing, cooking, vegetable gardening and picking, you name it, they're the ones responsible. I suppose the men do help to harvest the rice and hunt. Now that I've typed that, I'm starting to realize that although "Western" women do have equal rights, we still are usually the ones to perform most of the above tasks while often maintaining full-time "out of the home" jobs. Hmmm, maybe we're not so different after all.
Returning down the same path, we were quite happy that the sun had been shining for the past half hour to begin to dry out the path a bit. The heavy rains during the past couple of weeks that should have occurred in October have kept the path muddy and slippery. We all made it safe and sound (and drenched from sweat and a few mud stains here and there) back to the van.
Less than ten minutes later, we pulled into the ............. Elephant center. We climbed up a makeshift ladder and carefully stepped onto the elephants back and settled ourselves on the "saddle". The saddle is built to seat two people side-by-side. That kind of puts the size of the elephant in perspective: we could sit next to each other with room to spare! The elephants took us for a ride along very muddy path, up along the side of a hill. There were some spots that were a bit steep and our roomy "saddle" turned out to be a disadvantage. We kind of slid from one side to the other. Luckily, there were arm and back rests to hold onto. At one point, one of the other elephants stopped for a snack. With its trunk, it broke a branch, the size of my arm, off of a tree and proceeded to eat it. Unbelievable. The only thing that bothered us about our ride was how the driver treated our elephant when it became a little ornery. The driver hit it very hard with a stick on its forehead and used a hook to pull on its ears to direct it. We realize that elephants are very strong, sturdy, and thick, but it must have hurt more than just a little bit.
Lunch was next. We stopped at a little café and were served a delicious lunch. Potato yellow curry, steamed rice, mixed sweet and sour vegetables and a delicious cabbage soup. We were already very stuffed when the pineapple and watermelon arrived, but somehow, we managed to finish that off as well.
Our second village visit found us at the Karon tribe. This should not be mistaken for the Karen tribe, the "long-necked tribe" so named for the women who wear numerous, and heavy, metal necklaces. Contrary to many traditional societies, this tribe valued women more than men. When married, the men must take the woman's name, polygamy is not practiced, and the men do contribute to the family. The men and some women harvest their rice paddies. Other women weave beautiful bedspreads, scarves, skirts, etc.
To protect against the water flow from the heavy rains, their houses are built on stilts. The space from the ground to the floor is used as an open-air barn. Although this is a great use of space, we're sure that their homes must sometimes have quite interesting aromas. The walls and roofs were made of overlapping leaves strung onto long poles of bamboo. We had the chance to experience first hand just how waterproof they are. About five minutes into our visit, we were treated to a Thai mountain deluge. Man, did it pour down.
As the village is poised on a steep slope, the water ran down the slide in mini-reddish-coloured streams. Our guide pointed out that some of the children were barefoot. No big deal, right? That's what we thought until he reminded us that the "barns" were under the homes...are you putting two and two together? Yup, those streams flowing down the hillside weren't the cleanest. The guide continued to explain that the children would often get quite ill and have to be treated by the travelling doctors. The rain finally let up and we had the pleasure of walking down the muddy slopes, trying to be ever-so-careful not to get a sandal full of "water". Yuk. Off to the waterfall.
Unfortunately, the rain hadn't let up completely and we walked the ten minute trail to Mae Sa waterfall in the rain. Ironically, the rain stopped just as we reached the waterfall. It certainly wasn't that high of a waterfall, but the amount of rain that they've enjoyed for the past couple of weeks sure did make for a strong and wide waterfall. This translated to a very thick mist coming off of them and soaking us just as much as the rain did! As bad as this seems, we were going to get wet at these waterfalls anyway, so I guess the rain earlier didn't really matter in the end!
Our short ride to the next activity wasn't long enough for us to dry out, but then that really didn't matter either since we were climbing aboard a bamboo raft! The rafts were about six metres long and about one metre wide. There were two "benches" one in the middle and one near the end. The benches were two pieces of bamboo on top of each other. Yup, our butts were certainly going to get wet! The trainee tour guide and I sat on the middle bench and Gerald would have sat at the back except he was given a long bamboo pole to help steer our raft.
With the excess rain fall that has fallen in the last few days/weeks, the Wang River was quite a bit higher than it otherwise should have been. As a result, there was quite a bit of sediment in the river, hence, the title of today's entry, "Brown Water Rafting"!
Our "driver" stood at the front with his bamboo pole and pushed us along with the current of the river. Gerald did very well at maintaining his balance while helping to push us along. I was really impressed with his balance and ability to stick that pole down to the bottom of the river. At some points, we floated close to the shore where there were trees hanging over the water; even the trainee and I had to duck, can you imagine just how much Gerald had to duck? He did so well.
The other raft carried the other four members of our tour and our two drivers were out to soak each other and try to knock each other off of his raft. As you can guess, this meant that we were also soaked in the process. The other driver scared Gerald once by smacking his pole on the water right next to Gerald. Did Gerald get mad? No, but he was on a mission to get even. What fun!
The other driver "won" since our driver did fall in a couple of times. At one point, the other driver succeeded in tilting our raft causing the trainee and our driver to fall in. This left Gerald and I alone on our raft, with one pole. It couldn't have happened at a worse spot. The river narrowed and we were soon wedged crossways in the river, stuck against two rocks. The other raft was close enough to pass us one of their bamboo poles before proceeding along ahead of us. I grabbed it, headed to the end opposite from Gerald, and established my balance. Gerald and I demonstrated fantastic teamwork by dislodging our raft. We did such a great job (if I do say so myself) and were so concentrated we hadn't realized that our driver had run back on the shore and ended up behind us. He had to jump in and swim to us while we dug in our sticks on the sandy bottom to act as brakes and waited for him downstream.
Standing on the raft was so much fun that neither of us sat down for the rest of the trip. Okay, maybe I had to squat a couple of times on the bumpier parts. The rapids we went through wouldn't have even been considered rapids on the Zambezi so they were pretty tiny. Actually, we found the raft to be very stable.
What a great ending to a pleasant day. Our drive back to the city took about an hour and we really enjoyed chatting with the couple from New York City.
Based on their recommendation, at supper I tried a dish called "Khao Sauy". This is a noodle soup with chicken and other veggies. It is a Northern Thai speciality and was the favourite of our waitress. She seemed quite tickled that we found it delicious. Gerald had his new favourite dish: chicken and cashew stir fry. A large beer and a fantastic pineapple shake for less than 200 Baht. Are we ever going to get used to feasting on less than $6?
November 11 - Doi Suthep, Bhuping Palace, Chiang Mai Zoo and a Scooter Ride
To get ourselves around today, we decided to rent a scooter. Looking at the picture of our rented scooter, those of you still in Bermuda might think that it was a small and gutless scooter. Quite the contrary. Even thought the tires were be quite small and the bike looked like a 50cc, it had a 115 cc engine and sat both of us quite comfortably. Although the traffic was fairly similar to the traffic in Bermuda, the speed limit was 40 km/hr in some places and 60 km/hr in other places. Needless to say, the pace of the traffic was a little faster than what we were used to in Bermuda.
Our first stop after picking up the bike was to a gas station. The scooters are rented out without any gas as it is the renter's responsibility to top it up. You don't have to return it full of gas, but you don't get a refund for any gas that remains when you return the bike. The benefit of having to go to the gas station right away was to ease our way back into getting used to riding a bike. Although it's not quite like riding a pedal bike, it was only a few minutes before I got the hang of it again. The only thing that Tamalyn didn't like was that there wasn't a basket nor a lockbox on the back. She felt a little free to fall off! It didn't take her long to get comfortable and soon she was back to her habit of resting her hands on her knees.
Heading out of town from the gas station, we made our way up the "mountain" to the west of Chiang Mai making our way to Doi Suthep. To quote Lonely Planet, Doi Suthep is one of the North's most sacred temples. The site was "chosen" by a Buddha relic mounted on the back of a white elephant; the animal wandered until it stopped (and died!) on Doi Suthep, the relic's new home." It is famed to house a bone of Budda. It is a beautiful temple. Leaving our shoes at the door, we walked into the innermost structure. The painted murals on the walls depict ancient daily life of the monks. There are many statues at which the faithful place burning incense in prayer. The main attraction is the Golden Chedi. This is a huge golden pyramid in the center of the temple. We witnessed many people walking around it numerous times while holding a special flower.
A few km's beyond Doi Suthep is the Thai Royal Family's winter palace, Bhuping Palace. It is here that I found out that my choice of clothing for the day was "disrespectful" to the Thai people. Visitors to Bhuping Palace are not allowed to wear shorts or any other clothing deemed disrespectful (short skirts, sleeveless tops, open shoulder tops etc.) I had my knee length board shorts on but they apparently weren't long enough (or the guards didn't like the design on them...ha, ha). I was forced to rent a pair of "pants" for 10 baht (about 30 cents) to cover up my shorts (see the picture in the photo album accompanying this entry). It's a good thing that we didn't know anyone here, as it was quite embarrassing walking around in these "pants". A note to Chris, Joe, & Iain - I deserved a hundred truck and traders for wandering out in public in those pants!
Heading back down the mountain, we decided to stop in at the Chiang Mai Zoo. Both Lonely Planet and Rough Guides said that the 30 baht entry fee was good value. Good value? Even at the lowly sum of 80 cents, it was a bit of a rip-off. The only good thing about the zoo was the panda exhibit. Unfortunately, it called for an additional ticket to be purchased to view the black and white bears. Once we saw the quality of the exhibit, we didn't mind having to pay for the extra ticket. It was top notch, being in a climate controlled environment with plenty of glass walls allowing natural light to enter.
The pandas were very cute, and we did get to see them at one of their supplemental feeding times, which was a very interesting exhibition of their behaviour in a confined environment. They were fed bamboo sticks by a zoo employee. When each of the pandas had finished their bamboo stick, all they had to do was look up towards the employee, and they were thrown another stick. Talk about being spoon-fed. They didn't even have to make a sound! Just turn their heads and a bamboo stick was tossed their way. Tamalyn commented that she wished she received the same service from me at home.
An interesting side-bar about the pandas: apparently they've reached maturity. A couple of days ago, there was a celebration at a park along the moat followed by a parade. This was in honour of the wedding of the pandas. Yup, they were "married"!
The amount of resources used to create and maintain the panda exhibit seems to have occurred to the detriment of the rest of the zoo. The other animals' exhibits were in a state of disrepair and neglect and a few of the exhibits didn't have any animals at all. Maybe we just visited the zoo on an off-day.
Returning to the Old City in the early evening, we made our way to a restaurant recommended by Melanie. Heuan Sunthari is an open aired restaurant directly on the bank of the Mae Nam Ping River. The owner, a famous Thai musician, performs nightly to add to the ambience inside. Adding to our experience, we had to remove our shoes and sit a table which had no chairs, sitting on mats directly on the floor. Since our table was against the balcony's railing we were afforded a fantastic view of various rowers glide by as dusk turned to darkness. We both agreed that this was our most romantic meal thus far on our trip. Thanks Mel.
Half way through dinner, we realized that today, Remembrance Day in Canada, marked the three month anniversary since our adventure around the world began. Wow, three months! It seems like only yesterday that our parents dropped us off at the airport in Calgary, and here we are roughly one-third done. The more we see of the world, the more it becomes apparent how little of it we have actually experienced. Today's jumbo jets can fly from London to Sydney non-stop and remain in the air for over twenty hours, giving people the impression that the world is becoming smaller. An adventure such as ours makes us realize that the world is only becoming more accessible, not necessarily smaller. That may be stating the obvious, but when Travelpod indicates that we have seen 17% of the world, we still feel that we have only scratched the surface of the countries that we have visited. Although we are having amazing experiences in each of the cities and countries that we visit, we are humbled that we are moving on with so many more experiences left on the table. There just isn't enough time to do everything, everywhere.
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