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After Spicy Villa, we didn't get back to Chiang Mai until the late afternoon.
Samart wanted us to teach him how to make pizza before we left (random...)! He had some sort of flour that just had a picture of a pizza on it, but it definitely was only flour, and I don't think it was really any sort of special pizza dough flour... He also didn't have cheese -- a small ingredient needed for pizza making! We decided to just go with it since he was so excited (they have some pizza places here but clearly it's not a big thing that is made at home). We mixed the flour with some water and oil (we had noo idea what as already in the flour mix, or what we were supposed to add because it was all in Thai) and then Samart added an entire bag of baking soda !!!
We turned it into a little competition and he was going to make a "Thai Pizza" and Lauren, Pricilla and I were going to make a more classic pizza (without cheese, I guess...)
Soon after we started making our pizzas, the
common area was full of people -- all the workers and volunteers began making personal sized pizzas with various ingredients. Samart had bought a pizza sauce (kind of) that he was eager to use...It was indeed some sort of tomato paste, but it also had anchovies in it! His Thai pizza included this fishy red sauce, some eggplant, bananas, basil, and even some ketchup on the top. Yummm.
We took to the simple route and put a bunch of garlic, basil, tomatoes and some eggplant. Needless to say I think we won the pizza competition even though the dough ended up more like a foccica bread consistency with the extra baking soda...We all had a communal Sunday lunch, lounging in the hut before we had to leave Spicy.
After our pizza making, with bellies full of make-shift pizza, Samart took us back to Chiang Mai. He took the long way and drove through Mae Wang, and a few of the 'suburbs' of Chiang Mai. He pointed out that they grow their rice in a different way since it is much more flat down here. The rice patties are just in large fields, rather than
terraced like the ones we saw throughout the mountains.
We didn't have a hotel booked for this night so we just had Samart drop us off in the city center and we walked around until we found a decent place right near the Chiang Mai Sunday Market. It was called the Sculpture Hostel, seemed clean, cheap and in a good location.
It was only 3pm and vendors were already setting up for the Sunday Night Market. From everything we've read, the market gets PACKED the longer you wait, so we just took quick showers and them hit the streets for the biggest market in Chiang Mai. Blocks and blocks of the city were closed off for this night market. You could find pretty much anything in these stalls. There was food, drink, entertainment, and plenty of shopping for us tourists. Lauren and I were set on getting a pair of these loose pants that we've seen everywhere -- they are very light weight, and what we like to call "temple wear".
Throughout this trip, we've realized that we could start a very lucrative Temple Wear business around here. For all the temples, you
must dress conservatively and have your knees and shoulders covered. It's been quite difficult in this 100+/- degree weather. Getting dressed in our temple wear every morning is pretty dreadful, knowing that it will be mid-90's by noon with 80-90% humidity...Lightweight materials are KEY so we were on the hunt for a pair of pants, and it was indeed our first purchase.
There are arts and crafts for sale, wooden Buddhas, marble Buddhas, painted Buddhas, even plastic Buddhas. Lots of interesting street food carts with mystery meat sticks, some that look like they've been sitting out in the heat for days on end. We tried some potstickers on the street along with a bun filled with pork -- both looked fresh and tasted delicious.
I bought a hand woven bag from a school of the deaf who makes all their products and then sells them at the markets. After this we headed to the fish spa. Not really anything like a spa, but rather more like a strange Internet cafe that offered the fish pedicures -- one of the items on our bucket list.
We had to clean our feet off
first (thankfully, so that maybe the tubs of fish in water are relatively clean of foot diseases...) then sat in the window and stuck our feet into a large tank with tiny little fish who immediately started nibbling on our feet and ankles. It ticked SO much! We were both just laughing uncontrollably in this small Internet cafe-like place with fish pedicures. We signed up for a 20 minute session, and after 2 minutes weren't sure if we would ever be able to make it through the entire time ! About half way through we started adjusting to the strange feeling...I thought it even started to feel good, sort-of.
After our fishies, we headed back to the hotel, pretty exhausted and excited for a real hotel room after our few nights in the jungle. The room was simple, but the hot water was decent and it was relatively clean, so a definite upgrate, in some ways, from our jungle hut. Our hotel was right in the middle of it all with street vendors right outside the front door. It was a great location and it even had a great outside patio area but everything was completely empty!
This is definitely one of the themes of our trip -- being alone in places we expected to be crowed, like temples and hotels.
Our flight to Siem Reap leaves at 6am in the morning which means getting to the airport around 5am! Early to rise definintely means early to bed for us! The trip has been very go-go-go and we're both pretty tired...constantly! So even with the sounds of the night market wrapping up, we both just fell asleep instantly.
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