Day 4 - Chiang Mai

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Woke on the train this morning at about 5:30am after some waiter guy on the train started trying to sell "orange Juice".
We were still about an hour out of Chiang Mai.
It was good that we got woken up though because we got to see the sun rise. We arrived into Chiang Mai at about 7:45am where we were met by and piled into our 'Finding Nemo' bus and taken to our hotel, The Empress.
We had an included breakfast there this morning and it, like the hotel itself, was amazing. Everything you could think of for a buffet breakfast, you could even choose your own ingrediants and they would make you an omlete on the spot for you.
After breakfast we had 2 hours free, until 10:30am, for showers etc before our trip out to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep. We made our way on our 40minutes drive to the mountain. Today we had a new local tour guide called Nui.
On the way up the mountain Nui was expaining to us about Monks and what it takes to become one etc.
When we arrived at Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep we had to climb a lot of stairs to get to the top. Nui was nice enough to stop us at the bottom and take a picture of the group on Matt's camera.
We went through the temple and the boys even got blessed by a real monk and have a 'good luck' piece of string tied on their wrists. The girls had it done second hand by a monks assistant as the monks cant touch females. You're supposed to leave the bracelet on until it falls off, it's unlucky to cut it off; if you do want to remove it you have to un-tie it.
After the temple we did the 40minute drive back to the hotel where we had free time for a bit.
Jackie and I decided to go for a walk to find some genuine Thai food for lunch. We walked for about 20minutes in the heat, finding only 2 Thai food places. We headed back toward the hotel to have lunch at the first place we saw. It was kind of a street stall, but not. It was open to the street, but not just one of those little stalls. Anyway, we hoped for the best and ordered our noodleswith chicken. My goodness was it amaing!! It cost us just 30Baht (just over $1) and it was probably the best meal I've had since I've been here.
After stuffing ourselves we headed back to the hotel to sit by the pool for a bit. We had to meet up in the lobby at 4:00pm to be taken to our Thai cooking class.
The class was really good. First they took us to the markets so we could see what everything was and what we would be using to cook. We then walked back to the Thai Cooking School to start our cooking.

We got to do four courses, I chose:
Curry - Chiang Mai noddles with chicken
Stirfry - Fried noodles Thai style
Soup - Chicken in coconut milk
Appetizer - Spring rolls

It was very interesting learning their techniques and all the recipes were quite easy once you had all the ingredients. After the cooking class we moved on to the night markets. They werent bad, not great; a whole lot of rip offs like Tiffany & Co. jewellery and Prada bags.
We met up with the rest of the Contiki group at 9:00pm. We had a couple of drinks and left the bar by 10:00pm for the 'surprise' that Dean, our tour manager had organised for us. The 'surprise' was a visit to 'Marina's Lady Boy Bar'. Pretty self explanatory really.
We stayed here for a while as everyone was having drinks and they had Thai Boxing on outside the bar aswell which we could see from our seats. It got to about 12:30am and I was knackered and think I have discovered that I am allergic to everything in Thailand so Jackie, Anne, Jamie and myself jumped in a tuk tuk and went back to the hotel for some sleep.


Quotes:
- "I don't kno you but mash" Cara said to some random who was rudely on his mobile during the cooking class when he
was supposed to be mashing some ingredients in the mortar and pestle
- "It's so big I'm surprised you can fit it in your mouth" - Unknown, said about the springroll that was just made..

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