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Published: January 14th 2009
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After an extremely chilly (even for me; someone who has been known to wear T-shirts in the Canadian winters) 12-hour overnight bus ride (thankfully without any breakdown problems this time around) from Bankok, we finally arrived to the capital of the north and Thailand's second largest city of Chang Mai. With very little time to spare as our thai visas were to expire again (stupid new government regulations and their 15 day visas), we decided to forego the somewhat needed nap and head right on into one of the more regularily attended activities here; a Thai Cooking class. It was great! We started the day with a tour of the local markets in order to learn where our ingredients for the days were coming from and how to pick out our own ingredients when we get back home. We each got to learn many different dishes (10 or 12 learned between the two of us) and even learned how to stir-fry with fire (and how not to set the kitchen on fire in the process). By the way, do you know why it's best to pick the smallest eggs when cooking thai? Because they're the cheapest of course! It was funny
Spices in the morning market
This old man wanted us to smell every spice he had (twice) so we would understand what makes Thai food so tasty to surprise even a thai about how much spice I can handle, and by the end of the class he was even challenging me to put more chillies in than the locals would ever use.
Other additional perks to taking this course meant that we learned how to make simple fruit carvings and we even picked up some of the language through the process. "Ha" in thai is the number five and after taking this course we now know how to say 5,555,555 in thai....Hahahahahahaha! I'm sure the courses that you can take all over Thailand are very similar, but we went to "The Best Thai Cookery School" and we couldn't have agreed more about the name!
The actual city of Chang Mai stems from an inner walled square (the old city) that is now interjected with many guesthouses amonst it's numerous couple-hundred year old wats (temples). Although it has a lot of history, probably the best thing it is famous for (other than the cooking courses) is it's great location to do hill-top-trekking from. Would would hate to not take part in a local tradition, so this is what we headed out to do next.
Although at
Mortar and pestle
Crushing up more chilies than was necessary for this Papaya salad dish to make it more than "thai spicy" this point of our trip we have learned that most of the organized tours that every other place of business on any given street offers are usually, despite their promises, not all that authentic, we chose to go through our guesthouse to set up this hill-tribe trek as neither of us felt comfortable enough or well-equipped enough to attempt to hike through the back country amongst the native people on our own.
After several mildly strenuous hills, we arrived in the village we would call home for the night. We were encouraged to explore the village on our own an even to engage the people of the village if we felt up to it. In less than an hour of being there, a footie match had broken out; Thai's versus the westerners! I'm proud to say that the westerners actually pulled off a win (not much due to my help). Later we learned that the boys we played against were on average 10 years our junious and we did have 2 locals on our team, but a win's a win, right?
Night brought on a dinner buffet complete with delicious curry and pad thai dishes; and all you can eat
none the less! Directly following dinner, a guitar was brought out as was the thai whiskey and beers. The local children, dressed complete in traditional garb, started song and dance for our entertainment. Lindsay was even brought up in front of the group to be taught some of the steps to some of the dances; as you can see from the pictures, it takes some getting used to!
The experience wouldn't be complete without sleeping as a local family would; all together on one big "mattress" (read: woven mats on the bamboo thatched floors) all under one room's roof. The temperature was something new for us to get used to as we were clearly no longer in beach territory. As it is the winter time here now, temperatures dip down to somewhere between 0-10 degrees at night. Now I know that all you canucks may be saying, "that's nothing, it's -20 here plus windchill!" But might I remind you that you have heated (and insulated) cars and homes to go into and you no doubtedly have already taken out your winter jackets and touques for the season; not so much the case here!
The second day of trekking brought us
to an elephant camp where we loaded up and headed out down a stream right on top of the elephants! It is not something we felt comfortable with doing since we had to step right on poor old "Stampy's" head to get on, but she was more than accommodating for the rest of the ride. We would both agree that cars are still our desired mode of transportation since the ride atop our long-trunked friend was somewhat comparable to riding down a dirt road that had recently been washed out; she was a bumpy ride.
After dismounting Stampy and a short stop off at a waterfall to cool off, we loaded up onto a bamboo raft to meander down a lazy river. The only way to steer the raft was with someone at the front and back holding a long piece of bamboo to push off of whatever side of the river we may be close to hitting.
The next morning after our 2 day trek and a good nights rest, we made our way on to Laos (and nearly got stuck in Thailand over our allowable Visa permit due to missing a bus) for a new exciting adventure.
Intricate fruit carving
Unfortunately ours didn't turn out quite this nice
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Danielle
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Surreal Life!
I can't believe you guys were actually there. Those kinds of places I only see on TV. You make me want to go there too. For now I will live vicariously through your stories and pictures! Keep up the posts. Have fun! Love you guys!