Should have done this weeks ago!

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The travelling has definitely begun! I moved out of my apartment on Tuesday, got the overnight train to Chiang Mai on Wednesday and have had the most amazing few days since then...



The overnight train was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be; the seats that we started our journey sitting in folded down into a lower bunk bed and the upper bunk bed was released from the ceiling by the train attendant when it was time for us to go to sleep. Holly and I watched a film to pass some of the time but it was soon time to get some sleep and, whilst it wasn't exactly the best night's sleep of my life, it certainly wasn't the worst either! We got to Chiang Mai on Thursday morning and were taken straight to Julie's, the guesthouse we had booked into before coming. It was certainly a backpacker's hostel, with a friendly vibe and lots of people all doing similar things to us.



We spent the rest of Thursday getting used to our surroundings, walking around Chiang Mai - which, for a city, isn't very big - and pinching ourselves every few minutes to make sure this was all real and we weren't going to wake up and find ourselves still working in schools. The highlight of the trip had to be Friday's cookery course, where we spent the whole day learning how to cook six different Thai dishes (and sampling them as well, of course!). I was quite impressed with how my dishes turned out and the fact that nothing takes very long to prepare and cook. As long as you have a decent wok to cook it all in, I suppose that's the beauty of Thai food. My chicken with cashew nut stir fry, spring rolls, coconut milk soup, red curry paste, red thai curry and deep fried bananas all went down very well, except for the fact that we were too full after the first two courses to eat much of the rest! It was fascinating to not only learn how to cook these dishes but also to look around the market and the cooking school's garden to find out about the different varieties of foods that are uses in the dishes.



The rest of our time in Chiang Mai was spend looking around the temples and trying to find some ruins that we'd read about in The Lonely Planet. We hired a motorbike on Saturday and rode out to where we thought the ruins were, only to be unimpressed with just piles of bricks and not much explanation about them. We didn't stay long. Wat Umong was much more interesting, literally translated it means 'Monastery with Caves' and that's pretty much what it is. It is still inhabited by monks but open for the public to wander around its beautiful surroundings. The pagoda is resting on top of the caves, which don't actually lead anywhere but, at the end of each tunnel, sits a Buddha and a small shrine for prayers to be said in front of. I think the tunnels are more a tourist feature now than anything else!



Apart from getting a pedicure and eating nice food, that's about all we did in Chiang Mai, enough to keep us busy but not so much that we were exhausted after the first stop - neither myself nor Holly felt much like doing the three day jungle trek that Chiang Mai is most famous for! I'm spending the next few days back in Bangkok whilst Holly is in Laos getting a new visa, hers expires on March 5th and it was easier for her to go to Laos from Chiang Mai than anywhere else from Bangkok. She is coming back to meet up with me tomorrow evening and, on Wednesday, we will make our way to Ayuthaya, the old capital city of Thailand!

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Photos

Chicken and Cashew Nuts
The first dish I cooked!

The final sitting
Coconut milk soup, red curry, rice to accompany it and, for dessert, deep fried bananas.

Tunnel in the monastery
The view down one of the tunnels in the monastery.