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Published: December 25th 2006
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Temple in Chiang Mai
Michael kneeling in front of the Emerald Buddah. We arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand's second biggest city after an arduous journey
from the sunny climes of Koa To. After 26 hours of boat, bus and train we were
ready to find somewhere, anywhere to dump our bags and ourselves. We looked
round a few dingy places before I met a dutch guy who had an air con room with
a TV for 350 baht, that's a good deal honestly.
After a hot shower (a novelty) we hit the streets of Chiang Mai keen to see
the towns main attraction - the Night Bazaar which has all manner of bootleg
goods including really cheap and cool clothing. We also found a great little
restaurant with massive fish tanks containing lobsters and liver fish! Our new travelling buddy Anna had made the trip up North with us but she wanted to learn Thai massage and only had a few days to do it so we had a drink with her and said our goodbyes. Tired and now a little drunk we stumbled home to our comfortable bed, I stayed there four 14 hours which was great, Manda was much better, 10 hours and she explored the town finding an IT
The lying buddah
Made with gold leaf. centre with rows and rows of pro evolution soccer.
I had the most vivid dream about my grandma that night and once I was up and about we visited Chang Mai's biggest temple with the sacred Emerald Buddha, there I had a thought of my Grandma and remembered the good times we had. I lit a candle and some incense and felt relieved and uplifted. After walking round the gardens of the temple which had enlightening Buddhist sayings like ' A lazy man has no honour, no matter how good looking'. We went for some lunch where a thai boy was playing Pro Evo in the restaurant, I played him, he beat me with his set goals and far greater skill but I gave him a good game.
That night we wanted to have a few drinks and knew there were a lot of bars near our hotel. Each bar you went into had a young Thai girl or Ladyboy coming up and saying hello (sawadee kah) and plenty of western men over 40. Realising that this was'nt the sort of bar we were looking for and that the company would cost us half our holiday budget we
soldiered on to find a cool/normal bar. Determined to find a bar with people our age we eventually came across the THC bar; laid back, UV lights and cocktails for a pound was just what we were looking for. We sat on the roof terrace where you could look up at the stars and we watched some thai people in the square below lighting paper lanterns and sending them high above us into the sky.
Chiang Mai is a much more organised city than Bangkok; it has side streets were you can sit out and have a coffee or a beer, a moat around the old town with fountains and flower boxes and it is just an hour away from some of Thailand's most remote jungle.
Day three in Chiang Mai we decided to do a cooking course with Pad Thai Cookery School. We started off at 9am in the food market where we learnt about the different types of Thai fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices that we were to cook with later on. Our cooking course instructor, Mew (like the noise a cat makes!), was a very funny lady. She was a larger lady (you could tell
Pad Thai Cookery School
Michael cooking with chicken cashew nut stir fry with flames! she enjoyed her food) with curly brown hair and a very funny laugh. She explained that Ginger and Ginseng had qualities like viagra, 'Only for men, Doesn't work with ladies, he he'. Her laugh was deep and cheeky but evil sounding! She really made the day fun. We cooked Green curry, Spring Rolls, Chicken and Cashew Nut stir fry, Spicy Prawn Soup, Pad Thai (traditional Thai dish with noodles, chicken, spring onion and of course red chillies!) and Banana and Coconut creme pudding. The food we cooked was amazing if I do say so myself! See the picture of my perfect spring rolls! By the end of the day we were stuffed but Michael still managed to eat a few more meals in the evening!
That evening we went to watch a Mai Thai match which is the most popular sport in Thailand. There were more westerners in the stadium than Thai's and we were told to sit right at the front whereas the Thai's were either right at the back behind the cages or on one side at the front where the betting was. We bet a couple of times with a guy we met called Dave Finchy
Pad Thai Cookery School
Amanda cooking with chicken cashew nut stir fry with flames! Much less composed than Michael! from London but we refrained from the madness of the ringside Thai betting! There were 8 fights all with 6 rounds. It was very entertaining even if it was quite violent, but what made the violence ok was that the fighters were very respectful of each other! At the end of each round the fighters would check if each other were ok...my punch didn't hurt too much did it?!?
The next day we went on a one day trek just outside of Chiang Mai. We would have went on a longer one but David and Louise were arriving that night and they would want to see Chiang Mai too. Our treck was packed full of adventure...I think it has been the most fun yet. We arrived in a village after an hour or so on a mini bus where we met the other 5 people we were trekking with who were all very nice. Our first adventure was to ride on an elephant, our elephant was very friendly and loved bananas. I think we fed him about 40 small bananas which were probably only as filling as peanuts to this huge creature! They are so amazing, I think my
Perfect Spring Rolls!
Amanda the perfectionist made perfect spring rolls! mmmm...but how do they taste? new favourite animal is an elephant...apart from Conker of course!
Next we had to climb inside a cage in pairs and be swung across the river to get to the other side, then we walked up a hill and down through the jungle to get a a small waterfall where we swam in the mini pool and used the water streams as waterslides, then we had lunch and a beer, then we went for a walk across our first of many bamboo bridges and up the hill to a tiny village where we cuddled and played with three tiny and very cute puppies. Next was our water adventures...we went white water rafting down some pretty rapid rivers and finally we had what was meant to be a more relaxing ride on a bamboo raft but Im not sure which was more scary! They were both great fun and we left feeling very happy and fulfilled.
We met David and Louise later that night and obviously had a lot of catching up to do over food and drinks. The most entertaining thing was David's new beard and tretcherous tales of India where he stepped backwards and fell into the
Mai Thai Boxing
40 Baht on Red! open sewer at the side of the road. His jeans were caked in crap and the only toilet he could find to try and clean himself had a tiny dribble of water and no windows!
We spent the next two days in Chiang Mai shopping for each others Christmas presents and David and Michael found places to play each other at Pro Evo and found a park to finally get some use out of Michaels new football. Next stop was further North to laid back Pai where we would spend Christmas.
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GRETA
non-member comment
CHRISTMAS
A lovely Chistmas present to open today, Christmas morning - thank you. We'll all think about Grandma at Christmas lunch