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Published: February 20th 2007
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My time in Chaing Mai has come to an end as I hit the tarmac tomorrow for a plane bound for the islands and the greatly anticipated beach.
Saturday:
Following the trekking excursion I took a day off to just kick back and relax but did manage an outing to one of the "must sees" here. Arjan, the Dutch guy, and I negotiated a "mini bus" up to Wat Doi Suthep. It's an important temple for Thai Buddhists and is named after the mountain it rests upon. According to legend, a Buddha relic was placed on the back of a sacred white elephant, which was allowed to roam where-ever it wanted. The elephant is said to have climbed to the top of Suthep Mountain. There it trumpeted three times, turned around three times, then knelt down and died. This was taken as a sign and the king at the time, King Ku Na, built the temple there in the 14th century.
Sunday::
The next day I was cooking: literally! We signed up for an all day cooking class and it was a blast. It started with a morning tour of the local market where our instructor explained what all
the various spices and exotic fruits were. Then back to the school where we made Thailand's national dish, pad Thai, as well as panang and green curry, spring rolls with sweet chili sauce, stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts, tom yum kai (spicey coconut and prawn soup) and sticky rice with mango. We of course ate everything we made, so imagine how I felt after all that. I was in bed by 8 that night.
Monday:
I checked out of the guest house I was in because my roomates, the mosquitos, were bothering me and I just didn't like the vibe there (it was very motel 6-ish). I found a great place just down he street with more of a Thai-feel to it and it was even cheaper. It's run by a Chinese-Thai man who used to work at the Beverly Wilshire in LA. He rented me a scooter for 100 baht, $2.75 USD, and I spent much of the day jamming around town eating at food stands, checked out the river and people fishing for catfish there, got lost and didn't care, and even broke down and went to Starbucks. A great day topped off with an even better
Happy New Year
Eating my way through Chinatown... night: Chinese New Year. There's a Chinatown neighborhood here where the streets were blocked off and about 1000 food stands were set up. It was unbelieveable. There was crab and dumplings and kabobs and pad-thai and Chinese noodles and black bean custard and ice cream and Singha beer. And that's just what I ate. Arjun and I are quite popular here as we both tower over the locals and just smile at everyone. We scootered it back to our respective guest houses and called it a night.
Today:
I felt we should try to do something physical to burn off the calories fromt he night before so I signed up for a mountain biking excursion, and it was an excursion! It was "downhill" style so we had full-supension bikes and full body armor. The guide, a Hawaiin guy, drove us up to the top of Doi Suthep and we hauled 28 miles of %90 downhill into town, all single track through bamboo and teak jungle. Even though it was mostly downhill I got a great workout and am feeling totally worked. There were about 20 people in all, split into three groups based on skill level. I opted for
the advanced group which included three Australians and a German guy.
The town of Chiang Mai is somewhat of a crossroads of people heading out for excursions in Northern Thailand. It actually reminds me a lot of Southern Oregon as it attracts the "outdoors" crowd and is itself a smallish town nestled at the base of the mountains. Locals here speak of rain and water levels and fire season just like there. People come here from all over the world to take treks and sample the food and local color. It meshes Western influences and luxuries with a distinctive Thai culture, and is truly a very special corner of the world.
It's interesting as I have met no Americans here. There are tons of Canadians, people from the Netherlands, Austrailians, English, and many Asian tourists from China and Japan. Today everyone on the biking tour wanted to know why we aren't on the metric system like the rest of the world, and I didn't have an answer fro them.
Next stop: The Beach
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