Cooking, Floods and traversing the continent

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Well this is our last night in Chiang Mai, we spent the day engaged in various activities including thai boxing, a thai cooking course, visiting the local markets and visiting a famous temple on one of the mountains surrounding Chiang mai! This is actually a description of the various activities we each engaged in rather than what we all engaged in -Tom went thai boxing, Ele and I went on a thai cooking course and Clara visited the local temple. It does show you the diverse activities available to visitors to Chiang Mai and that has barely scratched the surface - for those who wish there are courses in meditation, massage, opportunities to go trekking, white water rafting as well as the amazing night bazaar's that Chiang Mai is famous for. Did I mention the sunday night market in my last entry? Well they are great fun too!So many stall's, so little time! There may be a lovely silk scarf from there on its way to you.

Unfortunately due to the floods happening in downtown Chiang mai we have been unable to visit the night bazaar - oh yes the floods! Apparently this is due to it being the rainy season and the recent typhoon coming over from the south china sea but also as reported to us by several locals it is due to the authorities being worried that local dams will burst therefore they have opened the dams and the river (Ping?) has burst its banks and the water is thigh high in places. However this is nothing in comparison to the floods they got in August which were several meters high. The floods have not affected us in anyway except to prevent us going to the night bazaar and the area surrounding it and the river ping.

Well the cooking course was brilliant although we were left feeling a bit full after eating the 6 dishes we cooked throughout the day!We were given a recipe book which I will be posting home soon and I feel vaguely confident that I will be able to recreate these dishes on returning home! They were delicious and how spicy these dishes are is up to the person cooking them!Also on the course made another potential contact for when we are in Australia!

Well we move onto Laos tomorrow via Chiang Kong and are probably going to take the fast boats to Luang Prabang (6-8 hair raising hours!). I'm not sure when my next entry will be but i expect there will be a few photos relating to this entry as I'm unable to upload at the moment. Here are a few interesting cultural difference's we have observed during our stay:
1)The drinking water is treated in a variety of amusing ways; reverse osmosis, ultravioleted (ultra -violated?) and ozone treated being a few of these. (I admit it, i miss english tap water! however the bottled water here is not bad and we think that our malaria medication may cause a metallic taste occasionally)
2) The traffic lights have a countdown for when they will change! I think this is a brilliant idea, its so useful and probably would help some people save petrol/ not get speeding tickets.

I'm sure there are more but I can't think of them right now. I would definately recommend coming to thailand, the people are very friendly and helpful and generally honest although they may try and over charge you for taxi rides, but this is always up for negotiation and bartering. You should not have any problems here as long as you read the guidebooks for a bit of background information and take sensible precautions. Also bring a sense of humour and a smile! An example of thai honesty- I purchased an item from a shop and then left it in the public toilets- the girl who sold it to me, saw it and took it to customer services and when we came back the next day assisted me to have the item returned as soon as she saw me - she could have tried to sell me another one. I have enjoyed my time in Thailand and am looking forward to laos. Hope all is good with you
Sarah xxxxxxxxx

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