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Published: November 26th 2007
I managed to leave my phone on a tuktuk at 5.30am after arriving by night bus. Not a great start. Luckily, though, Chang Mai just got better and better!
The tuktuk driver dropped me off at his commissioned guesthouse, since it was before dawn and the one I had booked was locked up. Naturally skeptical of tuktuk touts I planned to stay for one night then move out. However, 'Five Stars House' turned out to be great. It is run by incredibly friendly people, operates brilliant yet standard priced tours and courses and offers decent budget rooms. I would recommend it to any backpacker visiting Chang Mai.
Like my first day in Bangkok, Chang Mai began with administrative hassle, since I needed a police report if I am to have any chance of claiming for the loss of my phone on my insurance. First the non-English speaking city police station then an expensive tuktuk to and from the tourist police station. Admittedly, there is a comical value to writing a statement about exactly how you, stupidly, left your mobile on a tuktuk, which is then painstakingly translated into Thai...but it was an episode I could have happily lived without!
The next day I enjoyed a Thai cookery course.
After meeting my fellow cookers and each selecting 6 dishes to make we were taken to the local market to buy the ingredients. Then the real fun began:
One curry paste - for me green curry paste (you have to crush it in a mortar and pestle)
One related curry - green chicken curry
One stirfry - sweet and sour chicken
(Lunch break to share and feast on all that we had made....yum!)
One noodle dish - Pad Thai
One soup - coconut soup
One dessert or deep fried item - Steamed banana cakes (wrapped in banana leaves)
The teaching was fantastic, the company fun, the cooking interesting and educational, the food delicious and plentiful, the variety of foods to try interesting, and the large Thai cook book we got to take home, very useful and necessary if I want to try to recreate anything back home!
.....
Practically everyone who visits Chang Mai goes trekking. These immensely popular trips are all fairly standard; jungle trekking, elephant riding, bamboo rafting and visiting local villages populated by Thailands immigrant ethnic minorities. The only variations
are in length of time, size of group and just how touristy your route is!
Five Stars offered a 3 day, 2 night 'non-touristic trek', which had received glowing recommendations from people writing in their comments book, and all those I met who had just been on the trek. So I signed up and it was fantastic.
We only had a small group...five of us and two guides, so it was intimate. My fellow trekkers were Olivier and Greet, a Belgian couple, and Boudile and Yiddo, two friends from Holland. At first I was a little worried since they were all Dutch speaking but they made a great effort to speak mostly in English for my sake, and they were all wonderful people.
The trekking was hard work but wonderful. The first two days were in the jungle and mostly either trekking up and through streams or up and down steep hills. The third day was more in the open, and the green fields, rolling hills and tropical trees reminded me very much of Laos.
Elephant riding was fun, since I got to ride on an elephant's neck again (and get trunk squirted when we crossed
Cheers!
Coco cooking dinner - night 1a stream!), bamboo rafting was divinely relaxing, and the village we stayed, and the others we visited, we really nice and interesting (despite the many attempts to sell us things...inevitable since tourism is a regular factor and income bringer to the villages of North Thailand.
I couldn't speak more highly of our guide Coco, who was also a member of an ethnic minority group in Thailand. Friendly and funny he had a love of life and smile that were simply wonderful.
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The rest of my time in Chang Mai I enjoyed the wonderful shopping and eating opportunities offered by the Sunday night market (I was in Chang Mai on a Sunday twice) and randomly bumped into a friend (friend of friend) who I had met once a year and half ago...such is travelling!
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Annie
non-member comment
trekking
wow the pictures are fantastic, sounds like you really did get the non tourist experience and get a feel for the place. all the food sounds great and now you even know how to cook it authentically :-) happy to hear how well it went.