Advertisement
Published: August 27th 2009
Chiang Mai is a cute little town, surrounded on four sides by a moat and contains over 300 temples, known at Wats in Thailand. We found a wonderful little guest house called Nocky house for about 2 GBP a night, and spent our first day exploring town and all the Wats on offer! We saw a Monk graduation ceremony, if that's what you call it! There were some lovely little gardens around and some very ornate Wats!
Around town, there is always fantastic fruit smoothie places, and we had a great Pad thai lunch for next to nothing. There is a nice market to wander in the evenings, and nothing feels too rushed or manic, in comparison to my previous Bangkok experiences.
I experimented with my culinary skills, partaking in a Thai cooking course which was excellent - big plumes of fire, and all local ingredients. It was excellently run, each of us having our own cooking station and ingredients, making individual dishes we had pre-selected. We learnt how to make lots of Thai dishes, and sample some extras. I now have a full cook book as well, so might have to try it out on my own one
day! (Don't ask me to cook for you yet though!). After a lovely, rewarding lunch we returned to Nocky house where Ben indulged in a massage and I opted for a leg wax - bad idea in Thailand...not something the locals do themselves!
We opted for a day trip package, as is necessary sometimes to see a lot of things in one day, and we got to see some hot springs, a fantastic palace called Wat Rong Khun, the border of Burma (Myanmar) and the golden triangle, where we took a boat ride across to Laos and close to the shores of Myanmar. On the return journey to Chiang Mai we visited some hill tribes selling their hand made crafts, including the long necked tribes and ladies with large ear lobes. We saw a few things throughout the day, but it was unfortunately a bit of a tourist trap. The palace impressed me most.
The next day we headed on the long and winding road to Pai...
J xx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.042s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.024s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Christine Mills
non-member comment
good to hear from you
Hi jen good to hear from you and get the next stage of your travels. It looks like you're having fun and certainly seeing the sights. My goodness, I hope you don't need flames that high when you try the cooking for yourself. Take care, Christine xx