After having a day to get over our jet lag, Rob and Yee flew into Bangkok and joined us at our schwanky hotel in Bangkok. The next day we met up with Yee's friend Joe, who helped us negotiate some great prices at the weekend market (including a pair of binoculars for the safaris we'll be doing in Africa and more of the splatty tomato toys that Steve is obsessed with.... if they weren't so heavy, everyone reading this blog would probably be receiving one for Christmas!) Joe also introduced us to some awesome Thai food- most of which was super spicy for our western palate- as well as different candies and desserts, not so much emphasis on chocolate as I would have liked but still good with creamy coconut milk. One of the most impressive things is their ability to use banana leaves to create all sorts of packages for the food- and the shape of the leaf wrapper (a little pyramid, a flat square packet, etc) tells you what's inside without having to unwrap it. Genius.
We then took an overnight train, about 14 hours total, to Chiang Mai in the northwestern part of Thailand. Chiang Mai is known for having some amazing cooking schools, and we definitely took advantage while there. The 4 of us took a full-day cooking class that included a trip to the local market, which featured some very funky ingredients that fortunately our teacher didn't make us sample (there was some kind of moth or other winged bug that you could purchase as a snack, we didn't get that adventurous.) The class was taught out on an organic farm- how perfect- and the 10 of us students learned how to cook all sorts of awesome dishes that used a lot of ingredients grown on the farm. One of the dishes we made was green curry with chicken, and the photo below shows what the curry looks like before it gets smashed into a paste. We also made Tom Yum Soup, Chicken & Basil Stirfry, Chicken & Cashew Stirfry, Spring Rolls, a Banana and Coconut Cream dessert, and even learned the art of making awesome sticky rice. We also learned a lot about Thai dinner culture and how to eat like the locals (it's all family style so you get to try lots of different dishes at one sitting.) One other outcome is that we are WAY bigger snobs about Thai food now- everything's been delicious at the restaurants we've eaten at but really pales in comparison to what we cooked. Now the trick is recreating that at home.
After cooking school, we spent the days exploring the city of Chiang Mai and some of the sites outside of the city. This included the temple below, which had a huge staircase featuring a beautiful glass mosaic snake railing. At the top of the temple was a great view of the city, although the pollution was so bad that it was impossible to take a picture because of the haze (this is a pretty common problem we're finding in this part of the world, lots of aautomobile pollution.)
We also explored a national park and saw some beautiful waterfalls- another highlight was using our Lonely Planet guide book to interpret a sign written in Thai that said "Danger Ahead" and helped us to find the correct (safer) path. The language chapter had proven completely useless up until that point, so glad it finally justified us carrying around the extra pages. :-) Here's a photo in front of one of those waterfalls (it's actually really tall, just the perspective in the photo makes it look a lot smaller- it's really impressive, i promise!)
Here's another waterfall- Steve is having fun exploring the many different settings on our digital camera:
One other adventure was going to the elephant conservation center outside of Chiang Mai. The photos will come later once we can get them loaded onto a computer. For about $2, our admission into the park included an elephant show featuring very smart elephants that could do some amazing things- paint pictures (apparently each elephant that knows how to paint has their own style, one paints elephants, another does flowers, another is more abstract), play the xylophone, walk across a log and turn around on the log (like a gymnast, except much much bigger.) The coolest part probably was that the elephants looked so happy- they seemed to be very well taken care of and enjoyed all the attention they got from their mahouts (trainers) and the hundreds of school kids that take field trips here every day. For just 30 cents, you could buy a stack of sugar cane or bananas and feed the elephants- we have LOTS of photos of this, too.
We also got to ride on an elephant and at one point the mahout got off our elephant and let us move from the basket on the elephant's back to its neck to steer it. Rob and Yee's elephant was bigger and a bit more sassy- he was more interested in the various vegetation in the jungle and the baby elephants roaming around- so their mahout didn't quite think it was a good idea to let them drive. Riding on an elephant is a lot like being on a horse, but you're a lot higher up obviously, and their skin is covered in really prickly hair. The day at the elephant conservation center was amazing, one of the highlights of our trip so far which is saying a lot!
We're now back in Bangkok, getting ready to head south tomorrow to Koh Libong, an island off the south west coast of Thailand (south of Phuket if you're familiar with Thai geography.) We'll be there for a week and will celebrate Christmas there. Although by celebrating Christmas I mean we'll probably sit on the beach, go snorkelling, and eat some Pad Thai, because Christmas isn't really a big holiday around here considering the country is 95% Buddhist. We do have a wonderful drawing of a Christmas tree from my niece Caitlin that we'll be hanging in our bungalow (thank you Caitlin!)
We hope you all have very wonderful holidays where ever you spend them, and look forward to seeing you in 2008!
Cheers,
Anna
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