The Chiang Mai Report

Well I'm excited to say that we actually stayed in one city for longer then two days... it feels nice. Although we haven't moved from city to city, we certainly have been keeping busy. The bus ride here with Arenda and Milan (the Dutch couple) was a little uncomfortable. The lady at the bus station told us it was 5 hours and it actually 6-1/2. The air conditioning wasn't working either, but since it was supposed to be an air-con bus the windows didn't open. All and all it wasn't the greatest ride, but we got here none the less.

Day One

Our guesthouse is quite nice. We're staying right across the hall from Arenda and Milan, who we have spent the last three days with. We arrived fairly late in the afternoon so we spent the time reading about trekking trips, exchanging money and later on in the evening we visited Chiang Mai's famous Night Bazaar. The shopping there was amazing. It was nice to see some actual Thai items instead of the western stuff we saw in some of the other cities. We didn't do any buying on the first night, but we ended up with lots of great gifts ideas for family and friends.

Day Two

Our second day was just as busy as the first. It started with a early morning and a walk to the mini-bus station that was to take us to Doi Suthep (you will all have to pardon my spelling on this entry - I don't have the Let's Go guide with me this time). This famous Wat is 16km up a very very windy road. Arenda and I were not feeling very well by the time we got to the top :P One we arrived at the summit we noticed an elephant off in the distance so we thought we'd take a look. Turns out that a Thai gentleman has tied the elephant up for the last 13 years and watched as people paid for baskets of cucumbers to feed to him. It was actually quite sad to see the way he was being treated. It made us think that tourism in this part of the world can sometimes bring about negative results for the people and their animals (another example later on). At this point I was no longer feeling nauseous and we decided to start the 306 step journey to the where the Wat is. I bet you are all wondering what makes this temple so special... well I'll tell you! An elephant actually chose the place where this temple was to be built. The Thai people decided to let this elephant decide the location and he started to walk. He walked and walked and eventually made his was up this mountain. Once he got near the top he dropped dead. The Thai people thought that it couldn't be a more clear sign of where to build the Wat, so they started to build. There were statues and monuments of elephants all over the temple grounds.

The climb up the stairs wasn't nearly as exhausting as we expected it to be. Especially since it was quite cool that high up. At one point I was wishing for my sweater. The temple was quite nice. Milan and Paul both wore shorts that day and they wouldn't let them in with them so they had to borrow a pair of fisherman's pants. It was quite the site since they were both dressed so nicely in pink :) After viewing the temple we went out to the lookout where you had a great view of Chiang Mai - we have lots of pictures.

Note: We are a bit behind in uploading pictures - it's taking longer than we expected - we apologize to everywhere who is patiently waiting.

After we all were feeling better from the ride up the mountain we decided to take our chances with the way down. It was a bit better than the way up, but I still vowed not to step foot in one of those for at least a few days.

We spent the rest of the afternoon Wat-hopping around "the old city" in Chiang Mai. The highlight was one of the only two teak wooden temples in the city. It was quite beautiful and impressive to see what great condition it was in (since it was over 160 years old). We spent the evening shopping for Christmas gifts and did quite well. We are going to save quite a bit of shopping for Bangkok (on our way out of the country) because we don't want to carry all the gifts around with us for the next 1-1/2 months. I will say this though - Paul was on fire!! His bartering skills had the three of us (Milan, Arenda and I) in awe. We managed to get most items for close to half off.

Day Three

Just as a note - day three was today which is November 23rd. Today the four of us took a one day cooking course with a company called Baan Thai. They picked us up at our guesthouse around 9:30 this morning. Our first stop was a local market where we learned loads in Thai vegetables, rice and fruit. It is really nice to be able to identify what you're eating which before today we weren't always able to do. We also shopped for all the ingredients we would be needing that day. It was a really cool experience. We walked back to Baan Thai and our host (whose name is pronounced "Wow") started us off with a Thai Welcome snack. You took this leaf that looked like spinach only bigger and made it into a cone shape. You then filled it with peanuts, lime, ginger, hot chili pepper and this fantastic sauce and put the whole thing in your mouth. Every bite was a different flavour. It was pretty neat. Our next dish was Thai fried rice and I must say I have NEVER had fried rice that tasted so good. We then made egg rolls (from scratch) and papaya salad. At this point we took a bit of a break and got to know some of the other people in our group. The other three people happened to be Canadian as well. After swapping travel stories we started on our next set of meals. We made yellow curry (which was amazing) and fried bananas. At the end of the day we got a huge recipe book filled not only with what we made and ate today, but with at least 10 other Thai recipes to try. We both can't wait to start cooking!

Well that's it for now. Our guesthouse offered CD burning for 50 baht, so we burned almost 400 photos (yes I said 400) so we could delete them off the memory card. If we didn't do that we would most certainly run out of room. Tonight we will probably skip dinner and do some more shopping :) Tomorrow should be a little more relaxing. Arenda and Milan are doing a one day trek tomorrow that we decided not to do, so Paul and I will probably lounge around and maybe visit the Tribal Museum. On Friday the four of us are going to go on a two day, one night trek. It involves hiking to a hill tribe, an elephant ride, a raft trip down the river etc. It should be great fun. We get to spend the night in the tribe's village. We will write all about it when we get back. Love to you all. Thanks for putting up with the lengthy entry :)