After pretty cold weather over the past month and a half, we were ready for some warmer weather again. Onto Asia we went! We went back to Thailand for a few reasons. First, the warm temps. Second, it was on the way to our next destination in the Philippines for a wedding that we are attending. Lastly, we were in Thailand last year and fell in love with the culture, food, people, sights and the craziness of it all.
Both Marissa and I were on the verge of getting sick in Munich before we left. I was really dreading going all the way from Germany to Thailand. It ended up being 3 flights and over 14 hours of flying from Munich to Chiang Mai. When we arrived, we had missed a day’s sleep, which is never a good thing when being on the verge of sickness. Sure enough when we landed in Chiang Mai I was sicker than in Germany and now had a full-on head cold feeling that my head was going to explode with sinus pressure! Marissa had the opposite feeling and somehow managed to fight off the sickness.
Even though I wasn’t feeling tip top, I was bound and determined to make our time there as memorable as possible and not letting me being sick stop us from doing anything and it didn’t.
We went back to Chiang Mai. It is the northern capital of Thailand and is a city of rich history with over 300 temples in and around the downtown area. To top that off, the city sits at the base of some fantastic mountains to the north with many national parks close by. This was our ultimate reason for coming back – to enjoy the mountainous north and use Chiang Mai as our jumping off point. (More to come with later posts on that subject.)
Technically there are 3 seasons in this part of Thailand (Rainy, Cool and Hot). Rainy season just ended and we were now in the ‘cool’ season. It is crazy to think that it is ‘cool’ when the average daily temperatures are still in the mid-80’s and as usual it is very humid. The weather was so pleasant the entire time that we were in Chiang Mai and was a welcome relief from the cooler temps of our past month.
We really enjoyed our time in the city this go around. We ended up staying for 3 nights. The first day was spent recovering from the long day of flights. In addition, both Marissa and I also really wanted to get hair cut. Marissa hadn’t had one since we left in early August and I was looking a little squirrely since my last cut was when Marissa (re) shaved my head in Croatia 2 months ago. We both picked the top hair places in the city based upon every review we could find online. We were both nervous but they ended up being great! Marissa’s cost her a whopping $16 US dollars and mine cost me $9. This was no ordinary barber for me though. It was a 1 hr 45 min affair. It consisted of a meticulous great haircut with a nice fade, a straight shave on my face to get rid of my homely lumberjack beard and a shoulder & neck message.
This is another wonderful thing about traveling in Southeast Asia. Everything is very inexpensive. Our lodging was $25 US dollars a night and was pretty nice with our own bathroom and air conditioning. You can eat out with some great street foods for $5 total for both of us with dinner and a beer. This was welcoming to our budget considering we were in some pretty pricey places before this. We could now afford the ‘luxuries’ such as getting our hair cut!
An item that we ‘splurged’ on was a local cooking class. It costs $25 and was catered towards being wanting to learn more about how Thai food is prepared. In the cooking class, we had to opportunity to go to the local market and learn all about the fresh ingredients that go into the amazing Thai cuisine that we love. After the trip to the market, we took a stroll into the organic farm onsite where they grow many of the vegetables that are used in daily cooking. Lastly was the cooking!
We cooked 4 courses of some of the best foods! First, we each choose a stir-fry that we wanted to learn how to cook. Each stir-fry was similar in the way it was prepared but had some slight difference in the ingredients used. I chose the Pad Thai with Chicken and Marissa choose the Stir Fried Noodle (or Drunken Noodle as we sometimes call it). After the stir-fries, we fried up spring rolls that were made with fresh veggies. Round 3 were the curry dishes. Marissa chose green curry and I chose the Chiang Mai specialty Khao Soi. This dish is made from hand cut egg noodles, coconut milk and curry soup base. Truth be told, I LOVE Khao Soi and ate it everyday that we were in Chiang Mai at some point or another.
Pad Thai
Stir Fried Noodle
Fried Spring Roll Masterpiece
The curry dishes were pretty difficult to make since they involved so many steps and ingredients. The toughest part was making the curry paste, which involved pounding several ingredients for what seemed like ages. I know why we buy the curry paste already complete now!
Khao Soi
Our last round that we made was soup. Marissa made the Tom Kha, which is a coconut milk soup and I made Tom Yum soup that is more of a sweet and sour Thai soup. By the time it came to eat the soups, we were both pretty stuffed and couldn’t even eat everything.
We both learned a lot during our first cooking class. There is a reason why Thai food is so good in Thailand. They take the time to do the hard work and prepare everything the ‘ol fashion way and don’t take any shortcuts. In addition, many of the vegetables and spices that they use in everyday cooking are not readily available in the US making it very tough to replicate. The class ended up being a lot of work but a lot of fun!
Besides the cooking class, we really enjoyed all of the markets that are offered in Chiang Mai. It reminded me a lot of my days in Shanghai. There are endless things to buy. We ended up only buying one thing in the markets, a backpack to use for the motorbike trip in the mountains after we left Chiang Mai. We knew we didn’t want to use our big packs since Marissa would have to have it on her pack the whole time. We found a nice mid-range size one for cheap. I enjoyed the bartering back and forth getting the price to something more reasonable. After our backpack purchase, we just enjoyed the chaos of it all. On Sunday the markets are even bigger and we had the chance to explore that our last night before leaving. It was like being in a sea of people with vendors selling anything you could possibly imagine!
Our last order of business in Chiang Mai was securing our ride for our trip into the mountainous north. We knew that we wanted to embark upon a 6 day ride, planning it ourselves as we went along. There were many motorbike choices ranging from high-powered rockets to small run down scooters. The choices were overwhelming to say the least. We went back and forth on which motorbike to get and ended up settling on one sweet $9 per day ride – a 100cc motorbike! It was something that as a teenager every kid wanted before they could drive and we were going to drive this thing several hundred miles through the mountains. What were we thinking? Would we survive? Was this a bad idea? You’ll have to read our next post to find out!
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