After waving goodbye to Laos we hopped on a plane and crossed the border to Chiang Mai. We decided to take the flight option as this would give us a 30 day Thai Visa rather than the 15 days that crossing a land border would have given us, plus it was lovely, quick and comfortable in comparison to those Laos buses.
Our first day in Chiang Mai was spent taking in the numerous and very beautiful temples which are scattered around the city.
We found the 'Saturday walking street' which is a market stretching the length of a very long road. There was nothing of much interest to tempt us, except for a couple of food stalls which Dave made a bee line for.
Day 2 was cooking school day and we were picked up at 9.30am on 2 motorbikes and whisked through the streets of Chiang Mai to reach our cookery school. The first task was to take our baskets to the local market and collect the ingredients needed for the days dishes, all under the watchful eye of 'R' our teacher of course. Probably a good job as half of the things on the market stalls are unidentifiable!
Back at the ranch it was time to get cooking and Dave and I had cunningly chosen completely different dishes to make, so as to maximise our cooking repertoire, clever eh! All very organised and within no time at all we had a Chicken and Cashew nuts and a hot and sour prawn soup to scoff.
During a very enjoyable day we cooked a further 5 dishes each, including Green curry, Chiang Mai noodles, Chicken in coconut milk and we pounded and ground to produce our own red and green curry pastes.
We waddled our way back to our hostel and had to have a lie down to get over having consumed so much food. Recovery was swift and we were soon out and about again and wandering up and down the Sunday walking street, which was actually a number streets and was a shoppers dream. We made a few purchases and then made our way to a bar to settle down to watch the world cup final. One of the bars had been transformed into Dutch headquarters and Dave with his orange t-shirt and Netherlands affinities was soon adopted and I only got away without face paint for a few short moments. Great atmosphere and even when we moved bars to a more mixed venue there was no hint of animosity between the Spaniards and the Dutch; in fact even with our very orange faces a friendly gringo shared his bottle of SangSom (Thai Rum) with us during the match. We eventually rolled into bed at 4.30am and were not looking forward to our 9am start to head further north to Pai.
Our first day in Chiang Mai was spent taking in the numerous and very beautiful temples which are scattered around the city.
We found the 'Saturday walking street' which is a market stretching the length of a very long road. There was nothing of much interest to tempt us, except for a couple of food stalls which Dave made a bee line for.
Day 2 was cooking school day and we were picked up at 9.30am on 2 motorbikes and whisked through the streets of Chiang Mai to reach our cookery school. The first task was to take our baskets to the local market and collect the ingredients needed for the days dishes, all under the watchful eye of 'R' our teacher of course. Probably a good job as half of the things on the market stalls are unidentifiable!Back at the ranch it was time to get cooking and Dave and I had cunningly chosen completely different dishes to make, so as to maximise our cooking repertoire, clever eh! All very organised and within no time at all we had a Chicken and Cashew nuts and a hot and sour prawn soup to scoff.
During a very enjoyable day we cooked a further 5 dishes each, including Green curry, Chiang Mai noodles, Chicken in coconut milk and we pounded and ground to produce our own red and green curry pastes.
We waddled our way back to our hostel and had to have a lie down to get over having consumed so much food. Recovery was swift and we were soon out and about again and wandering up and down the Sunday walking street, which was actually a number streets and was a shoppers dream. We made a few purchases and then made our way to a bar to settle down to watch the world cup final. One of the bars had been transformed into Dutch headquarters and Dave with his orange t-shirt and Netherlands affinities was soon adopted and I only got away without face paint for a few short moments. Great atmosphere and even when we moved bars to a more mixed venue there was no hint of animosity between the Spaniards and the Dutch; in fact even with our very orange faces a friendly gringo shared his bottle of SangSom (Thai Rum) with us during the match. We eventually rolled into bed at 4.30am and were not looking forward to our 9am start to head further north to Pai.
2 comments:
At last ..... we are hearing about Thailand!
You might be able to survive in Wareham Forest now David with all that training!
We have plenty of squirrels!
I am loking forward to some Thai curries!
LOL
Mum Rowan
so exciting post ...
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