Chiang Mai!!!

From Ayutthaya we have headed north to Chiang Mai, Thailand’s cultural capital.  We arrived late at night via train rather drained but were immediately recharged when our tuk tuk dropped us off in the middle of the Sunday night market.  We’ve hit up several night markets in Asia but this one was special, along with all the usual bric-a-brac  for sale there were musicians, artists painting and sculpting, and our favorite a 6 year old boy doing portraits!

We packed our time in Chiang Mai full of fun activities and visited numerous temples, got massages from a group of inmates at the local women’s prison and meandered through several streets and local markets.

As our blog posts attest, we love food and Thai food continues to impress us.  So when mulling over what to do to celebrate Colin’s birthday a cooking class was an easy decision.  To escape the city we booked an all day course out in the country and with only 5 people in our class (we saw others in the markets with 15) it was a lot of fun and very relaxing.  We picked our 6 dishes to make and as we stirred and fried our instructor slyly asked if it needed more heat, almost daring us to put in another chili. We accepted this devilish dare and it defiantly kicked things up a notch but didn’t hinder the taste, we figure between the two of us we consumed a whapping 15 chilies…yowza!    We learned how to make fresh curry paste with a mortar and pestle and our instructor divided us into two’s and said this was a job that needed ‘man’s power’.  Now anyone who knows me knows I dislike being told what I can and cannot do and so I refused to let Colin help me pound the ingredients in to a paste.  The instructor came to look in my bowl and I proudly showed her my work which passed her inspection - ha, man’s power my @$$. We learned a lot (other than the fact that women can pound curry paste) and our favorite part, of course, was eating our fiery creations.  Our minds and bellies full we headed back to the city.

After cooking I had just enough time to head to one of the temples for what is called ‘monk chat’. As the name implies you get the opportunity to sit and chat with a monk.  He gets to practice his English and share his knowledge and I get to learn about Buddhism and his way of life.  I was early and had a good hour to talk with two of the monks before other showed up. At the end of visit they took us into the temple and taught us how to meditate, very cool.   Add all that new knowledge to what I learned earlier at the cooking school and I was good and done by the time I got back home.   Chiang Mai has so much to offer we could stay a week without even covering all there is to see and do.  But it is time to move on and head further north for some small town living. 

p.s : The next morning confirmed 15 chilies might have been one (or ten) too many...