Chiang Mai, Thailand

Dec 9: Chiang Mai temple day
Today we woke up rather late, had lunch at street-side cafe (Pad Thai and some curry, which was unfortunately not that good), and decided to check out the city's many temples. We started our walking tour, hit many of the temples around the city, then decided to go check out the temple at the top of the nearby hill. Apparently it was supposed to be a really beautiful temple, and you got a great view of Chiang Mai. All this ended up being true, we just paid way too much for the ride up, entrance fee and the ride back down. Not worth it. That evening, we decided we would cave and splurge on some Mexican food that claimed to be REAL mexican food. Turns out it wasn't too bad: we got a combo with a taco, burrito, enchilada and beans and rice. Everything was pretty darn good except for the enchilada sauce that was trying really hard to be red chile sauce but failing. Relatively satisfied, we went to check out one of the night markets for about an hour or so before attempting to go see Harry Potter! (it was the first time we were in a big city since it came out, and we checked the internet, which said it was playing in english at 9:30. We've since learned that you can never trust the reliability of anything written on the internet in Thailand). We had a tuk-tuk drop us off at the mall, and it took us about 30 mins and lots of confused Thai people for us to figure out he had dropped us off at the wrong mall. Frantic, we found another tuk-tuk to take us to the correct theater, where we found Harry Potter, playing at 9:30, but only in Thai. Very, very sad, we decided to have an hour long foot massage outside the mall instead.

Dec 10: Thai Farm Cooking Class
Today we woke up bright and early, ready for our cooking class! Our first stop was the local market, where we saw several curry pastes, how coconut milk and cream are made, and where we bought some breakfast snacks in the form of pineapple and strawberries (or, as the Thais say, stlawbelllllliiii). Then, off to the farm! We were told that it was a farm and we would get to pick all our own ingredients, etc, etc. Needless to say, we were a bit disappointed when we discovered there was 3 other groups of 12 people and the garden was basically just a display garden that we looked at and didn't pick anything from. Sad day. Other than that, we had a great day. We made our own curry pastes using a mortar and pestle (steph-green, phil-red), a curry dish, several different soups, and basil or cashew chicken. We ate our food with some great sticky rice (and were stuffed to the absolute brim). After lunch, we made a couple of more dishes: Pad thai for Phil and Pad si ew for Steph. We also made a couple of desserts and called it a day. We headed back to the city, had some beers with some of our buddies from the cooking class, and headed to bed.

Dec 11: Elephant Riding, Waterfall and RaftingWe started our day in the back of a pick-up, and it was about an hour's ride to the elephants. We stopped along the way to check out an orchid farm, which was pretty cool. Then we stopped at a longneck village, which was a bit awkward--it was very obviously set up for tourists, and all the women just posed for us. Despite the awkwardness, it was really amazing to see and feel how much all the brass weighs, and that they can still go about their daily lives with 11 pounds of brass around their necks. Next, we headed off to the elephants. Apon arrival, we were instructed to buy some bananas. Then, we boarded our elephants. Turns out they really like bananas. They stick their trunks up at you and they stop walking until you give them a banana. What happens when you run out of bananas you might ask? Well, either they would grab a giant tree branch and rip it off the tree, or our guide encouraged the elephants to keep moving by tapping them on the leg or the butt. After the elephant ride, we rode something similar to a zip-line, except it was a cage...so we rode a cage across the river... Afterwards, we had some lunch, had a short hike to a waterfall, took a short swim (the water was freezing), and then headed back to the truck. We were dropped off for some white water rafting. The rafting was rather short, but also exciting. We hit 5 or 6 rapids, most of them pretty tame, except for one, where we were literally spinning and bouncing through some pretty serious rapids. Then we hopped on a bamboo raft (luckily we were all past the rapids) and headed home for the day, exhausted. We had some dinner and went to bed.

Dec 12: Biking around Chiang Mai
Today we decided to have a relatively relaxed day. We got up a bit late, had a late brunch at Kajana, one of our favorite restaurants, and rented some bikes. We headed outside the walls of the central city to see some of the temples that were further away. Our first stop was Wat Suan Dok, a beautiful, almost completely white temple that contains the remains of some of the former rulers of Chiang Mai. Next we headed to Wat Umong, which took us a little while to find due to some awkwardly placed signs. Wat Umong is a 700 year old Buddhist temple. Some of the monks live in tents near the entrance (the new ones), while others live in houses throughout the area. The cool thing about this temple is there are many tunnels (that you can still explore!), that are said to have been built for one of the monks who really liked to wander while meditating. After Wat Umong, we had a snack at a local restaurant, and headed back to the city. In the evening we went to Chiang Mai's huge Saturday market, which stretches from wall to wall in the central part of the city (approx 2 km!). We went with our friend Ari that we met in cooking class, but ended up loosing her in the huge crowds! We surprisingly didn't buy much, and headed back to the hostel for an hour long Thai massage ($5) and some sleep.

wanna see more pictures of our adventures Chiang Mai? click here