Day 0, or the never ending travel time where I lost a day. Took off from Seattle at 2pm (1 hr late) on Thursday the 17th, and arrived in Tokyo (and ran) at 5:45pm the 18th, caught the plane @6:05 (and my luggage did as well, yay!) then arrived 7.25 hrs later at Bangkok at 11:15pm (45 minutes early) on the 18th. Slept (or tried to) on a bench at the airport for a few hours, then caught the 8am plane to Chaing Mai.
Day 1, Arriving at Chaing Mai, lots of trees to be seen from the plane along with haze. Weather was in the low 80's in the sun when I arrived at 9am, probably high 70's in the shade. I took a taxi to the hotel and got my first real taste of Asia. :) They drive on the left side of the road here, when they feel like it, or are bored? The Taxi wasn't careening but he certainly didn't stay anywhere NEAR the left side of the road very often, many times motorcycles passed us on both sides. Tons of fun! He also was nice and pointed out some sights and places I might want to check out later.
I arrived at the hotel at about 9:30? and checked in (after going to the wrong building, there are apparently 2, right next to each other, eh, figured out eventually). Went to my room and met my roommate Dorothea (pronounced Doro Te ah), who is very nice, from Zurich. She was about to go wandering and look at temples and since I had passed tired at that point and was pretty wired I went with her. We had a map, (ish) a guidebook, and no sense of direction but it was wonderful fun and gorgeous. Found tons of temples, though we missed a few we were trying to find, we eventually found a street sign and orientated ourselves. The temples are GORGEOUS, really, really wonderful and they are everywhere you turn around, only a few are actually on the map. And there are monks everywhere. Lunch was wide noodles with veggies and chicken in a oyster sauce type thing at a little hole in the wall restaurant. I also got a fantastic watermelon shake. Mmmmm. Then more temples, oh my goodness I took a lot of photos! Around 4 we got tired and decided to try a Thai Massage. 150Bhat for 1 hr (5$). Pretty good, though not all that relaxing! Saw a few more temples then headed back to the hotel to "start" the tour with our welcome meeting with the coordinator. His name is Long (nickname) and he is Cambodian. Really nice though it is sometimes hard to understand him. After an overview of the next few days we went to dinner as a group in the night market (Shrimp Pad Thai, Dragon fruit shake, and mango sticky rice, tasty) then wandered through the market for a bit. Then back to the Hotel and bed, thunk, at around 8:30!
Day 2, This morning we met downstairs at 9am to go to a cooking school that was included to make up for us missing some included stuff in Bangkok. We got stuffed in the back of a pickup with benches on either side and a top and taken to the place. Got out then walked to the local market and got shown our ingredients and what they all look like and smell like, fresh noodles and lots of kinds of rice. Then back to the Cooking school where we all got our own little round cutting board and cleaver and got to chop stuff up, then later cook! you got to choose 4 dishes (2 choices per course, soup, main, curry and dessert) I chose Coconut milk and chicken soup, pad thai, red curry and mango sticky rice. mmmm. It was Delicious and not all that hard to do. We made the soup and main, then ate them, then made the curry and desert and ate those. I was sooo full from the 1st two I barley ate any of my curry, even though it was tasty. D made the bananas in coconut milk as a desert, it was verrry sweet, tasted like banana's flambe, but the bananas are a bit tougher. After cooking school we had a free afternoon, and D and I and another woman in our group Julie went wandering to check out some more temples (oldest) and then the Sunday street market. Kindof like a street faire, mostly cheap junk but some pretty things. Had dinner at a restaurant along the way, I had something with huge flat rice noodles and veggies and chicken, the veggies and chicken were tasty, but the noodles were odd. Didn't like them, too slimy and no flavor. Wandered a bit more through the market then we all reached saturation with crowds about the same time (it was reallllly crowded) and we stuffed ourselves into a tuk-tuk to go back to the hotel for some rest.
Day 3, Elephants! (included, also, due to missing Bangkok) we went to the Elephant Conservation Sanctuary and got to look at and pet elephants ( the 2 year old was adorable) and one of them petted me bach. :) I had to wash my top, my whole sleeve got muddy. We watched them bathe the elephants, then wandered over to see them do a show. Drumming, shoving logs to a fro, PAINTING, and sitting, etc tricks. Pretty fun. After that we had a 1/2 hr or so elephant ride in this rickety little bench thing perched on their backs. The handler was sitting on the neck and directing, it was interesting for sure. Next we took a quick trip to see the Elephant hospital (saw an elephant with a prosthetic leg) then lunch. I got something called 'Neither Fried Beef String Nor Theaster with herb/rice". It was too spicy and was an odd texture. Came next to white rice, and had about 7 chunks of "beef" which tasted more like tendon and had about 1/2 teaspoon of actual beef between them all. Maybe. I didn't eat much of it. Oh well.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a food market and I picked up some fresh longans, very tasty, so those held me over. Back to the hotel for a quick rest and then we headed to our original "included" activity for the day the Doi Suthep Temple, a 45 min ride up into the hills. Very, very pretty, we had (some people paid to take the cable car) to go up 300 steps to get there, though it didn't feel like that many at all. Wandered around a took pictures, the view was pretty obscured by haze. Then back to the city, went as a group to dinner. A tasty place where I got Panang curry wuth pork with woooonderful brown rice, a watermelon and passionfruit shake (they just grind up the seeds, it is disconcerting) and fried "angel" mushrooms with a satay sauce. mmmmm.. D got "angel bean salad" that was spicy but good. I think this was the best meal I have had so far. Wonderful. Then back to the hotel where I am downloading photos and writing this to you all. (574 photos so far, YIKES!)
Tomorrow, on to Laos!
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