Chiang Mai, Thailand

Chiang Mai, Thailand - December 30th - January 5th

Ashley already touched a bit on Chiang Mai and we left over a week ago but we have to fill you in/record it for our own memory so here goes...

We loved Chiang Mai. It kind of feels like you aren't in Thailand because there seem to be almost as many tourists and expats as there are Thai people. But everyone is friendly and smiley so we were happy. Also, Chiang Mai is a lot cheaper than the southern islands. Considering we haven't maintained our budget at all, this was a good thing. Instead of going over budget by buying beach chairs, food and ridiculous clothes and musical instruments we didn't need, we went over budget by riding elephants and taking cooking classes. We spent our days and nights walking through the many street markets, getting a lot of massages and exploring the different areas of the city.

We have a one hug a day policy. We believe a hug a day keeps homesickness away.

The buses in town, songthaews, are actually red trucks with two long benches in back, no door to stop you from falling out, and inconveniently placed windows you can't see out of unless you are 4'10". Despite this, they are really fun to ride in. Every single one advertises for the Tiger Kingdom, the place where you can pose with drugged out tigers, and unfortunately, ads for the Sn@ke Farm as well. Ash happened to turn her head to see a huge cobra staring at her and her uneasiness for the rest of the ride was palpable.

Metro system Chiang Mai style.

We took one of these buses up to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, the most famous temple in town. This required walking up over 300 steps lined with people selling food, tiny Buddhas and bracelets. We sampled some of the most interesting food yet here- sketchy sausages on sticks and pickled mango with chili pepper. Can't say we were overly impressed with either item and the sausages may have caused some problems later in the day.

Exploring one of the hundreds of wats in town.

Made it to the top!

Covering up for the temple (but not hiding the cleavage).

Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep

One thing that became very apparent to us in Chiang Mai is how much Thai people love their King (and don't like his son). Firstly, his picture is everywhere around town. I'm pretty sure vandalizing one of these  photos would get you into more trouble than being caught with marijuana. Secondly, we were at the very crowded night market, bargaining a fair price for a necklace Ashley wanted, when a song came over multiple sound speakers in the street and everyone instantly stopped moving and talking. It was like in a movie where someone stops time and walks around repositioning things. We almost took a bite of someone's satay standing next to us. The song may have just been the national anthem but we will pretend it was in relation to the King to prove our point. Lastly, we went to see a movie (for only $3!) and after all the previews, a video montage of the King started and everyone in the audience stood in silence while this aired.

Sneaking ice cream into the movie theater.

We are so classy.

The only hiccup we had in Chiang Mai was our lodging. We decided to be social and stay in a hostel for this part of the trip. We found a super trendy looking hostel called SoHo and booked it on a whim. In a room meant for 7 we only had 1 other roommate, a Canadian who slept, no lie, for 1 hour a night. He'd sneak in at about 6 in the morning then leave at 7. And he'd been adhering to this schedule for 2 weeks. It was at this point I really appreciated being able to use my age as an excuse to go to bed early.

So all was going well in the lodging department until NYE. We came back to our hostel in the afternoon to discover an "Out of Service" note on the elevator. We were sleeping on the 7th floor. We accepted this inconvenience as a way to burn off the extra calories we'd be drinking later in the night. Then more "Out Of Service" signs started appearing. On the computers, on the washing machines, on the bathroom doors. And then.....the whole hostel lost power AND RUNNING WATER.

 The fact they had at least 50 of these on hand (no power, no printing) led us to believe this wasn't the first time this has happened.

We'd started drinking already so didn't think of how this would affect our future and took off to celebrate NYE. Cut to the next morning. Woke up with a hangover. Foot was covered in dirt from walking home barefoot. May have vomited in one of the "Out of Service" bathrooms in the middle of the night. All I wanted to do was wash my hands, my feet and brush my teeth. But  there was no running water to be found anywhere. And so while Kyle and I slept off our hangovers, Ashley not only negotiated a refund for the previous night, she also found us the fanciest hotel in town (obviously at a super discounted rate), with a glorious swimming pool, that we promptly moved into for the rest of the trip.

From no water to this.

Full day recovery. We didn't eat a bite until 1700.

 -Kim

Thai Cooking Class!

Chiang Mai, Thailand - Jan 4th
Ashley here

One of the things we were most excited about doing in Thailand was taking a cooking class, and we found a great place to do it in Chiang Mai!

I think it was called Thai Cookery

So excited to start cooking!

For $30 each we were able to pick 6 dishes to learn to cook, got to stuff our faces, and got to walk around a local market with a really cute basket where we picked out our ingredients. It was awesome!

Shopping in a local market with a basket.  Dreams really do come true!

The only lame part was that we had to spend the entire day hanging out with an eclectic group of semi-annoying fellow travelers.  All of these day long excursion situations are super hit or miss.  For example- the elephant thing was extra awesome because we were in a group with a bunch of really fun people who made me cry laughing the entire time, and cooking class was only a regular amount of awesome because we were in a group with some too cool for school Americans (some of the only Americans we've seen actually!) and one of those really annoying people who is constantly adding in extra facts when you're not even talking to them... 'Oh yeah! This is Thai basil-you probably haven't seen it before. Did you know the Thais and the Vietnamese went to war over a dispute involving ginger?'  Blah, blah, blah.  It was really annoying!  But aside from our classmates the cooking school was really great.  The teachers were awesome and everything was super clean and the food all ended up tasting delicious!  And this wouldn't be social media if we didn't post tons of pictures of it, right?

My "green" curry (no spice)

Kim's green curry- super spicy!

Sauteing baby bananas for dessert

Add caption

Chicken fried rice- even easier to make than the soup!

Making chili paste from scratch

Kim enjoying the fruits of her labor

The most important thing we learned is that Thai food is super easy to cook.  I know!!  I was shocked too!!  Now put down that take out menu (or popcorn and wine you were about to have for dinner) and chef yourself up a delicious Thai meal instead.  Below I'm including the recipe for my favorite thing I learned to make.  It's that coconut chicken soup you can get at any Thai food place, but I swear it's even more delicious when you make it yourself, and I think it took maybe 10 minutes to make?  Oooh maybe I can be the next Rachel Ray!  Ten Minute Thai Meals.  Yumm-eeee!

Some of the ingredients

Chicken and Coconut Milk Soup (Tom Yum Gai)

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups coconut milk (you can do half coconut cream and half water to make this)
1/2 cup of coconut cream
4 slices of galangal (thai ginger- but regular ginger works too!)
A few lemon or lime leaves
A handful of oyster mushrooms
A couple green onions diced up
A quarter of a white onion diced up
1/2 a small tomato
2 Tbs of lemon or lime juice
1-3 tiny red chilies depending on how spicy you want it
1 and 1/2 Tbs of fish sauce
Fresh cilantro to garnish

Directions:

1.  Put coconut milk in the wok and add the chopped ginger. green onions, regular onions and tomatoes
2.  Add the chicken and cook until tender
3.  Add the mushrooms then the think coconut cream, lemon leaves, and chilies.  Cook for another 4-5 mins
4.  Take off heat and add the lemon or lime juice and fish sauce
5.  Be impressed with how quickly and easily you just made that awesome soup!  And if it doesn't taste good blame me and look up a better recipe online :)

Yumm-eeeee

Sliding Down an Elephant's Face? That Wasn't In the Brochure

WE RODE ELEPHANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This elephant was scratching itself on a nail on that post

This elephant was dancing

And it was so scary.  It was cool... and awesome... but mostly scary.  We got picked up at our hotel in the morning and rode about an hour or so in the back of a truck out to the elephant camp for our 1/2 day elephant extravaganza.  When we got there they handed us our new denim on denim gear to put on so we could get dirty.  Dirty as in- swim and bathe in elephant poo.  Denim is pretty rugged but not enough to make bathing in poo water with elephants ok, but I mean, it's what we signed up for so oh well I guess.  What doesn't give you e coli makes you stronger right?

Back to the awesome stuff though.  After we were wearing 100% denim, they gave us a sheet of paper with 10 commands in Thai that we were supposed to commit to memory before we started riding the elephants.  The words included things like head down, go, stop, reverse, lift your leg, come and our favorite- yaya, which means no more fruit.  I'm sure you agree that these prepared us more for a night in a Thai bedroom than on a Thai elephant.  Unfortunately I was so rattled by the fact that I was trying to mount a giant elephant by standing on his leg and hanging off his ear, that I couldn't really remember anything at all.

We each got to practice climbing up- or rather, being hoisted by a small Thai man- onto the elephant and making it turn in a slow circle a couple of times before we took them on a longer ride through a river.  We also got to practicing dismounting the elephant, by sliding down it's face.  Elephants are tall.   

Since everyone else travels in couples, and there were 3 of us that came together, they had Kim, Kyle, and me all squeeze onto one elephant for this longer ride.  I was in the front with the stick shouting whatever commands in Thai I could remember, Kyle was in the middle on the hump trying to supersede my commands by yelling in a louder more authoritative voice, and Kim was in the back, with nothing to hold on to, trying desperately not to fall off.  HAHAHAA I'm just picturing this again now.  It's a lot funnier in retrospect. 

Three deep on an elephant

Acting like an elephant on an elephant

Holding on for dear life

By the time I thought my wrists were going to break and shaky thighs could hold on no longer, the ride ended in a river full of poo.  At least we were wearing denim?  We walked the elephants into the water and they lowered us down so we could slide off into the river and help bathe them.  This was a mix of fun and nastiness, but I guess mostly fun.  There was an adorable baby elephant splashing around with us which definitely helped. 

Washing her right behind the ears

Well, now there's poo in our hair

The trip ended with our half day group eating a delicious thai lunch while we watched the other full day group shovel manure by the elephants- and this was when we were SUPER happy we opted for the half day adventure.  We then hopped into the back of the truck bed and headed back to our hotel where we fought over who got to shower first. 

Homemade Thai lunch!

So happy to not be shoveling manure

ELEPHANTS!

Love,
Ashley

New Year's Eve, Chiang Mai

To all the naysayers we met earlier in the trip who told us Chiang Mai was not a fun place to spend New Year's Eve, you were so wrong.

It was the first time any of us got tipsy (interpret that as you will) since being in Asia. We kicked off the evening with a dance party and photo shoot in our hostel room and then hit the town in the cleanest backpacking clothes we had.

We were really excited to ring in the New Year!

This top bunk will be hard to get into later in the night

We also took some festive silver sporks with us to spread cheer to strangers we met throughout the night.  Said strangers did not seem excited to be given a spork (even after I told them you could run over it with a tractor!) and I have made it my personal mission to show everyone how useful sporks can be.

A spork can also be used as a hair pick.

Sporkz 4 Life

Had to give our masseuse from earlier in the day a spork!

His Happy New Year hat is much cooler than mine.

Ashley traded this man a spork for an extra shot of bourbon.

Thousands of lanterns carrying New Year's wishes were being sent off into the sky....it  looked like you had zoomed in on floating stars. People were spilling out of the bars lining the streets which made it difficult to get a drink. We stopped at the first place we found empty seats only to realize why the bar was empty: the stools were bike seats 4 feet off the ground. Quite uncomfortable no matter how much you've had to drink. We did manage to pick up a French friend though.

When you wish upon a lantern....

Bike seats: don't like them on a bike, don't like them as a stool.

We ended up at Zoe's corner, a little plaza with bars full of expats and fellow travelers. We rang in the New Year with fireworks, more lanterns and some Gangnam Style. The rest of the night we spent dancing to Nirvana and No Doubt at a bar playing the 90's Greatest Hits. Aside from losing a flip flop and walking home half barefoot, it was one of the best New Year's Eves ever.

Happy New Year!!

-Kim