March 25 and 26: Chiang Mai whirlwind tour!

March 25, Friday

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Spent Friday with Creed and Chloe while Jake and Monica took Lincoln to the clinic for his circumcision. We had fresh fruit (pineapple, pomello, bananas) and hard boiled eggs for breakfast, then came back to the house to work on puzzles, draw and update our blog.

After lunch, Jake rented a motorbike from Juniper Tree ($5/day rental) and took me into the city for a Thai massage. We had side by side ‘rooms’ with a curtain in between. We each got a one-hour treatment for 150 baht… remember the exchange rate (30 baht to the dollar)? Yep, that’s $5 US dollars for an HOUR! The massage was deep and painful at times, so I didn’t sleep through the whole thing, but I was definitely on a different plane!!

We hit the local ATM and grocery store, where I loaded up on fried seaweed (think wasabi chips, yum!) and dried mango.

We came back to Juniper Tree for dinner, then Jake and made another motorbike run to the market for mango sticky rice.

The streets are narrow, often less than 2 cars wide, so if they don’t take turns in places, they’d hit mirrors as they passed. Motorbikes and scooters are everywhere—it’s not uncommon to come to an intersection and see 30 motorbikes packed into their lane waiting for a light to change! It’s also not uncommon to see families on motorbikes. Yesterday I saw a woman driving with a toddler in front of her on the motorbike, an 8 or 9 year old behind her and a 3 or 4 year old between she and the older child.

Public transport is in the forms of song teows and tuktuks. Song teows are pickup trucks that have been modified with a cap on the back, a step up into the back and benches along the sides. You flag them down on the street and they stop and arrange a price with you based on where you’re going. A $1 ride one day could be a $1.75 ride the next day, depending on the driver, his load, the traffic and any number of other variables. There is no ‘set rate’ to follow.

Tuktuks are 3-wheeled motorbikes with a covered seat for the passenger. I haven’t ridden in one of those yet, but I’m HOPING Jake can take me out on the bike again so I can take some video of what the traffic is like!

I slept like a ROCK Friday night!

March 26, Saturday, Chiang Mai, Thailand

9:30am-2pm

Private Thai cooking class!!! We were picked up at Juniper Tree at 9:30am in an old VW bus. All total, 10 adults and Lincoln (in his car seat) in the van-we were pretty cozy!

Yui Sriyabhaya was our instructor for the half day class. She has a veranda set up alongside her home with 9 gas stove tops and work spaces in it. She teaches 8 students at a time, and they learn either 3 or 6 dishes during their time with her. We started out with pad thai—she demonstrated it first, then we went to our stations and made the dish. All of our ingredients were prepared and portioned for us on a plate beside our work station. We cut up and cooked everything according to Yui’s example. Then we ate the dish we made as a group at a table in the end of the veranda. The other students were 3 younger couples—2 British couples and one American couple. I felt old among them. ;-)

After the first dish, we loaded up in the VW bus again and Yui’s husband took us to the market, where we got a guided tour of all the vegetables, fruits, herbs, meats, rice and noodles. Yui explained all the different produces and how they’re used in Thai cooking. It made me covet a fresh market!!

When we returned to Yui’s house, we cooked a hot/sour prawn soup. OH MY GOSH… this was quick, easy and DELICIOUS! Yui gave us a copy of her cookbook, so I’ll be happy to make this soup for anyone who wants it when I get back!

The third dish we prepared was green curry with chicken. Again… wow. Yui showed us how to make our own curry paste, but recommended buying it and ‘fixing’ the proportions with our own ingredients. She gave a lot of tips on storing, preserving and keeping ingredients when buying them in small quantities at the market isn’t an option (like in Duluth!).

Yui drove Monica and I home to Juniper Tree, then she returned to teach the other couples how to make spring rolls, chicken cashew stir fry and mango sticky rice. It was an incredible day. I learned not only how to make those dishes, but several other asian cooking tips that I’ll use often in my kitchen.

After we got back, Jake and I took a song teow to the local hospital where I had a dental appt to fix the chip between my front teeth. My dentist charges $450 per tooth, and since the chip was on the corner of both teeth, it would count as 2 separate procedures. Here, I paid $40 per tooth. Really. So, I had them make a mouthguard for sleeping also. That cost another $75, but is less than half of what I’d pay at home!

For those of you who don’t know our family… my nephew Creed, is almost 7, and my niece Chloe just turned 4. Lincoln, the baby, is 4 weeks old now. I’ll have photos of them posted to the shutterfly account in the next day or so.

Thanks for reading, wish you were here.