Enjoying a moment of blessed AC in our extremely colorful room here in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Chiang Mai is in the north of Thailand, and super chill, much slower pace and less humid than Bangkok. I've been calling it the Boston vs. New York, but it's even more laid back than Beantown.
Chiang Mai is known for being the big city of northern Thailand, and being close to tons of tourist activities such as elephant parks, something called the Tiger kingdom, tons of mountains and hiking trails, waterfalls, ziplining, rafting, atv-ing, biking, all sorts of activities. Fearful of falling too deeply into tourist traps, we chose our excursions wisely. I voted cooking class, and Lyndsey elephant interaction. The cooking class was wonderful from start to finish- a fabulous reccomendation led us to MamaNoi cooking school, which is just outside the city on a gorgeous farm and HAD 4 PUPPIES! We played with the cuties, toured the farm, met the piggies and chickens and cooked up some delicious food. I learned how to make Pad Thai, Tom Yum soup and Panang curry. Lyndsey chose Cashew nut chicken, Sour chicken soup and Massaman curry. Highlights of the experience were, obviously the puppies, but mostly our instructor Kim and our group. 3 siblings from Argentina originally but with 10 passports between the 3 of them, who were so sweet and lots of fun to hang with and are here on an annual sibling trip because they all live on different continents. The other 2 women were both coming from Finland, one Finnish and one American, both international cat show judges...yeah, I'll just let that sink in. Truly the most hilarious profession to me for some reason, and I basically burst into laughter with each question Lyndsey and the sibs asked them about their line of work. What they look for, their personal favorite cats, and everything and anything you ever wanted to know about judging a bunch of cats in an arena. Absolutely hilarious situation. Our instructor Kim, was the icing on the cake and was just a total jokester, kept picking on the only boy in the group and adding more chili to whatever he cooked and then harassed Lyndsey with her challenging mortal and pestle battle at the end. Kim made the experience.
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| puppies!!! |
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| Chef du jours |
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| meet Kim! |
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| Pad Thai & Tom Yum soup |
Our elephant journey was also memorable, but less flawless. We were joined on our day trip by a lovely family from the south-west corner of France. We never got the parents names, but they were awesome, but the kids were Batiste, 9, and Gabrielle, 13. Super class family of four, much like my own. Big sister, annoying little brother, funny dad and a mom trying to keep it all together. We went to the Elephant Conservation center which has a hospital, nursery and huge property for the elephants to live on. Parts of the day were lovely, got to see a 6 month old ele with its mama, and other parts were a bit hard to watch- elephants doing a show for the huge tour groups such as painting, playing catch and lifting logs. We did have a nice ride through a few little lakes on the property for the big guys to cool off in and fed them tons of bananas.
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| Kao the elephant spraying it. |
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| La belle famille |
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| Mama e bebe |
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| the tour guide took this |
On our other days here we just explored the town, by foot and motorbike, hit the markets and shops and ended our week with a visit up to the Doi Suthep temple that overlooks the city. We met a man from the states at one of our delicious breakfast spots who is a foreign service officer and has been in Thailand altogether for nearly 10 years. He said it was a must see so off we went. Our mode of transport was a pick up truck that they put two benches along the long side in and a cover. Bumpy, sideways and driving in circles up a neverending seeming hill. Nauseating to say the very least.
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| our attempt at a "Wat Thaime is it" joke |
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| overlookin the fog of Chiang Mai |
We are off to the islands for the next week. Flight takes off in 2 hours so I should probably pack. Catch ya kids when I'm tanner and back to my comfort zone of beach life.
Sending some sun your way.
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