Boppin' Around Chiang Mai

Our arrival at the Bangkok train station was relatively uneventful.  We arrived a full two hours before our train was to leave.  The train station was very reminiscent of the train station in Beijing: it was a giant room full of chairs.  There were so many people waiting that several chose to sit on the floor rather than stand and wait.  We lucked out and scored some seats, which was especially good when it unexpectedly started pouring outside and drove many street cats to find sanctuary inside the train station!  I'm generally not a huge fan of cats, especially not stray street Thai cats.  The train station also marked my first encounter with the Thai squat toilet, which was actually far better than its Beijing equivalent!  For a mere 2 Baht, you got a door on your own stall!  Just ignore the overpowering stench and the slippery surroundings of the bowl itself, and it was an almost picture perfect experience!  To be fair, it gave me a quick refresher session on the squat toilet before facing it on our 16 hour train ride to Chiang Mai!  When we went to board our train, turns out it was a purple train -- clearly a good omen, since, as most of you know, purple is my absolute favorite color!  There was no way that Chiang Mai could be a bad experience after that!

Purple train!

Me and my giant Singha (which doesn't look as big here for some reason)

My mom and I both had upper berth bunks in the same "room" on the train, which was interesting, given that we had some rather obnoxious "roommates" on the lower berths in the form of two British girls who were rather inconsiderate and decidedly unfriendly.  Other than the inconvenience of having to put on and remove sneakers to get up and down from the berth to use the bathroom, the situation was not too uncomfortable.  Unfortunately, we're both a little long for the average sized Thai bed, and after 16 hours, that made for a fair bit of discomfort.  Let me just tell you that using a squat toilet on a moving train and managing NOT to fall in -- well ,that's quite a feat -- one that we both dealt with several times, due to the fact that we had both indulged in large Singha beers upon boarding the train.  We had a really nice lady serving us (awful) train food, and the end result was that we really didn't eat much during the journey.  The train ride was originally only supposed to take 14 hours, but I've discovered that Thai Standard Time seems to run an hour or two behind. 

After hauling our bags off of the train, we faced the next daunting task: how to find a cab to take us to our hotel.  I picked a chipper looking fellow out of a line of cabbies waiting to take foreigners into the city.  As it turns out, he was fantastic and a stark difference to our experience in Bangkok.  His name was "Mr. A" -- clearly a nickname developed to aid foreigners -- and he showed us a booklet of testimonials from past foreign passengers, all recommending that we hire Mr. A to take us around Chiang Mai.  He explained to us that Chiang Mai had only recently instated a metered cab system, and as a result, the majority of cabbies had still not been able to afford new cabs with meters, so rates are normally negotiated with cabbies prior to setting out rather than according to a meter.  We decided to ask Mr. A to take us to see the elephants that afternoon, which left us only an hour at the hotel to freshen up and grab lunch.  Unfortunately, we didn't manage the latter, and instead headed up to the elephant center famished!

The elephant outing consisted of two parts: watching an elephant show and then riding an elephant.  The elephant show itself was pretty impressive, but it was kind of hard to watch after seeing Water for Elephants a couple of weeks ago.  All I could think about was whether or not the trainers treated the elephants well behind closed doors.  After the show, an elephant trainer convinced me to take a few pictures with the elephants, which amounted to me having trunks wrapped all around me!  I felt like that was a little too much interaction with nature.  And then of course, I hopped right up onto an elephant for an hour-long ride to a local village (Shorty - was thinking of you the whole time!).  And this was no wimpy ride down a nice wide road. No. We were climbing up and down steep, slippery grades and winding in and around trees and bushes! It was actually kind of terrifying at times, not gonna lie.  But I did it!  Which is completely against my nature.  Feeling pretty proud.

At first they seemed harmless...

And then things started to get interesting...

I don't generally wear hats. KMM doesn't condone it.

Mom on her elephant.

Me on mine!

After the elephants, we returned to the hotel to freshen up again after elephants (they don't smell especially good, if you can believe it!) and to get ready to head to the Night Bazaar at the end of our street.  It was huge and full of vendors selling everything from knockoff designer bags and sunglasses to fresh fruit shakes and authentic Thai garb.  I made a few select purchases, but mostly if was pretty amazing to just wander through and observe the sheer size of the market!  Then we headed across the river to a restaurant that Mr. A had recommended.  It was fabulous.  I had an amazing Tom Yum Gai (soup) following by the best green curry chicken I've ever had!  It was overall, a fantastic day and a stark contrast to our experience in Bangkok.  In Chiang Mai, tourism is a huge industry, and as a result, instead of trying to cheat tourists, the local people are helpful and nice.  Furthermore, the size of the city is much smaller and more manageable, so it was easy to head out from our hotel on foot.

Night Bazarre

The next day, our hotel arranged for us to take a day-long cooking class at the Thai Orchid Cookery School.  Our instructors, A and Kong (again, I think nicknames catering to foreigners) were absolutely fantastic, and it turned out that we got a private class which made the experience even better! Kong picked us up at the hotel and drove us to their house in the Old City (A and Kong are sister and brother).  From there, we had an entire day full of cooking and eating!  I prepared spring rolls, tom kha kung (soup) (SS - I will teach you how to make this - it was amazing!), green curry paste, green curry with chicken, pad see ew (noodles), and mango with sticky rice.  Mom prepared chicken satay, tom yum kung (soup), panang curry with chicken, pad thai (E - now I know how to make it!!!), and thai pancake.  We also learned how to prepare papaya salad and lemongrass tea (which was sooooo yummy!).  A and Kong took us to the local market to teach us about Thai fruits and vegetables, and we got to try some as well.  I must say - Mangosteen is an absolutely amazing fruit! At the end of the day, we left full and happy.  Again, a much better day!  Our plan for the evening was to hit a couple of bars and just relax, especially since we had no interest in dinner since we'd eaten so much during the day.  But, much to our dismay, all of the bars were closed or not serving alcohol because it was the day before the national elections!  What a bummer!  So instead we went back to the hotel room where Mom continued to sleep off her jet lag and I watched perhaps the most terrible movie I've ever seen - Jennifer's Body - any takers? It was gross. And ridiculous.

We made yummy soup.

Me learning how to chop efficiently.

Our appetizers: Chicken Satay and Springrolls

Grinding curry paste using a mortar and pestle

Pad See Ew - one of my faves and cooked by yours truly

Pad Thai - cooked by Mom and delicious

And you all thought I couldn't cook...

Mangosteen (left) and Rambutan (right)

This morning, we packed up our bags and met Mr. A in our hotel lobby.  He drove us to the airport where we hopped on a quick flight to the island of Koh Samui!  This is the first time I've ever been to an island or stayed at a beach resort, so it's kind of exciting!  After collecting our bags, we used a Super Shuttle-like service to get to our hotel.  True to form, our cabbie had a hard time finding our resort (again! - an unfortunate theme to our trip), but once we arrived, we were greeted with fresh pineapple juice, and promptly took a nice long walk along the beach.  The water is so warm!  It's crazy!  My only experience with beaches, for the most part, has been along the Pacific, which is generally freezing in a turn-your-lips-blue-after-two-minutes kind of way...so this is a welcome change!  Literally as soon as we returned from our beach stroll, it started pouring!  So we sat in the indoor-outdoor restaurant with two giant Singhas and watched the rain.  Talk about relaxing!  And to be honest, after what we went through in Bangkok, I think we deserve it!  So, tonight we're going to lie low in our cute little villa, and then tomorrow hit the beach hardcore!  On a completely unrelated note, I can't believe how quickly I'm becoming tan, even with my SPF 70!  It's pretty crazy!  So, we'll be on the beach for the next five days or so, and depending on how eventful it turns out to be, I will post at least one more time before leaving the island, since I don't know how often I'll be able to post from Vietnam.  Miss you all!

-- Priya/Pri/P/Preesh/Pixi/LPJ/P-Money/Baibiya