Northern Thailand (Chiang Mai, Pai) - Meh

Four years ago, I spent 4 days in Chiang Mai celebrating the Songkran holiday and loved the place. Looking back now, it must have been a few too many Chang's (Thai beer) and water fights that clouded my memories of the area. Don't get me wrong, Chiang Mai and Pai are interesting places, they just weren't exactly what we were looking for on this trip. Chiang Mai, the town itself, is pretty dead during the day but comes slightly more alive in the evenings. We learned that most people that come to Chiang Mai come more for the activities outside of the city then for the city itself. Rock climbing, mountain biking and white water rafting attract the adventurous travelers, while the tiger kingdom, elephant treks, and cooking classes attract the more casual tourists that want to see large animals or explore culture. Compared to Vietnam, we found that Thailand really seems to lack a strong cultural presence and is almost entirely built on tourism. If we were to do it all over again, we would either spend more time in the islands, more time in Vietnam or head to Chiang Rai after only a quick 1 or 2 day visit to Chiang Mai to see the Elephant Nature Park. So what did we enjoy in Chiang Mai?!

SSoutheast Asiaou

We had an excellent cooking class with the Thai Farm Cooking School! After choosing our meals for the day, 1 soup, 1 curry, 1 stir fry, 1 noodle and 1 dessert, we explored a local market to learn about the different spices, sauces, and ingredients that we would be using for the day. The market was surprisingly different from the one we experienced in Hoi An just a few weeks ago. There were significantly more options for prepared dishes ranging from fresh fruit smoothies to kebabs to fried insects! The shop owners had also created hybrids between a fan and a fly swatter to keep their produce and meats clear of the annoying pests. Since the school runs it's own farm (kind of obvious from the name, I know) where it organically grows about 75% of the ingredients that we used in the dishes that we prepared, we did not actually buy from the market, but it was cool to explore nonetheless and we enjoyed a delicious mango smoothie to fend off the morning heat.

After arriving at the farm, which is located about an hour outside of Chiang Mai, we walked around the garden to learn more about, and taste, the fresh ingredients that we would be cooking with and to hand select the eggplant peas and thai peppers that would flavor our curries. Once all the ingredients were ready, we did some prep work for all our meals and then started making our dishes one at a time. The first thing that we did was prepare curry paste for each our dishes, which was a really cool experience. A large variety of ingredients are combined to create these delicious pastes which are the make or break part of any curry dish. We crushed, sliced and diced our vegetables, then added loads and loads of chiles and pounded them into a paste using a mortar and pestle(this is surprisingly more tiring then you would think!). Note to self: when crushing peppers with a knife before adding them to your curry paste, either wear gloves or wash your hands immediately afterwards; an hour later I found myself wondering how I burnt my throbbing hand so badly on the stove when I never touched it, nope that was the juices from the chiles!

Throughout the day, Sammar and I made some delicious dishes. Tom Yam and Curry Soups for a starter, followed by Red and Green curries, Spicy Basil Chicken and Cashew Nut Chicen, Pad Thai and Pad See Eew, finished off with some delicious Mango Sticky Rice. Lucky for you, we have recipes for all our meals and we'll add those to the Vietnamese dishes to keep our kitchen interesting any time that you all visit us in DC!

The Sunday Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai is also something that is not to be missed. While we are not usually big market fans, this one was an altogether different experience. Shutting down over 10 blocks of the city and flooded with thousands of people, the shear size of the market is impressive. Beyond the usual souvenirs and trinkets that you will find at most markets, the Bazaar was lined with unique and tasty street food vendors like bacon wrapped mushrooms with a Thai twist, and beautiful paintings by local artists rather than the traditional mass-produced, generic paintings. The only downside to the market was the street performers. Don't get me wrong, they were pretty good musicians, but we began to notice that nearly every performer was either blind, burned or injured in some way and we began to have flashbacks to the scene's of Slumdog Millionaire where you saw kids and adults being essentially tortured or injured very severely, then sent out to the streets to beg for money. The worst was when we saw a child that appeared to have down syndrome with a hula hoop and a ukelele asking for money with what appeared to be his mom standing and watching him and forcing him to perform. It was a depressing note on an otherwise great experience at the bazaar.

We first heard about Pai when we were in Hanoi, at our favorite food joint, Bun Bo Nam Bo. From there, every time we told someone that we were visiting Chiang Mai, they asked "are you going to Pai?!" Given all the rave reviews, we decided to forgo our last day in Chiang Mai for a quick visit to Pai. Just a 3 hour bus ride from Chiang we figured why not? While some people had warned us that the road to Pai was winding, we hadn't fully grasped how intense the curves would be. 762 curves to be exact, at least half of them hairpin turns! Needless to say in a 12 passenger minibus that was cruising at top speed, this was not the smoothest ride, but thank God we did not throw up on the journey (although at least 1 passenger in our car did on our way there and the way back, awesome, right?). When we did get to Pai we quickly learned that I had made a big mistake.... what in pictures had seemed to be a picturesque resort with a large pool overlooking the mountains, had instead turned into a visit to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory; no seriously, there were massive paintings of M&Ms and Sugar Daddy's surrounding the pool. The view itself was not terrible, as long as you didn't look behind you, but it wasn't quite the romantic escape that we had imagined. Ignoring the child wonderland behind us, we enjoyed an afternoon by the pool to relax for a bit. If we hadn't been so exhausted, and especially if we hadn't visited SaPa, Vietnam, we likely would have gone on a trek through the mountains. We can definitely see how Pai could be a fun place to post up for a while and explore the mountain trails and water falls in the area. In the evening, we explored the town a bit and enjoyed some nice street food including our first Black Sticky Rice with Sesame Seeds. Surprisingly enough, the black sticky rice is not rice so much as it is a black tortilla that is heated over a fire and then cut into small pieces. Regardless, it was pretty tasty. After a so-so dinner, we decided to head back to our place early since the music bar wasn't open and we had an early trip home to Chiang Mai followed by an afternoon flight to Bangkok.