Chiang Mai

Finally, a breath of fresh air! Blue skies, gorgeous white fluffy clouds, and moutains covered with green trees. It's been awhile since we've seen clear skies.

Our first day in Chiang Mai, we went to the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School (Summer's idea). We got an introduction to the many Thai ingredients (about 20 per dish!), and then were off to make a bunch of meals: tom kha (shrimp soup), green curry, fish cakes, pad thai, minced chicken salad, and a water chestnut dessert.

Brennan added his own punch to each dish - first by dropping his entire lime into the soup - the girls helping us got a huge kick out of that. Then he made his fish cakes way too big - the girls called them "fish burgers - American style". The food ended up tasting great, and we will try to make some wonderful green curry and pad thai for you all when we get home ;)

That night, we checked out the Sunday market and saw a cool breakdance show by some Thai teenagers at the Toyota showroom. We saw a live band recommended by some travellers we met at the cooking class. Beach Heaven was the name of the bar, with sand on the floor and straw mats and lounge pillows. The band played a bunch of 90's grunge cover songs. My favorite was when they played Melissa Etheridge I think and instead of "what's going on?" it was "what's sewing on?" They were pretty good, but every once in awhile, they couldn't pronounce something, and we were laughing hysterically about it.

The next day, we rode an elephant! It was so cool - the skin of the elephant is rough, kind of like scabs, not what I expected. The baby elephant, named Janine, followed us around and kept wrapping its snout around Brennan's shoe. They were hungry - we fed them two huge bags of bananas.

Next, we hiked through two hilltribe villages which was cool to see. One was the Mung village where the men have 4 wives, and send them to work in the city, while they sleep and sell handicrafts to tourists. Brennan wanted to join that tribe.

We hiked to a cool waterfall - the crazy Italian in our group climbed up in and almost slipped down. Then, we took bamboo rafts - Indiana Jones style- down the river. They didn't reallly float, so we were sitting on them with water up to our waists. Brennan steered the back of the raft with a big bamboo stick. I took the lead once, and almost steered us into a rock in the middle of the river - the guide had to jump out and swim the raft out of the way - ooops!

The last day, we checked out the temples in Chiang Mai and really enjoyed them. For once, we were the only tourists around the temples. One had a beautiful garden with Buddhist sayings on every tree which were inspiring. "Focus on doing good and not being great, otherwise it's a dangerous path."