Massage and Green Curry

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Chiang Mai is a smaller, old moated city in the North of Thailand... rich in traditional culture and crafts, it has historically been a crossroads for commerce. It's now bustling and parts feels alternately like a) a tourist ghetto, or b) Bangkok, but overall it's easy to get around and quite interesting. 300 temples, lots of classes in whatever you want. Lots of ex-pats and tourists, it's the take-off place to most destinations in the N. of Thailand, and the night bazaar is the place to buy crafts.

2/23 I took a full day massage class at the Loi Kroh massage school. My teacher for the day was a man named Kom, who had given Mama a massage yesterday. All day long, he would massage me, while telling me what he was doing. I would write notes down in the instruction book he had given me, then I would do it on him to practice. It was one-on-one instruction all day, which was good because I think it would have been much harder to learn if there were any other students. He taught me the four energy lines in each leg, and the one line in each arm. In Thai massage, most of the techniques use your body a lot, so it was a good work-out. We only had one break, which was an hour for lunch. I was pretty worn out at the end. - Megan

2/24 Dad'n and I got picked up at about 9:30 by some staff from the cooking school. First they gave us some fresh fruit to eat for breakfast. {Then we went for an extensive tour of the market, learning the various vegetables, curry pastes, and types of noodles you could buy. It was fascinating!} Then we started cooking. We all sat around a big table with a partner; each pair had a container with the ingredients for a dish, and all the bowls and utensils we needed. First we made a beef salad with cabbage and other vegetables, in a spicy lime and pepper dressing on it. {After finishing a dish, we'd carry it into the tasting room, which would be all set up for us to sit on the floor, eat, and share goodies with the second class who were cooking different dishes. When we finished eating, we'd go back into the cooking room and they'd be all set up for the next dish. Now that's the way to cook... all the fun and none of the scut work! - Ed.}

Next we made a green chicken curry and put it in a pot while we made chicken with basil leaves stir fry. We ate both of them with rice. The green curry was delicious, but I wasn't very excited about the stir fry.... During lunch, we tried to learn how to carve decorative vegetables... I kept cutting the cucumber in half by accident or cutting the pattern too deep into the carrot. We also learned how to make green curry paste by cutting up basil, turmeric, green spicy peppers, cilantro, kaffir lime peel, and other stuff. You and your partner would take turns: one cutting up the stuff, while the other ground it in a stone mortar and pestle. It was actually kind of tiring....

Then we made papaya salad, and ate it.. it was realy good.... Back at the hotel, Mama and Nathan were really hungry, but Dad'n and I had been eating all day, so we walked around for a little while, then Dad'n and I split a salad! - Megan