Northern Thailand

Cooking class in Chiang Mai - our first dish, Pad Thai!

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First of all, we want to apologize for not responding to everyone who has sent us a personal email.  We very much like to receive them, but do not always have time to respond to them individually, and we're sorry.  This is for all of you who have kept in touch with us - THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

In Northern Thailand we visited Chiang Mai, then west to Pai, back to Chiang Mai, then north to Chiang Rai before heading west into Lao.  It was much cooler up north, and the nights got quite chilly actually.  Chiang Mai, talked about as the "backpackers and culture seeking hub" of Thailand, is a nice place but really is just another big city.  The night markets here are enormous, especially the Sunday walking market in the old district, where the road is closed and thousand of vendors and even more people come to sell and buy their crafts and food.  Eating at the market was wonderful, because the food was cheap, and the options were plentiful - we tried many different dishes during the night. 

A temple at night

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We took a one day Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai, which is a really popular thing to do - their are so many small restaurants and guesthouses and people offereing this.  We took a class with two others and one teacher and made six dishes, including a green chili paste - all of which we cooked and then ate.  We were soooo full by the end of the day!  The class gave us a cookbook with our recipies and others, so we are going to cook up a feast for the family when we get home!

Pai, a small town in the mountains to the west of Chiang Mai, was a very interesting place.  It is a laid back town, full of Thai hippies and lots of resident farangs (foreigners) that have inter-married with the Thais).  It is a place just to relax, walk around the town, take a bike ride into the mountains, meet up with lots of travelers and locals, and enjoy the easy life.  We rented a motorbike here and tried to go to a hot springs nearby to cut the chill of the morning ride - only to find out that this area is now considered a "national park", which means that there is an entrance fee.  The foreign fee is 400 baht (about $17).  The local fee is 20 baht (about 70 cents).  It is a single entry fee, per person.  This whole thing is completely ridiculous, but is the case throughout all of the national parks in Thailand.  I can see if the money is going to the people or preservation or something useful.  But it doesn't, and more and more neat places in Thailand are somehow "becoming" national parks because of their popularity.  In my mind a national park is more than just one site or activity - it is a way to protect and preserve and restore a unique  ecosystem.  Enough of the preaching, but is really is frustrating dealing with "foriegn" prices everywhere.

Lights at the night market in Pai

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Chiang Rai was just a quick stop in route from Chiang Mai to the Thai/Lao border at Chiang Kong.  It is a really nice city, much smaller than Chian Mai and much less touristy.  We stayed for a day or two and went to the night market (of course, this is what people do at night) and tasted some more exotic food, including fried crickets and grubs and worms!  The worms were the best, they had a light, airy crunch to them and tasted a bit like popcorn.  The grubs were the worst, mostly because of their squishy texture.  The crickets were in between - crunchy legs, head, wings - with a softer center.  There were many other wierd things to eat here, including a SE Asian favorite - deep fried chicken feet!  Really, people love them.  You'd think there wasn't much to each on a chicken foot - and you are right!  But they just knaw on them and spit out the nail, the bones - I guess there is skin and cartilidge to eat....

Eating bugs in Chiang Rai night market - worm to the left, cricket on the right

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Well, in retrospect, Thailand is quite developed, tourism and the tourist "path" is well established, and it takes some effort to get onto the backroads.  But it was worth it, and Thailand has so much to offer from beaches to hill tribes to mountains.  Onto Lao - which will prove to be much different!