Chiang Mai Chill

Hey, sorry about all the reading! I thought the Lertlah “Olympics”/Sports Day deserved its own entry!

This past weekend, a bunch of us went up north to Chiang Mai. It is a beautiful city, with many things to do. There was a Flower Festival taking place up there, so we lucked out to see the parade on Saturday morning. The floats were amazing! So intricate, and delicate at the same time. Six of us rented a tuk tuk and toured around some factories; lacquer, gems and jewellery, silk, and umbrellas. It was neat to see the production side of the items, and then there was the opportunity to purchase things. That evening, 20 of us went to the Chiang Mai Cultural Centre for dinner and a dance show. It was really great to see the traditional clothes; it took place outside and we sat on the ground. It was quite chilly out (yeah, yeah, not like the Peg, but definitely colder than Bangkok). I slept under a comforter for the first time in months!

Sunday was my favorite day . . . Six of us took a cooking class at the Pad Thai Cooking School. It was so fantastic! We started out at a market, where we learned about different curries, herbs, and veggies, and then headed to the school. We made Pad Thai, Spring Rolls, Tom Yum Gui (soup), Green Curry, Cashew Chicken, and Mango with Sticky Rice. We were stuffed! It was so much fun, and the instructors were wonderful and spoke amazing English. That evening, we went to the Sunday Night Market and the regular Night Market. Both were great . . . we saw many things that we can’t get down in Bangkok, and the prices were “cheap, cheap”.

On Monday, 7 of us went on a day-long trek. It was quite interesting. We went to the highest point in Thailand (2565m above sea level) . . . it was only 8c up at the top – we were frozen!, visited the King and Queen Pagodas (which took years and thousands of Baht to build); each has a Buddha inside that represents the day of the week they were born. There is a different Buddha for each day of the week – a variety of positions (sitting, standing, reclining, etc.). We visited a hill tribe, and saw a gorgeous waterfall.

Our flight wasn’t scheduled until later in the evening, so we had a great dinner and visited the night market again. The flight was delayed twice, so it was quite late when we finally arrived in Bangkok. I didn’t walk into my apartment until 3:30am!

That’s pretty much it for the updates. Thanks for checking in!