We began our Thailand journey with a few short days in Chiang Mai. The city is rich with history and delicious, healthy eats. We spent the first night at the Sunday Night Market. This occurs in the Old Quarter's walking streets. There are a seemingly endless number of stalls with handmade crafts, shirts, jewelry and of course EATS! This was our favorite part of the maket. We sampled spring rolls, fried mushrooms, pad Thai, coconut water, and corn. We also couldn't help ourselves in "supporting the local craftsmen" AKA many more souvenirs.
Luckily the rain stopped us from breaking our banks and our belts. We took shelter in a coffee house and made some new traveler friends, Megan and Beema. They are living in Bali, and Megan teaches at the international school there. We all decided to have our classes be pen pals in the upcoming school year!
A few hours later we ventured back to our hotel and out for a Thai dinner. Nicki enjoyed Pranang curry and broccoli with shrimp, and Arelys had sweet and sour chicken. De-lish!
The next morning we decided to get our bearings. Since we are headed back to Chiang Mai, our sight seeing was relaxing instead of rushed. We took a tuk tuk into the old town and walked around and ventured in and out of several beautiful temples. Each one seems more mystical than the last.
The heat is no joke in Southeast Asia. I'm what seemed like a mirage we saw a cart of iced chocolate milk surrounded by children. We felt no shame in sharing an after school treat with the young students.
While Chiang Mai has a lot of historical culture, it also features a great deal or street art. Here are some of our favorites that we've seen so far.
After an abbreviated nap we met some traveler friends at a place called Bus Bar. One of the girls lives in Chiang Mai and was able to order and dispute part of our bill in Thai. The fried rice with chicken, grilled pork with a northern spicy citrus sauce and fried fish did not disappoint.
These pictures don't do our food any justice. So delicious!
Afterwards our new friends showed us the night market. This is open every day of the week and seemed to go on for blocks. We perused the usual crafts and restrained ourselves from purchases (for the most part). Megan and Bima found us again, and we all enjoyed a trip to one of the market's many fish spas! We know some of you were not fans (Indian Road moms), but we had to try this phenomenon again. This time the tank had WAY more fish! Nicki enjoyed a delicious ice cream treat and then we went home to rest for our journey to a northern mountain town called Pai.
The ride to Pai from Chiang Mai is about three hours. It is 136 km and is known to have about 762 curves. Beware roller coaster haters....this one was a doozy. We can only think to describe this ride with a visual. Imagine the following letters make up the road to Pai: ssssssssscucucucusssssssssscucucu. We made sure to ask the pharmacist next door for motion sickness medicine for our ride back. This was another instance of overcoming the language barrier as we held our stomachs and motioned a windy road with our arms. We've taken a more charade-like approach these days.
Thrilled does not even come close to describing our feeling when getting off the bus. The only person happier than us was the puking Chinese girl sitting next to Nicki. Thankfully, we love it here!! It is a very small town and we were able to explore the majority of it in a few hours. After a lunch of pasta, we treated ourselves to body scrubs and facials. Everyone says this is the place to relax so we didn't want to stick out like sore spa-less thumbs!
Dinner consisted of wonderful Thai noodles, beef with pineapple and fried rice. We think we'll have eaten our body weight in rice products by the time we leave Thailand. We are hoping not to need two extra seats on the plane home because of our Thai food addiction. After dinner we explored some of the local watering holes and strolled happily back to our hotel.
We tried to video chat with George, but he didn't pick up!
Today we went to a wonderful place called Thom's Elephant Camp. We probably need some sort of help with our elephant addictions, but admitting you have a problem is the first step. And this opportunity was too good to pass up. We had a suspicion that the elephants we visited in Laos were not the happiest herd (until they were with us obviously), and compared to the elephants at Thom's we were right.
Thom (a woman) grew up with elephants all around her. She knows exactly how to treat these beautiful animals with love and respect. They are never chained, they sleep each night in the mountains, and the camp's visitors ride the elephants bare-back. We rode our elephant, Pam, for two hours joined by two other groups and their elephants. Pam and the others took us through the mountains and into the river. Our guides made sure to have the elephants throw us off their backs into the water after they vigorously splashed us with their trunks! This was a playful, fun experience for the humans and elephants alike. After elephant riding, we enjoyed a peaceful 40-minute bamboo raft down the river. After a late lunch of chicken fried rice, the staff let us lounge in the hot tubs.
While everyone else gave the elephant one banana at a time, we both messed up and had our bunches snatched all at once!
Despite having already eaten lunch, you know we couldn't pass up one of Pai's best known restaurants, Mama Falafel. It lived up to all our expectations.
That's our "snack" that turned into a meal.
On our walk home we ran into this family of chickens. Don't worry, we haven't eaten them...yet.
Tonight we will continue to explore the town, eat (obviously) and try to see the Pai Canyon. Tomorrow we are taking a cooking course at the Pai Cookery School where we will learn to make yellow curry, Pad Thai and fried spring rolls. After that we board the sssssccusscu bus back to Chiang Mai for round 2! Many more stories to come!!
Love,
The Frizzy Girls
Here's one last about out to George and his eternal love of tie dye tshirts.
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