Food for thought? No, food for George!

This post is dedicated to the one and only George Drase. The long time Disney employee was once Arelys' math teacher and is currently one of Nicki's most entertaining POD members. He teases us about how much we are eating on this trip, and to (probably) no one's surprise we have taken this habit to a new level in Thailand. We have been dreaming about visiting this country for years, and now we get to eat our way through this magical place. SERIOUSLY.. Nicki just found butter inside of her shoe as we were walking back from breakfast at our hotel!

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. 

 

And you thought we loved Laos before...

On Friday we enjoyed all of the serenity that Luang Prabang has to offer. We walked along the river, enjoyed a delicious lunch, visited a textile gallery, and made some serious progress on our books. Arelys is reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Nicki is reading 1Q84. 

We ventured out at night to attend a local fashion at a place called Hive Bar. As we walked in we were greeted by Troy, the owner. He informed us that the fashion show goes in hiatus during the rainy season because many of the models live far from LP in small tribal villages. Instead we got to see a B-boy show with local dancers. The dancers' amazing hip-hop moves were paired a variety of tunes that reminded us of the prom or a fun wedding. We also ate delicious bacon satay with mango sauce. 

The Canadian owner did bacon so well that we ordered three dishes with bacon for dinner. 

Troy hung out at our table for a while and he told how he ended up moving from North America to Luang Prabang. He also introduced us to his wonderful girlfriend who works with the monks in the town and manages a spa. She told us all about how the monastaries work and how we could get involved while we were  around. 

Remember the cute kids on the stairs from our last post? One of the little boys lives across from Hive. He visits the bar often and we got to share some pizza with him. Seeing how Troy and his girlfriend cared for the local boy was a very heart-warming experience. The young boy has Down's Syndrome. Seeing a kid like this always pulls at our heart strings, but this kid seemed special. When the couple met him he could not speak, but after a short six months he could communicate with us that he wanted some pizza! He was also showing lots of love to the couple through hugs, kisses, and many rounds of "I've got your nose." It brought is right back to our teaching roots. 

He loved having his picture taken and then looking at himself!

After Hive we went to the popular backpackers' hangout, Utopia. Our Israeli friend from the bus and our new friend Perrie joined us there. (Hi Perrie if you're reading this!!)

Everyone leaves their shoes outside the joint and hangs out on mats on the floor. We made sure to hide our cute sandals so we could get them back at the end of the night. At about 10:30 we called it quits so we could be ready for our very full day on Saturday.

Saturday was one of our favorite days of this entire experience! We booked a day trip with a local tour company that included three activities.

First we visited the elephant park, which was by far our favorite. We got to greet the elephants upon arrival and then we walked up to a tall porch to get on benches on the elephant's back! We rode our elephant, Kool, through the town for about 45 minutes. Nicki even rode on the elephant's neck. Fittingly enough, we had the touble-making deviant elephant. Kool marches to the beat of her own drummer. Each time the guides tried to take a group picture, Kool would turn around. Seeing this naughty behavior was very familiar to us and naturally we went with the flow and enjoyed the ride. 

After the ride we were able to hang out with the magestic creatures. We pet the elephants for a while, hugged and kissed them, and basically stared at them in awe for as long as we were allowed. We then proceeded to talk about them like love-sick teenagers for the rest of the day. 

Later we explored the Pak Ou temple. In order to get here we crossed the Mekong in a small boat. The temple is spread out between two caves. One was accessible from the water and the other involved what seemed to be a sky-high hike to the top of an infinite stair case.  These caves are filled with statues of monks and Buddhas that people have donated over the years. While we were almost too sweaty and hot to enjoy our time here we did enjoy how it felt pristine and untouched. This was after we diagnosed ourselves with climb-induced asthma. Our guilt about not visiting the gym was quickly sweat away.

Finally we took a 90-minute car ride to the biggest waterfall in Luang Prabang.

On the ride we got to help our guide, Pong, practice his English. We shared stories about our families and learned about all of the interesting jobs he's had. He told us about a company called Pencils of Promise that sets up sister schools in developing and developed countries. This is something we hope to get involved in later on. We also helped him practice saying the word massage which seemed to be very tricky for him. Every time we end up in these situations we really notice our Chicaaaago accents. Every American we meet loves to point this out. 

When we arrived at the national park we were suckered in to buying $4.00 ponchos. It stopped raining about 10 minutes later so we were not pleased. Seeing the baby bears in the park (who were in enclosures) and the beautiful views of the falls made up for it! This was the most beautiful waterfall either of us has seen. There are about four different levels to the falls and each has it's own lush scenery. Nicki was able to jump from a tree into one of the pools. It appeared as though she had a brush with death as she landed a little too close to the rocks, but everything was fine in the end. She came out without a scratch on her and a really good story.

We headed back to town, grabbed dinner, hit the night market one last time and crashed. We know we haven't had the most exciting night life while abroad, but we are beat every night from our long days of exploration. We tried to go to bed REALLY early last night because we planned to wake up at 4:30 AM!! Each morning at sunrise, the monks of Luang Prabang walk to streets to collect their food for the day. Perrie joined us for our early morning adventure. We waited for a while for the monks to show up, but when they did we got the most out of our experience. 

Troy's girlfriend explained that the monk programs in Laos take in many young boys. Families from the small villages send their sons to the city to receive food and education through the monastaries. They are only allowed to eat the food that is donated to them each morning. Most of the street vendors sell sticky rice and stale crackers to donate. We were informed to get something with protein because the kids are not getting enough. We bought some milk and nuts at the store and we even donated snacks from our personal stashes. We got a little duped to buy food from one of the vendors once we ran out of our donation ration. While it felt wonderful to give back to the community, we felt a bit taken advantage of when we had to pay the woman triple what we were expecting. It just goes to show that people are looking for any way to make money. 

After our early morning activities we napped at our hotel to prepare for our journey to Thailand. Since we have been dreaming of this for years, we wanted to be as rested as possible. This post is coming from our flight to Chiang Mai.

We truly cannot wait to take advantage of every moment in Thailand!! Our journey will take us to Chiang Mai, Pai, Phuket and Bangkok. While we can't wait for our next adventures, we are also anxious to see all of you at home. We hope this finds you well.  

Love,

The elephant-obsessed Frizzy Girls