Here we go, week one. I’ve already explained how we got there so we’ll hop right into what we’ve been doing. We started in Chiang Mai, which is beautiful. A little more touristy than what we expected, but still cool enough. The weather was in the 80s most of the week (in start contrast to Cleveland, which was in the 30s and 40s when we left). Some of the things we did in the Chiang Mai seem to be staples of Thailand, and Southeast Asia as a whole. With the prevalence of Buddhism throughout, temples are everywhere. The terrain lends itself to beautiful views and waterfalls, so there are lots of those as well. Anyon e who knows me knows how much I love food, so we had to start there.

Cooking Up Some Fun

We did a little research (Read as: grabbed a fistful of brochures and picked the one with the best pictures/competitive price) and chose one of the many cooking classes offered. We chose Pra Nang Cookery. This class consisted of 6 courses and you were given choices for each course. You learned all of the different options, but only physically made your choices. We were picked up from our hostel at 8am the next day and got away from the heavy city area of Chiang Mai and were taken to a market. The class was led by a Thai woman named Poi who took us through all of the ingredients we would be using, giving us good descriptions of what they are used for and what they might be called/where to get them in our home countries. After that, we roamed around the market while she gathered all of the ingredients and then we head off to a beautiful little building to do our cooking.

The first floor of the building had a row of burners for cooking and a table of cutting boards, mortars and pestles for ingredient work. The second floor was full of places to sit around tables. We started by separating out for each course choice made, so people could make their dishes together. First up was the curry paste, I had chosen the chicken with red curry because Ryan had convinced me red curry is the best one, even though he chose green. We started by crushing all of the ingredients into a curry paste and then set it aside for later. Next, we cut up all of the ingredients for our soup and main entrees. I had chosen Pad See Ew and Coconut Milk Chicken soup. Throughout the course, Poi was very good about making sure to adjust the recipes for Ryan being a vegetarian. We learned that pretty much every Thai dish is made with fish sauce and oyster sauce, so the request to ue soy and mushroom sauce instead will likely be made the whole time we are in Thailand. A little work at the burners and we sat down to eat. Already filled to the brim, we headed back down to make the curry dish and some spring rolls.

Some more prep work and time at the burners and then it was time to make dessert. Adding butterfly pea flowers to the cooking coconut milk gives the milk a light blue color. Thai cuisine doesn’t use food coloring, so all of their colors are made from adding in colored ingredients. Sticky rice is just a different type of rice that is prepped for 8 hours the night before, so we didn’t make that, but we added it to our now blue coconut rice. For the final dish, the people at the cookery cut the mango for us and we had mango with sticky rice, a common Thai dessert dish. Back upstairs to punish our stomachs with all of this delicious food and we were done. We were given a cookbook and driven back to our hostel.

Temples

Most of Asia contains temples for various religions. Chiang Mai is filled to the brim with temples. Some of them cater more to tourists than others. Having a decent interest in Buddhism and Hinduism, it was cool to see all of the ornate statues of different gods and learning about the relation of Thai gods to the different Buddhist/Hindu deities. One of the days Ryan wanted to take some time to do some computer work, so I took it as a time to roam the city and check out all of the temples.

The map I had picked up at the hostel had the more notable temples around town marked, so I just roamed and checked them out. In Buddhist culture, you are to dress respectfully when you will be within sight of a Buddha, so shoulders and knees covered for me, luckily it was a cooler day. A lot of the temples follow very similar designs and set ups. Statues of Thotsakan guard most of the entrances to the temples. He is the demon king and is almost the exact same character and story as Ravana from the Hindu pantheon. Ganesha, remover of obstacles and my favorite deity, adorns all of the temples we visited, usually painted in different colors. Each of the temples requires you to remove your shoes before entering the actual temple area and for the smaller temples, before entering the praying shrines.

The prayer involves dropping to your knees, usually with feet straight behind you. A meditation is usually done in front of the Buddha statue followed by leaving a candle or ringing a bell three times. The more you learn about different religions, the more you see how similar they are. Buddhism is much less of a worship culture than the Christianity we are used to in the States, but there are many similarities. We watched various monks, Thai locals and tourists partake in the prayers and did some ourselves.

We went to arguably the most notable temple in the Chiang Mai area, Doi Suthep. This temple is up in the mountains and is more grandiose than most of the temples. A little over 300 steps from where we are dropped off and we are at the temple, overlooking all of the surrounding Chiang Mai area. The statues here are bigger and more intricately painted than the others we have seen, but are all similar characters. The center of the temple is a large structure covered in gold, which shines as the sun rises. Doi Suthep is a big tourist attraction so it was filled to the brim with people. This felt like a bit of an exploit of the culture, but I’m sure it helps fund a lot. On our way down from the mountain, our driver brought us to a much smaller temple hidden in the trees. It was much more serene and we liked it much better. The statues were of many different animals and a small waterfall ran through the center. To each their own, but this was closer to my idea of a Buddshit temple.

Climbing Walls like Spidey

One of our day trips led us to haggle with a red cab driver to take us over an hour to Bua Tong falls. These waterfalls are covered in a special mineral that give them a grip similar to that of rock climbing holds. At first, our brains had a little trouble handling the concept of being able to walk up and down rocks covered in rushing water, but after a few minutes, we were running up and down them. This one of the few things not sold to us in the many tourist shops, but it was easily my favorite thing to do. Bonus, it was free as it is a national park.

The Day to Day

Most of our days have been spent roaming around the city and eating food. Thailand has a myriad of markets and I could wrote a whole post about that. We hit two different night markets in our first few days and have hit a few since. We tend to get a slightly higher price for being farangs (non locals) but you can haggle for anything. Even getting slightly ripped off is significantly cheaper than what things would cost in the states. Plenty of Thai food and trying out the Thai attempts at dishs of other cultures. Our hostel had a pool and bar a few doors down, so a lot of our down time was spent lounging around there. The pool had a volleyball, so we spent some time tossing that around as well. We hit up some waterfalls and different places to swim as well. At the end of the week, we were ready to get away from the busy city and headed up into a little hippy mountain town named Pai.