Update Part 2
Since our flight was delayed (see below) we have enough time for another post. Here’s my update for the middle of our time in Thailand, we’ll get more up soon about the wedding! We’ve had an amazing time in Thailand!
On Wednesday, our second full day in Chiang Mai, we went into the Old City section (it’s surrounded by a moat!) and visited wats (temples). Chiang Mai has over 300 wats, so obviously we were unable to see them all, but we saw many amazingly beautiful wats, stupahs, and Buddah figures. We took a lot of pictures, which we’ll get up on Flickr soon. It was a really neat experience, but I wished we had someone along (Steve!) who could explain some of what we were looking at—it seemed like there was a lot we were just missing out on by not being familiar enough with the religion, iconography and history. At one of the wats, we had the scariest experience of the trip—a slightly rabid looking dog had decided it was the guard of one particular building on the grounds, and when we got too close it started to heard us away, growling. We very carefully walked away, and as soon as we were far enough away, it flopped back down and totally chilled out, like, okay, got those annoying non-monk humans away! I don’t think we were actually in any danger, but it was not a friendly dog! All the wats were full of dogs and cats, mostly very cute and friendly—we scratched some cats but stayed away from most of the dogs, since dog bites aren’t exactly the best vacation activity. After walking around the city for several hours, we were sorely in need of some air conditioning, and Dave wanted to get something to wear to the wedding, so we went over to the mall, which was strangely like and unlike an American mall. We poked around and explored for awhile and Dave got some clothes. We also finally figured out how to order our coffee black, without sweetened condensed milk. While I love me some sweetened condensed milk, the amount I’ve consumed in the last few days was bordering on insane and it was really nice to just get the coffee plain. After that it was back to our guesthouse for a bit, and then we headed back into the Old City for a yoga class at the place Gernot has been training to be a yoga teacher. It was a really wonderful experience—in a dimly lit, creaky wooden room, with windows open to the air and the sounds of the city, and pouring rain outside, and a class that felt really physically satisfying (Dave and I have been slacking a bit on the exercising!). After class, we went home to shower and then and out to dinner with Tara, a new friend of ours and an old friend of Marisa’s, at Fine Restaurant, which was indeed quite fine. It was a bit more upscale than the street places we’ve been eating at, and we had some amazing fish dishes. After dinner, we tried to visit Iberry, an ice cream shop, but sadly just missed the closing time.
Thursday, we were picked up early and headed outside of town for a cooking class at Thai Farm Cooking School. The trip included a stop at a huge food market, and then we were driven to a farm about half an hour outside the city. We were in a class with a bunch of other nice tourists—two other Americans, one of whom is an epidemiologist!, a German college student, a Spanish guy traveling around the world, and two French women, one who works as a teacher in Beijing and one who works in Singapore. We learned how to make Pad Thai, green and red curry, Tom Yum soup, green papaya salad, and various desserts. It was quite a lot of fun, and hopefully we’ll be able to recreate what we made—it was all so delicious and seemed so easy there! The instructor was a really nice guy, and the school was very well set up and run. We also made friends with some very cute cats. When we came back, stuffed to the gills, we met up with Marisa and some friends. Dave headed off to get a massage, and I went off with Marisa and Cindy and Fronie to buy some wedding related gear at the mall. We also got to check out some of the crazy English on bags and other products, and I sampled Mr. Bun, an amazing food experience. After shopping, I went and got a Thai massage myself, and after a bit more chill out time, there was more dinner. This time we were determined to get to Iberry (there had been a second aborted experience in there somewhere) so we rushed a bit to get out by 9:30 so we could make the 10pm closing time. We were quite disappointed to get there and discover they had closed early! And lost business for at least 11 people. Crushed, we finished up the evening with a great time at the Drunken Flower, which seemed to be a whiskey bar for Japanese expats.
Friday (today), we finally managed to sleep past 7am for the first time on our trip! It must have been the mint juleps at Drunken Flower. We finally got to try Dragonfruit today at breakfast, which was great—it is so cool looking and I’ve been eying it curiously all week. (It’s pink with green spikes coming off it and is a bit like a less tart kiwi; the flesh is white with black seeds and very juicy.) A note about breakfast—we’ve been eating Thai breakfasts all week, which for me has meant rice porridge with an egg (unfortunately a little on the raw side for my taste!), and for Dave has meant a soup with meatballs and rice, with fried dough dipped in condensed milk on the side, and then coffee and fruit for both of us. I (Suzanne) headed out early to do a little shopping at Weave, an organization that sells fair trade, living wage traditional handcrafts made by Thai refugee women, with a fried banana stop on the way. After that, I headed over to meet up with Marisa and several of the other visiting guests, and we all got manicures and pedicures at a French spa. (My toes are blue and my fingers are a very natural shade of pink.) This was my first manicure and my second pedicure, ever. I’m not sure I’m super into having people poke around at my fingers and toes but they look much nicer than they do when I try to polish them myself. Dave went off and did manly stuff with some of the other men, I think, I’m not sure what but there was food involved. Then we all (the women) stopped at a road side stand for some khao soi (noodles with curry), and ran a few errands before leaving the city, including FINALLY getting into Iberry for some loganberry sorbet. After that we all piled in a van for the trip out to our beautiful guesthouse a bit outside the city. The wedding festivities started tonight with dinner at an outdoor restaurant on the Ping River.
