we had a hard time getting tickets out of ko tao, all modes of transportation, crappy as they are, were pretty booked. we did find a travel agent to get us connected and it turned out to be a bus, then a boat to ko samui, then another bus to the airport, a plane to bangkok (not the super cool airport boo), then a plane to chiang mai. we decided that one overnite train ride for sol was enough and even though the train was cheap it would end up being 2 overnites all the way here.
our first flight left almost an hour late and we only had a 2 hour layover in bangkok where we had to collect our bags and check in again. shanti spoke to the woman at check-in and she arranged to have someone meet us to help expedite our connection. we arrived in bangkok and a tiny woman in a golf cart loaded us up for the trip to our gate, and its a good thing she did, what a confusing airport it was. she wasn't a very aggressive driver so we ended up going about exactly as fast as walking. but she already had our boarding passes and after asking about 20 times she assured us that our bags would follow. i wasn't so convinced.
we made our flight with shopping time to spare (there was a really strange everyday clothes shop and that's about it, i bought a black shirt for $2). and miracles do happen, our bags arrived in chiang mai at the same time we did.
after getting settled into our not so fantastic hotel we hit the sunday market, the biggest in chiang mai. the city closes some streets and its actually called the sunday walking market. it was pretty huge but not like bangkok, and open till midnite. i had gotten up at 4am so i wasn't too keen on staying late, we got just enough of a taste to last us until the next market, which was the next day. there's a market somewhere every day so no worries that we'll miss something.
monday was the zoo day, a long anticipated event. we were getting sol psyched up about it but it turned out to be the coolest zoo ever for all of us. we could interact with all of the animals (ok, not the lions or tigers or bears), but we fed giraffes and hippos and elephants and actually got to touch them. the only zoo 'security' were the guys selling the food, 10 baht (30 cents) for a bowl of cucumbers and radishes to dump into the gaping hippo mouths, another 10 for cucumbers and sugar cane for the elephant and its baby (while trying not to get trampled), and 10 more for long beans for the giraffes and their unexpectedly long tongues. amazing stuff.
for 20 baht pablo got a bunch of bananas for the monkeys. there was a moat between us so we couldn't touch them but pablo would get a monkey's attention, throw a banana, and the monkey would catch it, peel it and eat it from its tree branch.
every day shanti and pablo review the previous day's activities with sol in hopes that he'll be able to remember some of this when he's older, and the monkeys were the cause of sol's first grown up sentence today. he said 'dadda throw monkey banana'. subject, verb, awesome. better than my spanish, and equally good to most thais' english.
after the zoo we went to possibly the greatest vegetarian restaurant ever, all thai food. it was a giant all you can eat buffet (a real one this time) and most things were labelled. deep fried pumpkin, omg. when we ate all we thought we could, there was the dessert table. i found the most glorious looking chocolate pudding, and although it was with the salad bar that's where you usually find chocolate pudding, so i took a giant bowl full. i can't remember the last time i ate chocolate pudding and i was super excited. i took a big spoonful and it was the most extreme opposite of chocolate pudding that could be imagined. this was the closest i've come to barfing out food on this trip. after several tries at communication i was able to understand that it was a type of dark fluffy vinegar. not cool.
shanti also had a plate of something that didn't turn out to be raspberry jello. more like spongy smoke meat.
we ended our day at a nite market stuffing ourselves with crepes and gelatto and buying knockoff sunglasses and slippers. $5 raybans and hawaiianas but who cares if they only last a month.
today was for me and shanti, cooking school. we signed up (or more correct, shanti signed us up) for a full day class, learn a 7 course meal and eat it as we go. there were multiple options for each course and i picked chicken coconut soup, pad thai, mango salad, sweet and sour vegetables, red curry, pineapple red curry, and pumpkin in coconut milk. shanti picked other dishes so we'd be able to share and i'm not kidding that everything we made was better than any thai food we've had yet.
our group was 8 people and we started at the prep table cutting and dicing our ingredients. we prepared 2 dishes at a time then went to the gas stoves to cook. even though we all chose different dishes, each group (appetizer, salad, main, etc), started with the same basic ingredients. after cooking our 2 dishes we went to eat while the army of kitchen helpers magically cleaned our workstations and readied them for the next round. we were lucky to have the owner of the school as our teacher, her english was great and she loved to throw in the cooking sexual innuendo.
the curries were fun to make, no matter what color they all started exactly the same, only the final ingredients differentiated them red from green from yellow from the rest. we diced our veggies and spices and dumped them into mortar and pestles and got to work. the motion we were taught for grinding was very dirty and if we did it with a smile we could be considered for 'best wife' status. there were guys in our group but i'm guessing they already knew how to do it. i was the only unmarried girl at the table and my curry was considered done first but i'm not speculating on what that means.
shanti and i ate all day, well past what we thought possible. we ended up getting some of our creations as take away, and i still haven't tasted my sweet and sour veggies. i will say that my pad thai was outrageously good, the soup was freaking awesome, pineapple curry incredible and the coconut pumpkin dessert is something i might make every nite for the rest of my life. definitely a successful day.
i only have 2 more days left of my trip. i'm a little sad about it but i recognize that its time to come home and recover. shanti has planned our time with the tiger kingdom, temples and a full day being elephant mahouts so there's not a moment wasted before i leave. going out with a bang.
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| we also ate worms at a market |
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