Chiang Mai

Set amongst the misty mountains of northern Thailand, Chiang Mai is a walled city of narrow brick streets and leafy gardens surrounded by a moat. It's so serene and green compared to Bangkok... a whole different world.

The first night we got here we took a walk around the wall. The Taepae Gate is the most famous entrance into the old city.

The wall of the old city lit up at night. The wall was built when the city was a capital to protect against Burmese invaders from the west.

A wat we walked by on our walk.

This is the view outside our guesthouse window. There's an awesome vegetarian restaurant, tea shop, and bakery located just downstairs...how terribly inconvenient.

You can't go to Thailand without getting a Thai massage, or two, or three, or maybe just one a day! How can you pass up an hour long massage for $3? You've got to be crazy!

Friday night we went to see a Muay Thai boxing match. It lasted all night because there were 7 different matches...two of which were little boys that couldn't have been more than 9 years old. The most interesting parts were the spiritual ritual the boxers do before each match and watching the Thai men heckle and gamble on the boxers. Also, there's a really interesting subculture of caucasian guys that come over and train in Muay Thai, totally Karate

Kid(!), and fight in these local matches. We met one last night and watched another French one get beat by a Thai boxer.

Muay Thai boxing is pretty much anything goes. I read somewhere that it was the inspiration for that really sadly entertaining "Ultimate Cage Fighting" T.V. show sensation that swept the U.S. a few years ago...haha.

Saturday we spent most of the day at a Thai cooking class, which totally rocked. We learned all about typical Thai spices and ingredients, which can be a little overwhelming without help since a lot is so different.

We then learned how to make some really amazing Thai dishes such as: green curry paste, green curry tofu, fried TVP (textured vegetable protein...mmm!) with basil, veggie spring rolls, veggie pad thai with tofu, green papaya salad, and fried jungle banana with coconut toffee sauce.

The best part was eating everything we cooked...deliciouuuuss! We also got to sample all kinds of crazy looking fruits from this area that we've seen all over Thailand in the markets but haven't bought yet. We got a recipe book to take home with us so hopefully we'll be cooking for you sometime soon upon our return. As you can tell, I was really excited about the cooking class.

Sunday, our last night in Chiang Mai, the monsoon rain finally ceased for a while and we went out to walk about the town and get some food stand grub. We came upon:

A huge scorpion on the sidewalk. That coin is about the size of a quarter.

A night market. It was huge and overwhelming. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff that people are selling, or trying to sell, at these things.

And yet another night market. They closed down all the main streets within the old city and opened them up to vendors since they weather was so nice. Lots of markets...