"Faster, faster! Use your muscle!"

I found this nice swing chair in our hotel this morning. :)

Today we went to Asia Scenic Thai Cooking School for a half day cooking class.  Our teacher Aye first took us into the school’s kitchen garden to smell the different fresh herbs used in Thai cooking, like Thai basil, lemongrass, three different kinds of ginger, etc.  Then he took us to a nearby market to tell us about other ingredients like the kinds of rice, and he also bought the ingredients for our class.  In only 5 hours we learned to make “good luck snack,” spring rolls, a stir fry, a curry paste and curry, and a dessert.  It was really surprising how fast we could make all the dishes, but the curry paste was pretty labor intensive.  Gavin volunteered to use the mortar and pestle while three other people cut up the herbs, etc for him.  He definitely got his workout in, especially with Aye calling out “Faster, faster! Use your muscle!”  :)  The panang curry I made was just as good as the curry from some of my favorite meals of the trip!  Though I can’t imagine I will make Thai food that often now that I have seen how many calories it is, plus the herbs and spices are very Thai-specific; I doubt I will be able to find all of them where we live.  But we have a cookbook from the class, so I will probably try!

Ready to go to market! They made us wear these hats
so they didn't lose us in the market.  :)

Aye and class at the market, and Aye is explaining the different types of
rice you can find in Thailand.

Cooking our first dish!

Proudly posing with my spicy Thai basil chicken.  :)

I was one of two who volunteered to stir fry the ingredients for the inside
of everybody's spring rolls.  No pressure.  :)

Making curry paste. Gavin was in charge of the mortar and pestle for the
"red curry" team.

The finished curry pastes.  Top left is green curry, top right is panang,
bottom right is massaman, bottom left is red.

Gavin is ready to make his massaman curry.

Cooking deep fried bananas.

Time to eat our curries!

After cooking and eating all that food, we were both pretty tired and full, so we headed back to our hotel for a nap.  :)  After the nap, we rented some mopeds.  I got a manual transmission this time, but it was still more like riding a moped than a motorcycle, plus the shifting was in the opposite direction: tap down to shift up!  We drove the mopeds to go see the temple Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a temple high on one of the mountains surrounding Chiang Mai, and definitely the most beautiful we have seen yet on the trip.  

The steps up to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep.

Entrance to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep.

Inside Wat Phra That Doi Suthep.

Lots of gold plating. :)

Temple detail.

The view of Chiang Mai from Wat Phra That Doi Suthep.

After walking around the temple for a bit, we drove our mopeds back into Chiang Mai, dropped them at the hotel, then went to the Night Market.  The Night Market is HUGE!  Blocks full of stalls selling tourist crap, souvenirs, etc.  We had dinner at a little street food stall and I got to try Kow Soy, according to Lonely Planet is northern Thailand’s signature dish, and it was really tasty!  We wandered through the stalls and bought some souvenirs and Christmas gifts for various people.  I don’t think we even made our way through half of it in 3-4 hours!  We may have to go back tomorrow!

The Chiang Mai Night Bazaar.

Enjoying dinner at the "food court."

A temple in the Night Bazaar.

Tons of stuff for sale!

After jostling our way back out of the Night Market, we walked back to the hotel to turn in.  Tomorrow is our last day in Chiang Mai.

A tour of temples

Seriously, you can't throw a shoe in Chiang Mai without hitting a temple.  :)

Today was our first day in Chiang Mai.  We spent about half the day doing the Lonely Planet walking tour of Chiang Mai, and stopping in any interesting stores we saw along the way.  The walking tour is in the Old Town section of Chiang Mai, and we visited a lot of beautiful temples.  I came prepared with a light shawl I could stuff into my purse and take out when I wanted to walk inside a temple; they all require shoulders and knees to be covered.

Wat Phra Singh.

Wat Phra Singh is under renovations. :)

The back of Wat Phra Singh.

Wat Tung Yu.  I liked the colorful roof.

Wat Phan Tao, made of teak.

Wat Chai Phra Kiat.

Wat Chedi Luang.  Funny thing about our visit - we actually missed the main
reason to visit it, which is the ruins of a chedi behind it that is said to protect
the city.  Oops. :)

Gavin tried to sneakily take a photo of these young monks with their
cell phones, but he obviously got caught.  :)  I found it amusing that women
have to cover shoulders and knees to visit the temples, but if these guys have
internet on their cell phones they can look at all the shoulders and knees
they want...  :D

On our way to Wat Chiang Man we saw this
electrician working on the powerlines with his
bamboo ladder leaned DIRECTLY ON the
power lines!

Wat Chiang Man.

The inside of Wat Chiang Man.

After visiting (or at least snapping a quick photo of...) most of the temples on the walk, we had lunch in a local noodle kitchen; we were the only tourists in the place.  We were trying to find one listed in Lonely Planet, but they spelled it out in English and all the places only had the names of their restaurants in Thai.  :)  I had some kind of fish ball and other processed meat noodle dish, and Gavin had the same in a soup.  I accidentally dumped a bunch of fish sauce into my noodles thinking it was soy sauce, but it still tasted pretty good.  :)

Gavin was feeling tired and cranky (he caught a cold), so he went back to our hotel to take a nap, and I went to get another massage from Blind Massage, where they only hire blind massage therapists; they are supposed to be better because of their heightened sense of touch.  I am still a little scared of Thai massages after my first two were pretty intense, so I asked for an oil massage.

I was quite surprised by a couple of things starting the massage.  A.  I had to share a room with another woman, AND I had to be in my undies since it was an oil massage, and not even a curtain between us!  B.  It was a GUY massaging me!  Not that I have a problem with that, but all Thai massage therapists I have seen are women.

The massage itself felt good, but it was the most repetitive massage I have ever had. He just did the same stoke in the same place about 20 times, then moved to another stroke or another place and did that 20 times over my whole body.  It felt nice, but it was pretty boring.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll get brave and try another Thai massage.  :)

After the massage I went back to the hotel and woke Gavin up from his nap, then we headed down to  for dinner in our first túk túk ride (a little open-air taxi on three wheels, powered by what felt like a moped engine).  There happened to be an art/crafts fair going on, so we wandered through the stalls and did a little shopping.  Then we had dinner in a restaurant called After Nine, which was on a balcony a story above Thanon Nimmanhaemin. We both ordered dishes labeled “spicy,” and we definitely had our hottest but also one of the tastiest meals we have had here in Thailand.  After dinner we walked a bit farther down Thanon Nimmanhaemin to Warm Up bar, where we were for the most part the oldest people in the entire place.  From our cozy seat near the door we had great people watching. We got to watch all the 20-somethings coming in, and we noted this must obviously be the place to “see and be seen.”  People were dressed to the nines and it is WEDNESDAY; I was giggling at the ones trying too hard and the ones with ridiculously high platform heels, especially since I (in flat-as-you-can-get Vibram Five Finger shoes) still was a good 4 inches taller than any of them.  :D  There were two live bands playing in two different sections of the bar.  I had an absolutely amazing cocktail with fresh strawberries and limes muddled in cassis and other tasty stuff, and Gavin ordered a beer that was served like white wine with the bottle in a bucket of ice, and any time his glass of beer ran low somebody would come pour more beer for him from the bottle.  Fancy.

The ubiquitous túk túk.

The art fair at Thanon Nimmanhaemin.

Food stalls at Thanon Nimmanhaemin.

Gavin at our balcony dinner restaurant on Thanon Nimmanhaemin.

After our drinks we caught a tuk tuk back to our hotel, then went to bed.  Tomorrow we will try our own hand at Thai cooking!

PS. I skipped 12/8 because it was not at all interesting – fully an in-transit day.  Hour ride from LaLaanta to ferry, ferry to Koh Phi Phi, transfer onto ferry to Phuket, hour ride in taxi to airport, flight to Bangkok then to Chiang Mai, cab ride to our hotel De Chai!  Yikes!

Sea Cucumbers, Calamari, Starfish and more!

Today we got picked up by a speedboat to take us to Ko Rork for snorkeling and lounging on the beach.  It was about a 40 minute trip, and then we jumped in the water for two different snorkeling sessions before lunch.  The water near the islands was a low tide, so there was great lighting for seeing the brightly colored fish, coral, and other marine life.  We saw a lot of things we hadn’t seen snorkeling or giving before, like little squid (I told Gavin to go catch me some calamari for dinner  :)  ), a giant starfish, and many huge sea cucumbers, some as big around as my calf!  We also got to see blue coral for the first time, glowing electric blue in the sunlight.

Coral in the low tide water new Ko Rork.

Gavin snorkeling near a huge chunk of coral.

A sea cucumber the size of my arm.

This sea cucumber was the size of my calf!

Clownfish in a sea anemone.

Blue coral - the brilliance of the color didn't come out in this picture.

Tons of tiny fish in the coral.

See the blue coral on the right side of the picture? This is the closest I could
come to a photo where the actual color we saw came out in a pic.

A beautiful giant starfish! It was around a foot or more in length!

A giant clam about the size of my foot,  When you approach them, the
colorful part sucks into the shell for protection, making it hard to get a
picture.  :)

These little colorful things instantly suck into their holes when you swish
water at them.  They were fun to play with.  :)

After two snorkeling sessions, we stopped at the lovely white sand beach at Ko Rork, where we were treated to a buffet that included some DELICIOUS massaman curry.  We also saw a giant lizard thing wandering around the picnic grounds eyeing the food.  There was some good snorkeling on the beach, too.

Ko Rork Beach.

Ko Rork Beach.

A big lizard thing on Ko Rork Beach.

 After lunch we had one more snorkeling stop, then sped our way back to Ko Lanta through some pretty choppy water. It felt like our driver thought he was driving a jet ski instead of a giant speedboat, almost jumping over waves half the size of our boat!  I was definitely ready to get off the boat when we arrived at our beach.  :)

The rest of the evening was just more relaxing in LaLaanta’s restaurant, having a couple daiquiris and reading our books.  Tomorrow we leave the beaches behind and go back to the mainland.