A good friend David Xiong from Kansas City, helped us get in touch with a friend of his in Chaing Mai and we were greeted at the bus terminal by Pusit (a local Christian minister) and his cousin Abraham, who were very gracious and took us and our big packs to the city center and helped us find a good value hotel. Thanks David and Pusit! Good hotel, great value (we had all the hot water we wanted and comfortable beds, although we weren’t in the room that much). We ended up staying in Chaing Mai about 6 days, it’s kind of like a mini-Bangkok: Pretty busy, touristy, not as many cars, not as much debauchery, and just a bit more chill. The city itself is surrounded by a moat, but is now basically a pretty water feature that goes all the way around in a big square, en-circling the city limits. If you don’t mind 15 to 30 minutes walking, you can pretty much walk about anywhere you want here.
Chaing Mai is a city with a couple million people, so it is quite bustling and full of activity, tours, and travel scene. The “big” draws of Chaing Mai are its famous Northern Thai Cooking Schools, Doi Suthep (a Buddhist temple atop a 3,500 ft mountain with spectacular views), its many “treks” for meeting longneck hill-tribe villagers, elephant riding, bamboo rafting, zip-lining and anything else the locals can think of to coordinate for westerners visiting and make money on it appears. We were lucky enough to be there during their once a year Flower Festival also (the first weekend of each February), so that was kind of a big deal there (more on flower festival in part 3). It’s coordinated along with the Chinese New Year Celebration, so there was a big influx of travelers which made for some crowded streets during the evenings. (Think O’boro Bar-B-Q Festival on the river, except every night and day). Let’s say there was a lot of dried fish sticks being sold. The China Town section which we stayed really close to was buzzing all day and night with street food vendors, little shows/dancing, more food vendors, and people selling every trinket imaginable, so there was never a lack of something to see, eat, walk to, take a picture of or laugh at. I even squeezed in a yoga class nearby which was cool.
Christina was pumped about the cooking school, so we did partake in a full day of that, venturing out of the city by train to the crop-land where we saw organic fields of everything, and then spent the entire day learning to cook 7 different dishes each, in an outdoor kitchen with our instructor and a few other students. Big Day, Big Fun, learned a bunch, got a great little cook-book and pretty much stuffed ourselves eating all day after each couple of dishes and found some great new dishes we can share. Mae was a fun young teacher and very patient and sharp. One of our gregarious Lebanese/Canadian/Dutch/Chef/Rockstar/Recovering classmates was a bit off her rocker which added for quite an interesting cooking class we must say and she also had a stream of never-ending kooky stories. We did meet a wonderful couple from Cincinnati, Ohio in our class (Len and Marshall). They were off backpacking and venturing for about 30 days taking a long holiday which appeared very wise given the mid-west’s winter this year. Really enjoyed time with them and they impressed us so much that they were in their mid 60’s just out there doing the travel circuit like any youngster with a backpack. Awesome people!
More to come on Chaing Mai…..
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