We got to Chiang Mai on the 6th of January and have yet to spend a day in the city! After grabbing some street food after our flight (mango sticky rice and some noodle soup – yum!), we went to bed and got up early for some Thai cooking! Siam Rice, run by Nancy and her husband (both are Thai – don’t let her name fool you), has an awesome full-day cooking class – we both highly recommend it to anyone who visits Chiang Mai. We started off with a trip to the market, checking out the different ingredients we would use today and just wandering off on our own for a bit.
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I couldn’t talk Matt into any of the bugs
After the market, we headed to Siam Rice and met Nancy, the owner and our instructor for the day. We got to all choose from a list of five or six items in six categories: soup, noodle, appetizer, fried rice, curry, and dessert. Then we got busy chopping all the ingredients for our soup – Matt chose chicken with coconut milk (tom kha) and I chose spicy holy basil or something along that line.
Success! My soup.
After setting our soup aside, we made our noodle dishes. Matt chose drunken noodles and I chose pad thai. Both were excellent.
Matt’s is on the left, mine on the right.
After chowing down, we made our appetizers – Matt chose some glass noodle salad and I chose spring rolls.
Matt’s appetizer – very tasty!
We set those on the table (after sneaking a few bites of Matt’s salad) and then made our fried rice dishes. Matt’s was chicken cashew and mine was holy basil.
Nancy called this “adventure cooking”
Mine wasn’t as impressive as Matt’s, but that smoke was SO peppery – my eyes were tearing up.
We ate yet again, and then took a break for some vegetable carving. It was a nice time to digest a bit before getting started on our dessert and curry dishes. Matt chose red curry with pumpkin and sticky rice with mango for dessert, and I chose panang curry with banana and coconut milk for dessert. We made the desserts first, which were definitely hard to walk away from but a bit easier than usual considering we’d just about eaten our weight in food already.
Matt mixing the curry paste
Panang curry paste. It’s basically red curry with peanuts.
Mine is on left and Matt’s is on right
Needless to say, we went home very well fed! We also got a book with all of the recipes, so we can’t wait to try them out at home. After we got back to our guesthouse, we chatted with the owners for a bit about what to do next. They were incredibly helpful – we wish we could stay with them the whole time, but unfortunately they’re booked. Anyway, we booked a tour for the next day and then headed out for the night market. It was a lot of fun – jam packed with locals and tourists alike.
The next day, we left for a two-day, one-night trek in the jungle north of Chiang Mai. We had so much fun on this and took so many awesome pictures, but I’ll just dump a few and let them do most of the talking.
First, we rode elephants.
Then, we hiked through the jungle for a few hours until we reached a big cave with bats.
Then we hiked for another hour or so to a tribe and went to our hut that was right outside their village.
Cabbage fields – I’m not nearly as mad as I look
We ate dinner, relaxed, and just stayed up talking until we were all too tired to go on – so about 10 pm.
Full moon!
The next morning, we visited the tribe before setting off on another hike to a small waterfall and swimming area.
We grabbed lunch at another nearby tribe and enjoyed their animals.
Last, we stopped by some shops and then went down the river on a bamboo raft. No pics for this, but we did see lot of elephants along the way – very cool.
We both had mixed feelings about a trek before we decided to just go with it. We didn’t want to support any of the elephant tourist sites which mistreat them, a lot of them just sounded boring, and we were afraid it would be crowded and we wouldn’t get to actually experience that part of Thailand. In the end, we just decided to go in with an open mind and enjoy it. Did we really experience the culture of the hill tribe people? Not at all – we made brief stops through their tribes – maybe 15 minutes max. Did we really stay with a hill tribe family? No – we were outside of their village, in an area specifically for tourists, and our guide cooked all of our food and looked after us. Would it have really been authentic if they did? Probably not – I’ve never heard of ancient tribal villages who survived off of tourism and hospitality. But did we ride some elephants, see some spectacular scenery, stay at a cool hut, go swimming in the river (Matt’s favorite) and hang out with some great people? Absolutely.
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