Making it Falang spicy

Pick of the week: The elephant training centre, Nr Lampang

Style: Squat

Atmosphere: Tiled

Extras: Sometimes you have to focus on the positives. There was a door AND loo paper. Some days you win all round.

14/07/13 to 21/07/13: Chang Mai, Lampang and Bangkok

Having successfully collected Dad from the airport we went back to our lovely teak guesthouse complete with evil grey cat to rest a while before heading back out with Lee and Linda to a local restaurant for a slap up dinner that included a delicious whole steamed fish, tom yum soup, pad thai and countless other classics.

The next day Lee and Linda headed back to Nan and as Dad was a little jet lagged we took an easy day walking around Chiang Mai taking in the sights. We saw quite a few wats decorated in gold, coloured glass and sculptures and one that was beautifully made of teak. We also popped into the (*museum*) for a bit of culture in between stop offs for refreshing fruit shakes (blended ice and fruit- tasty in hot weather). As luck would have it there is a big walking market every Sunday in Chiang Mai and so as evening fell we hit the streets again for a look around. The market was (until we saw one in Bangkok) the biggest that any of us had ever seen stretching for miles down the longest streets in the city. The street sellers sold every kind of tourist tat imaginable and quite a few that would never have occurred to us in our maddest dreams. They also had lots and lots of very cheap food and drink. Ben managed to get a plateful of his favourite wide rice noodles in soy sauce for 15 baht (around 30p) and Dad and I got delicious Pad Thai wrapped in an omelette for 30 baht. There were also lemongrass stuffed sausages, tiny quiches cooked in a banana leaf on a barbeque, bowls of fried quails eggs, and the ubiquitous mystery meat on sticks. All in all a great evening of browsing and grazing was had with a little stop over for a beer when the evening rains hit (it is monsoon season after all).

The main Wat in Chang Mai is twinned with one in.... Runcorn. Who knew!?

Pretty weird

Omelette in banana leaf

The next day we decided to get a bit of a bird’s eye view of the city by hiring scooters and heading out into the hills. In retrospect putting Dad onto a scooter in a large Thai city on his third day in Thailand was possibly not the best idea, especially since we failed to explain to him the fact that in Thailand you can turn left at red lights and there is an unwritten rule that scooters are only marginally higher up the pecking order than pedestrians who are themselves at fault if they manage to get themselves squashed by a motorised vehicle while crossing the road. Cue Dad enraging truckers and car drivers alike by driving down the centre of the overtaking lane at maximum scooter speed like crazy frog on amphetamines. We did manage to make it up the hills to get a great view of Chiang Mai town and then carried on up to the Wat at the top of the hill. This was most impressive not just because of the sheer number of worshipers there but also because the central stupa was for once not painted gold but rather covered in a layer of beaten solid gold. Given that the stupa was several metres high there was a very serious amount of gold that had gone into it. We carried on to a nature reserve and followed signs through the woodland/jungle for the viewpoint summit, thinking we would just pop up and have a look. We hadn’t realised that the trail was several km long along a barely visible path that was infested with leeches. Added to that was the fact that trees obscured any view that the summit might have once had- needless to say we were not sure that the locals or even visiting Thais cared much for trekking through jungle.

Only when mad

Proper gold this time

Some view!

Our final day in Chiang Mai was taken up by a full day Thai cooking class. We were picked up early in the morning and taken to the school where we met up with the 5 people from Texas and a family of 4 from Denver that constituted our classmates. We were able to choose what we would like to cook out of a variety of classic Thai dishes including chicken satay, tom yum soup, yellow, green and panang curries and Thai pancakes. We started by making a couple of dishes (fairly proud of my crispy spring rolls if I say so myself) and then while they were happily digesting (you obviously eat everything you make) we headed down to the market for a lesson in Thai produce. There we learnt about the different vegetables, fruits and spices that are used in Thai cooking and finally learnt why some of the eggs we had seen in the supermarkets were pink. Turns out that in the pre-fridge era Thai people preserved eggs by boiling them in a kind of flavoured broth and then burying them for 100 days. The result is an egg that is cooked, ready to eat and, as far as we can tell, everlasting. They are painted pink to differentiate them from uncooked eggs and the inside is a rather terrifying black colour. They taste pretty much like a pre-salted boiled egg, if a little more sulphury than most. Back at the ranch and we learnt to make curry pastes from scratch (check us out!) as well as super tasty prawn soup and pad Thai. We finally made a load of Thai desserts of which the sticky rice with mango was my personal favourite although baked banana pudding and banana and coconut pancakes were a close joint second. We also had a little tasting lesson in Thai fruits including the dreaded durian which tasted less foul second time round by I still think I would rather eat my own week old socks. Finally we were rolled out of the doors with our little recipe books and sent on our way. 

Rice. Comes in many varieties

Best curry ever made.

Curry shot

We caught the bus to Lampang the next day and aimed to have a chilled out day wandering around and not doing a lot which was just as well since Dad promptly vomited as soon as we stepped off the bus. Dad had a bit of a sleepathon while we did a bit of organising for onward travel and then we all headed out to our favourite ‘one baht’ restaurant. The next day we headed to the elephant conservation centre for which Lampang is famous. It is a huge site that has a nursery and hospital which cares for sick and injured elephants throughout the north of Thailand for free. They have an elephant ‘show’ where they demonstrate the relationship that a mahout and his elephant have together and show how for hundreds of years the elephants were used to move and stack logs in the big wooded plantations. Lastly the elephants are given an easel, paintbrush and pot of paint and amazingly actually produce recognisable pictures of plants, trees and even themselves. We tried to pay a visit to the hospital but they seemed a bit busy with new arrivals so we went to the nursery where two adorable baby elephants were with their mothers, running around and playing football with their keepers (definitely could out skill me, given that trunks are allowed). We also got a ride on the adult elephants through their bathing pool and out into the wooded jungle. It was amazing to be up on top of these huge beasts (a long way from the ground!) gently strolling along as the mahoots guide them with the gentlest touch. There was actually a mahout training course that we could have done but sadly they were booked up months in advance so a project for the future.

Better than what I could produce

Going Tiger hunting

Surprisingly strong little bugger

Goes mental for bananas

We got our first overnight VIP bus to Bangkok which was a bit of a revelation as it was comfy, air conditioned and even came with a fleecy blanket and a cup of bright red fizzy drink that may or may not have been intended to give you a rosier view of the transport than you would have otherwise had.

On our first day (having arrived at the crack of dawn and sat outside our hostel waiting for it to open for a while) in Bangkok we had to go on a bit of a shopping trip as the case for our go pro had been thoroughly eaten by rampaging DEET. We also discovered a bit of a problem as none of dad’s bank cards were working in the ATMs (since he didn’t tell the bank he was coming to Thailand!) so this all took a fair bit of sorting out before we managed to do any sightseeing which consisted of a failed trip to the royal palace (which was shutting 30 mins after we arrived and at 500 baht a head seemed a little on the steep side) followed by a trip to (*which*) wat which was astoundingly steep sided and very resourcefully decorated as it was covered in broken bits of chinese pottery making up beautiful mosaics. All of these were accessed by the remarkably handy riverboat ferry which also turned out to be pretty cheap once we realised we didn’t have to pay for the special tourist ticket. That night we went to the most famous pad thai place in the whole of Bangkok which probably means the whole of Thailand and ergo we have eaten the best pad thai in the world. It may or may not have given Ben food poisoning but I thought it was very tasty.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Steep.

Looking back over the ChaoPraya at old town Bangkok

The next day was a Saturday so we went to Chatcuchac market which is one of the biggest markets in southeast asia and it is indeed huge. It is superficially divided into sections such as ‘pottery’ or ‘gardening’ but these might as well read as ‘random tourist tat plus some other things’. There is an entire section devoted to pets and their accessories and the dwarf rabbits were incredibly cute although whether the kittens and puppies were old enough to be separated from their mothers was dubious. Ben managed to get some pretty awesome t-shirts though so all was not lost. That night we went along to the national stadium and got some ringside seats to watch muay thai boxing which is basically a cross between normal boxing and kung fu except far more vicious than either. There were 9 matches, each 5 rounds long with the outcome being decided by 4 judges. However 4 of the competitors never made it to the 5^th round with one exiting due to a leg injury and the other 3 being knocked out. One of the matches was an American versus a Thai university student (who seemed to be the only guy who could come close to the American’s weight). It was not a pretty sight. You could virtually feel every punch hitting the mark and the poor Thai guy was on the floor with his eyes rolling before the end of the first round. The main event lasted a little longer but still ended with the loser having to be semi-carried off by his team. What the long-term effects of such damage to your head are I dread to think.

Game over

Stacking up the roses ready for the evening flower market

Ben and I got up at the crack of dawn the next day to see the Nothamburi morning market (a much more local affair) which was fascinating and mighty tasty and then we crawled back into bed for a few hours sleep before getting up again to go and see the old palace gardens. These were fairly pretty but also actually just a nice quiet place that felt a little out of the city. We also saw the biggest monitor lizard I have ever seen up close there. It was happily sat by a drainage ditch, sunning itself and was at least 4ft long nose to tail. I dread to think what they eat but thankfully it was not me.

Mega beans. Everything grows bigger in the jungle

Then it was time for an overnight air-conditioned train trip down to go visit the famous islands of the Gulf of Thailand and progress southwards.