Chiang Mai

I am now finishing up my time in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand. Kenneth and I were here for about 3 days together, and now he has left to head back home, and I have been here on my own for two days. So I have participated in a few Evelyn oriented activities in Chiang Mai before heading to my next adventure, going to the Elephant Nature Park to volunteer for a week. (read "volunteer" as scoop huge piles of poop in a camp that caters to white chicks with too much money who like elephants.) Should be fun! And probably a lot of work. It is sort of like going on a trek, which is big business here- taking tourists out for a few days of wilderness and looking at the natives. But many of the trek packages out here feel exploitative toward the hill tribes and I would feel a little weird doing one of them. So I picked this instead.

Kenneth and I liked Chiang Mai a lot. We saw lots of wats (there are as many here as there are in Bangkok) and explored the Night Bazaar, found a few regular Thai markets and did a Monk Chat. The Monk Chat was cool. There were some Buddhist monks hanging out under some trees with a "Monk Chat" sign and you could go over and sit down and ask them questions. I learned about the daily life of a monk. (lots of study, no dating) We also enjoyed the $3 massages that were available at the night bazaar.
Some stuff here was funny. One travel agent we went to offered plane tickets, trek packages and, for some reason, massage. We thought it was odd so we bought tickets elsewhere. I found a singng atm machine which played dance music when you took money out of it. There are one baht weight machines here. Put in a baht, and the machine tells you your weight. Like the blood pressure machines at drugstores, but these are on the street, outside 7-11. I also enjoyed the icy cold red wine that I got served. And the tasteless beer.

Ooh, I finally saw a sweaty Thai. I was feeling like I was the only person in Thailand who sweated ( I sweat a lot here) and couldn't figure out how all these Thai people were so cool looking all the time. It was driving me nuts. But yesterday I saw one who was soaked with sweat and I wanted to shake his hand. I didn't because I wouldn't have been able to explain why I was so happy to see him, and he was all sweaty and gross.

Evelyn oriented activities during my last 2 days:

On the first day I went to a spa, because I love being pampered. I liked the spa a lot, my favorite part was the facial. It was so relaxing. I want more!

One thing I wasn't so thrilled about was the hot tub soak that I was supposed to do as part of my spa package. I just found the idea of soaking in a hot tub that other people have soaked in to be a little weird, and kind of gross. I mean, on the one hand, I have gone to the pool, and I don't think it is gross to swim in the same water as other people, and the water in the tub was chlorinated, but at the same time, it was a tub big enough for two, and once I started thinking about that I was too jumpy to sit there. I mean, this is Thailand. So I sat in the hot tub for about a minute, then got freaked out and got up and rinsed off. I killed time until my next phase of spa stuff started by building bubble castles and Godzilla-stomping on them.

I also took a Thai cooking class. Turns out if you use the right ingredients, not just something similiar that is easier to find where you live, your food can be pretty convincingly Thai.

I loved my Thai cooking class, but I was a little clumsy that day. I kept putting in ingredients too early and I ruined one dish that way, but that was no big deal because I spilt that dish all over the stove anyway. All over the element, so it couldn't be salvaged. Then I put my foot in a grate and got god knows what all over my feet. Yech.

Oh well, the class was great. The teacher had some good tips and the food was wonderful. Very professional- there was a maximun of 8 people in the class and there were 9 work stations, and the teacher had all the materials prepared and ready to go. I was the only one in the class, so I got lots of attention.

On my second day I took an Indian cooking class. (There are lots of Indian restaurants in Thailand.) That class was a stark contrast to the class the day before. I showed up at 9:30 sharp, and then sat for 15 minutes while the restaurant proprieters chopped vegetables. Then they made me some bread thing to have for breakfast, and I sat for another 20 minutes. This compares with a prompt pick up and beginning to my Thai cooking class, where I made my own breakfast and prepared my own materials all day. At the Indian class, I watched and helped in the restaurant kitchen while the woman who runs the restaurant made a dish, instead of making a dish on my own at my own work station, as in the Thai class.

The kitchen was filthy, by the way. Oh god, it has put me off restaurants for a while. There were flies and cockroaches. Not a lot, but some, and really, the problem that I had was that the teacher wasn't concerned about them. We used the same pot for almost every dish. I was given a spoon for tasting at the beginning of the day and had to keep using that same spoon for all the dishes, double dipping be damned. I kept my spoon in the pocket of my not entirely clean apron.

The colanders we put the vegetables in were black with grime in places.
When a big group came in to the restaurant, the 2 other students and I had to hang out at a table for half an hour while the owners cooked for the customers.

The bathroom was so bad I wouldn't use it. I just held it all day.
Really, it would have been a disaster if it hadn't been for those other 2 people taking the class. I was getting angry about the lack of professionalism and the wasting of my time and money when the 2 guys showed up.

They were an hour late, so I had to sit through the first dish and a half again (instead of the teacher just doing it later with them). But they totally saved the day. They were these 2 twenty one/twenty twoish guys from Oregon, completely laid back. They thought the whole thing was a huge joke. They laughed about "jungle Indian food experience" and ghetto cooking. The recipes were all almost all the same. You put in oil, salt, garam masala, turmeric, and chile powder, which they started calling the fab five. Then garlic and onion were the manager and producer. Joking around about it turned my attitude around and helped me see the funny side of the situation. It really was so ridiculous that it was funny.
The wife of the couple who run the restaurant took us to the market because one of the guys said that he would like to have spinach in one of the dishes. So we all got up and walked to the market. She started telling us calmly and casually about how her husband talks a lot and works a little, and that she is going to leave him and go to Bangkok to live with her daughter. Then the husband kept trying to get us to drink beer, starting at about 11am, while we were working in the kitchen with oil over a gas flame.

Ah well, it is a good story. Thank goodness for those 2 guys, they made it a lot more fun. I still left early though.

Next I took a tuk tuk to a big wat a half an hour out of town and all the way up a mountain. And, because I hadn't been cheated out of enough money yet that day, I paid almost 4 times what I should have. Ah, I will be glad to get to the prix fixness of America. I don't mind being cheated out of a little money, as long as eveyone else is being cheated too, but I don't think that is always the case here.

I did actually have to pay more to get out there. The driver wasn't entirely cheating me. The hostel people told me where to go to get a taxi out to the wat. I walked out there (because the tuk tuk driver I asked to take me offered to take me for over twice what I knew it should cost and I didn't feel like bargaining.) The drivers who take you to the mountains have a set price which is posted. The problem is that they also have a minimum number of people that they will take, and that number is not 1. So I had to subsidize the rides of 2 or 3 phantom people to get out there, and agree to let him take other people back with me (not a big deal). Oh well, the wat was worth it.

It had a fabulous view of Chiang Mai and the surrounding mountains. It was a relief to see some natural beauty. It was a huge sweeping vista, an excellent place for a wat and a monastery. There are 306 steps up to the temple. And lots of touristy shops (which I always think is strange to find in and around a temple). There was also a scary dragon creature with the word "mom" written under it. Heh heh.

The inside of the temple was open air with the biggest, goldenest chedi in the world. And piles of golden Buddhas. I went in to one of the sanctuaries to sit and look at some of them, and a monk motioned me over and blessed me. He was the happiest, friendliest, least self conscious person I have ever met. Being blessed by him made me want to become a monk. He gave off this incredibly kind vibe. Then a nice man sitting beside him tied a white string around my wrist (monks can't touch women), signifying that I was now a better person, or that I was now clean, or just that they had gotten me already.

That night I went to the weekend market in Chiang Mai. It was gigantic. It was so big I wasn't able to see all of it. It had lots of the same stuff I had seen in the other markets, but with a bunch of other stuff besides. Clothes, cool t-shirts and hippie variety and ethnic variety. I bought a another pair of Thai fisherman pants, because I love them and the ones I found only cost half what they normally do. No one tell Kenneth though, he will kill me. I keep buying the damn things, can't stop dont know why. Lots of cheap jewelry, and really cheap jewelry, and crafts, and food. There was lots of music. It was like the sort of festival that we would only see on the Fourth of July in the US, or at a city's yearly big blow out, but I think this happens every week here.

I found a shirt with a huge mechanical ape and a monkey in a ninja pose that said "robot ape vs monkey." It was too small for Kenneth, and the salesgirl wouldn't budge from her original asking price at all. So I walked.
I saw a few German sounding people berating some Mormons who were proselitizing in the street. That was great. What the hell do they want with the Thais anyway?

So that was Chiang Mai Evelynpalooza 2006. Now I go to Elephant Poop Farm for a week, then I hit Phuket for a few days of sun and reading Helen Fielding and Jane Austen. Then I go back to the US and give people presents!

I hope everyone like the pencils I got them!

Will pony up with a report on our trip to Cambodia and our trip to Phuket soon.