After 3 days in Thailand’s largest city, we flew to the second largest, but substantially more laid back, Chiang Mai. Purpose of visit: food. Three food tours booked in over 3 days.
Night 1 almost broke me. A 3 hour food and walking tour condensed into about an hour and a half. We saw the world famous (to anyone who followed the late Anthony Bourdain) lady with a cowboy hat cooking the most incredible pork you’ll ever have, cut through town in a tuk tuk, loaded up at a local night market and sat at a locals only bar on the river Ping to finish off. After walking home, crying, we finished the night with a free bottle of bubbles in our pool on our balcony looking over the old town.
The second tour was a little more adventurous, travelling far and wide in an open taxi to taste the best Khao Soi in town, James ate congealed chicken blood (Lea’s face indicated her decision not to) and we even visited a restaurant that focussed on water buffalo dishes. “Would you like some minced buffalo salad?” I’d laab one! We learned more than the other tours, particularly about the traditional and non-traditional Thai cooking techniques. Non-traditional appears to refer to techniques introduced any time after the Normans conquered England.
After consuming more pork in one day than the previous 39 years, Lea tuk herself off to get a massage. 2 hours. $25. Bargain! Oh…and the masseuses were all ex-cons. But I’ll leave that there. I’m sure they all served their Thaime. Meanwhile, James was left alone drinking beer by the litre in a dive bar nearby, to be safe due to lack of comms, and was faced with the dilemma of leaving either the iPad an open drink to keep claim over the seat. Would it look creepier holding a large bottle of beer lining up for a Thai toilet or an iPad and claiming you’re just after a quick wee. I chose the iPad, and ran the risk of leaving the open drink container at the bar, thinking that being already above average size around here and having 2 food tours in me, it was unlikely that a) I would be a target and b) the run of the mill rufies wouldn’t pack much of a punch…completely forgetting that they routinely tranquilise elephants in these parts…
Our final food adventure was a market tour and cooking class out in the country with the amazing Aoy (pron: Oi!). After a less than auspicious start where we got to see some Western tourists (not naming continents) at their best bartering a lady down from 17 Baht to 16 (in a local market) with the biggest sense of glee, for a grand saving to them of 4.3 cents…Or 2.7 Euro cents for them…but Aoy saved the day! She brought sexy back. Referring to the spice level in food as how sexy you are and fluidity of bowel motions as sexy belly she not only enthralled us, but thoroughly confused the meaning of sexy to us…or we’re much more sexy over here than we’d thought…
On our final night in Chiang Mai, I put on my complimentarily hotel washed shorts (putting the HOT into Hotel washed, they shrank about 2 sizes), shed a small tear, then we hit the town to do our own food tour. The highlight being char-grilled prawns and stir fried morning glory (stop it), where the sight of us brought in another Westerner (from unnamed continent) to try the prawns. After sending them back 3 times because the CHAR grilled prawns had black tails, the undeterred shellfish entrepreneur, simply flexed his mussels and took to the prawns with scissors, waited a few minutes then dropped them back on his table.
After some more delicious street treats, we fortunately stumbled first on a cool live music bar and then a karaoke bar, then less fortunately, on the red light district, which was less dappled red light and more every colour of the rainbow (thankfully stopping at violet) up in neon lights. We did the perfunctory lap (no dance) of the area, were tempted to hide out in the Hard Rock cafe (at least there we’d be confident if we ordered a burger we wouldn’t end up with a Thai sausage) and quickly headed back to the karaoke bar where we were greeted with free tequila shots…and I’m pretty sure that was the end of our time in Chiang Mai. Cue montage.
Europe from Z to A 