WHIRLWIND TOUR OF NORTHERN THAILAND

Yesterday I took a whirlwind tour of northern Thailand, which consisted of about 8 hours of bouncing around in the rear seat of a van that was in serious need of a new suspension system—struts or shock absorbers or something—and about 4 hours of being whisked around the several sites we visited.  I won’t do this again.  Today, my back is an aching reminder.  Time for a Thai massage!

Anyway, the highlight of the tour was The White Temple.  Yes, sorry, one more temple, but this one was very atypical of what I’ve seen so far.  It’s a very comtemporary temple, the construction of which began in 1996 and is ongoing.  

The temple is the project of this visual artist, Chalermchai Kositpipat, and this visual image of him greets you at the entrance.

The temple grounds are chock full of sculpture and visual imagery depicting Buddhist teachings about the need to let go of human passions and desires in order to reach nirvana.

The pools in front of the temple are full of these colorful fish. 

The temple itself and the surrounding grounds are beautiful. 

This is the most glamorous outhouse I’ve ever seen.

A warning message about one of the evils in the world than needs to be resisted. 

There are lots of images of demons and skeletons everywhere, and this ocean of hands reaching up from hell is eerie.  

We weren’t allowed to take photos inside, so I borrowed a few photos to show you some of what I saw.  The murals inside were a unique blending of classic Buddhist and contemporary images. 

You wouldn’t expect to see images the collapse of the Twin Towers, Michael Jackson, rocket ships or cartoon characters like Spiderman and Superman in a Buddhist temple.

In one eye of the demon face on this wall is an image of Osama BinLaden and in the other eye an image of George Bush.   

In the “altar area” of the temple was the classic giant Buddha.  There was also a very realistic figure of a monk sitting in the lotus position in front of the Buddha facing the door.  It was so realistic that it took me a few moments to realize it wasn’t a real person.

This mixture of classic and contemporary imagery is very controversial in Thailand.  But the artist is very committed to completing his project and has made provisions for the work to continue after his death.  There’s an art museum on site, filled with his work. 

I was disappointed with how little time we were allowed to explore this very unusual temple.  I had to borrow a number of photos to capture the highlights of the story of this temple, and I had to almost run through the museum to catch a glimpse of the artist’s paintings.

Our next stop was the Golden Triangle—the point where the Ruak River flows into the MeKong, forming a natural boundary between three countries—Thailand, Myanmar (Burma), and Laos.  

 Thailand is in the foreground, the triangle of land is Myanmar, and across the river is Laos.

This, as many of you probably know, is where a great deal of drug trafficking occurred, as well as trading in other black market commodities, like precious gems and gold.  There is still drug activity here, evidenced by the number of police checkpoints we passed as we traveled into and out of this area of northern Thailand.

Here we took a ride up and down the Mekong River on a boat like this one.

This is a casino on the Laos side of the river, aptly named, for those of you who love gambling (and you know who you are), Paradise.

The surrounding mountainous landscape was really beautiful.

And we have Buddha on a boat.

We crossed the river and debarked in Laos to roam around a market there. 

Southeast Asian wares are very colorful.

And I never saw so many purses in one place.  There were probably 20 or so vendors with this many purses on display.

Most unusual were the bottles of whiskey.  Laotians put all kinds of reptiles in whiskey, believing that it gives them benefits like long life, virility, power, etc., depending on the reptile.

This whiskey shared its glass tank with a giant cobra.

A turtle in this one….other tanks had a gecko, an armadillo, and one had the penis of a tiger (guess we know what the imbiber of that one was after).  Beats a worm in a bottle of tequila, I'd say.

There were bottles of it for sale at several vendor sites.  The choices here were various types of snakes.

On we go (I warned you that this was a LONG day).  The next stop was for lunch—very average, but a chance to taste food representative of the Golden Triangle countries.  Then we went on to Mae Sai, which is the northernmost point in Thailand. 

It was another shopping stop, and I ordinarily don’t like these, but I actually bought something here. 

My closest friends know I’m a sucker for rings.  Here’s my latest addition.  It's a dragon, which is a symbol for good luck here in Thailand.  I was told these are rubies, but for $25, I kinda doubt it.  

Our last stop was the village of the Ahka hill tribe, the most downtrodden and impoverished of the hill tribes of northern Thailand.  This tribe came to Thailand from Burma in the early 20^th century to escape persecution. 

The entrance to their village is marked by this wood portal with the wooden statue of a woman on one side...

And a man on the other side…their nakedness is somehow symbolic of fertility.

This village elder greeted us and wanted to sell us bracelets. 

Another woman was selling these very colorful puppets.

And this elderly man was dressed in traditional costume, offering his photo for money.

One of the other highlights of the day was meeting an Italian in Thailand!

This is Fabio next to our tour guide May when she was explaining the reptiles in the whiskey (that's the armadillo).  Fabio is from Verona and works in Human Resources for the Barilla Company (the pasta people), so we had a lot to talk about.  He has been dating a Thai woman who lives in Bangkok for almost three years and travels here three times a year to spend time with her.  He’s trying to get her a visa for Italy, and I can appreciate his frustration with how difficult it is to accomplish that!  (I suggested marriage, but I guess he’s not ready for that.)  I got a lot of good information about his area of northern Italy, as well as his business card and an invitation to call on him when I’m in his neighborhood.  Meeting him almost makes up for my sore back!

NOW WE'RE COOKING

I like Thai food well enough to bother making it, but I've never tried.  Since it's cooler here in Chiang Mai, I decided to sign up for cooking school.  Today, I spent the majority of the day at Siam Rice Cooking School.  They picked me up at my hotel in one of those red trucks.

This is my view from inside  the truck.

We stopped first at a food market where our guide tested us on our knowledge of Thai ingredients.  As a group, we did pretty well.

There were a few vegetables that looked familiar.

These are the biggest carrots I've ever seen.  I think they're from New Zealand.

Pork rinds, anyone?










The full day program involves cooking 5 different dishes and making one of several different curry pastes.  Five of the 9 in our group signed up for the full day program, so we tried to coordinate our choices so we could try a number of different dishes.

Our class was conducted in a tent outside.  Nancy was our teacher.  She was really good, especially considering that she had to give instructions for several different dishes simultaneously.

We prepped the ingredients for our soup first.  I made Sweet and Sour Soup--galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, cilantro, spring onion, tomato, oyster mushrooms, fresh chilis, and limes were the main ingredients

At the stove, we added sliced chicken, sugar, chicken stock,  fish sauce and water.  This is my finished product.

The prep for my noodle dish, which was glass noodles with vegetables and chicken--the veggies were carrot, onion tomato, kale, and baby corn.  Seasonings were oyster sauce, Thai chili paste, sugar, soya sauce, and garlic.

The finished product, which was really good.

We did our cooking at this big square cooking area where there were 10 gas burners.

After we ate these first two dishes, we prepared our curry pastes.  I chose to make massaman curry, because I've never had it before.  It has 17 different ingredients, which I won't list here.

It took several minutes of serious pounding to get all those ingredients to come together in a paste.  That is a very serious stone mortar and pestle....very heavy.

My curry ingredients included carrots, potatoes, onions, pineapple, and sliced chicken.

At the stove, I added coconut cream, water, fish sauce, brown sugar, palm sugar and water, then garnished with coconut cream and thin slices of fresh red hot pepper.  This was a very sweet curry.






I forgot to take pictures of my dessert, which was sticky rice with mango.  It's my favorite Thai dessert.  Already cooked sticky rice is cooked in coconut milk with sugar and salt until it's thick.  Then you just slice a mango and eat the two together.  It's delicious, but you can find it in restaurants...it's a street food.

This is my group enjoying our curries and desserts.  There were two women from Malaysia, a mother and daughter from Israel, one American couple from Virginia who are traveling for a year and a couple from northern China--the guy is American and she's Chinese.






By this time, I'm beyond full, but we had an appetizer to make.  

I chose spring rolls, because I love them and have always wanted to learn to make them.  The school did the prep work for us on the appetizers, but I learned how to make the rolls and fried them.  I couldn't manage even one bite.





What surprised me most was that every dish we made had sugar in it...even the very spicy ones.

It was a great experience, and I'm planning to do it twice more while I'm here.    This full-day program cost 900 baht--that's about $30.  You get transportation from and to your hotel, the cooking instruction, a 5 course meal, a recipe book....and you get to meet more really interesting people.  It's a great way to spend a day.

BACKTRACKING

I finally got around to buying the USB cord I needed to transfer photos from my Smartphone to my computer.  I'm backtracking a bit to Bangkok to record a  very memorable evening I had with my new friend Dolly and her friend Anna.

I'm not sure why I decided to hold the flowers.  It had to be post-cocktail.

Speaking of cocktails, this is the one Anna ordered.  Yes, that is vapor rising from the glass, from the dry ice in the cocktail.  












The food at this most unusual Indian restaurant was marvelous.

I went to the restaurant website to try to find descriptions of the dishes we had, but their menu is different now.  This was a really unusual appetizer.  It's on a crouton--the white part was encased in a thin membrane that burst in your mouth and the green foam was made of cilantro.

This was a scallop dish.

Don't remember what these two were, but everything was beautiful and delicious.  We had a feast of 10 different dishes.

If you're ever in Bangkok, you must go to this restaurant--Gaggan.  The chef is crazy creative.

OH MAI

Chiang Mai is a baby city compared to Bangkok.  I spent my first day doing things I could do anywhere.  First, I went shopping in the big mall that's really close to me.  

They were still decorated for Christmas.
Pretty impressive tree, eh?  













There are the same kinds of early January sales here as there are at home.  I can't believe I actually bought more clothes.  I'm going to have to trade out some things in my suitcase, because there's just no room.  I've never been big on shopping, and having two already full suitcases has kept me pretty much in check so far (although I did spring for some linens in Italy).  

I also got a hair cut and color.  I asked them to match my color, and you won't believe what I got.  These Thais are much better with dark hair, I guess.  All I can say is that I'm not crazy about my Marilyn Monroe hair.  

Then I went to a movie--The Life of Pi.  The special effects are pretty amazing.  I guess some people have been dissatisfied with the lingering mystery of the ending, but I can live with open questions.  

This is only part of the field of motorcycles parked outside the mall.  












Today I went to explore the old walled city.  And what was the first thing I saw?  You got it.  Another temple.

This one is pretty modest compared to what I saw in Bangkok.  I met a couple of young women--Reka and Christina--one from Austria and the other from Germany, and after a chat about our travels, they invited me to tag along with them for a while.  




We went into the temple to hear the monks chanting before their lunch.  My picture of them turned out really blurry.

People were putting twenty baht notes in these streamers and hanging them from wooden rods.  














After checking out a couple of temple buildings, I decided to go off and explore what else was inside the walls.  

There really wasn't much--just streets like this with little shops.  

This is how most of the city looks--little shops in old buildings lining the streets.

There wasn't much to the walls of the city either--just partial sections like this.  The red truck you see here is one of the major forms of public transport here.  You sit on benches in the back.  They take you just about anywhere for 20 baht...that's about 65 cents. There are also tuk-tuks and a few metered taxis.  





I went back outside the walls and wandered a bit.  

This bowl of chili peppers was just sitting unattended on the sidewalk.
















I found a travel agent and booked 5 different tours--two full days, two half days, and an evening dinner and dance performance--all for $138.  I never cease to be amazed at how cheap things are here.  The travel agents told me about a couple of restaurants that aren't overrun with tourists and I had lunch at one....sweet and sour fish that was also quite spicy.  I know how to say "not really spicy" in Thai, but didn't think I needed to specify it on a sweet and sour dish.  It was really good, and so was the Thai beer I had with it.

I came back to the mall to get a shellac manicure and regular pedicure--only $30 for that.  There's a huge food hall in the mall, and they have a pretty good salad bar there, so I got a really big salad for dinner with lots of veggies, croutons and Italian dressing (of course) for only 42 baht...$1.38.  

I broke a sweat today, but never got close to being as uncomfortable as I was in Bangkok.  The weather here is going to be from 80 to 85 degrees for the next couple of weeks....I can't live with that!

COOLING OFF

I arrived safely in Chiang Mai, and what a welcome little drop in temperature.  It's still in the mid-80's, warmer than I expected, but oh, what a difference a few degrees make.  I've had the air conditioning in my apartment on for only a couple of hours so far.

I'm not crazy about my apartment.  I'm told it's one of the nicer serviced apartments in Chiang Mai, but it's pretty old and not that well maintained.  There's a big crack in my bedroom wall, the bottom of the bathtub is peeling, the venetian blinds in the kitchen area are warped and don't work properly, the TV's are old models and one doesn't work properly.  The kitchen is supposed to be fully equipped, but I have only two glasses and two coffee cups.  There's supposed to be a bar where guests can gather and socialize, but there isn't (not that I'd be there anyway, but it's the principle).  And no one here speaks decent English, so communicating all these issues was very challenging!  I met a Norwegian man who married a Thai/Chinese woman and lives in Bangkok.  He and his two sons are staying here while his son attends a boxing school.  His son speaks Thai and English, so he helped me communicate my problems to the hotel staff.

Anyway, the promised restaurant is on site, and I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I went downstairs to buy a cup of coffee to find that there's a breakfast buffet included in my rent, and the food here is even cheaper than it was in Bangkok.  I had Pad Thai with shrimp and chicken for dinner tonight for all of $2.26.  So I guess it doesn't matter much that I don't have a fully equipped kitchen, because I don't think I'm going to be cooking here.  

Another guy I met in the lobby told me about a laundry close by (the hotel's isn't open for a couple more days), and he even gave me a ride on his motorcycle to drop off my clothes.  It's going to cost me less than $3.11 to get 2 1/2 kilos of laundry washed and half of it ironed.  I also get daily maid service and free toilet paper, kleenex, water, shampoo and soap, all of which I've had to buy before.  So it all balances out, I guess.  This is more a hotel than an apartment building.

I signed up for three all day cooking classes at three different schools, and I'm really looking forward to learning how to make some traditional Thai dishes.  There's a huge mall within 2 minutes of my hotel which I'll explore tomorrow.  

And there are only 150,000 people here versus the 14 million in the Bangkok area.  Much less intimidating.  I think I'm better suited for northern Thailand.

CAMBODIAN THEME PARK

Even in Cambodia, you can find a theme park.  In Siem Reap, it's the Cambodian Cultural Village, where I decided to spend my last day there.  I hadn't seen any entertainment, and this place promised a lot.

It was quite an attractive park, with representations of the various types of villages you might find in Cambodia, a couple of theaters, a wax museum, a nice lake, a good restaurant, and generally attractive, well-maintained grounds.  

Various kinds of performances 20 to 30 minutes in length were held in different areas of the park for about 6 hours. 

In the Chinese village area, the performance included balancing and doing a few tricks with these giant, colorfully decorated poles.

And creating this human tower of about 8 people, I think.

In another area, there was a little fairy tale play about a princess and a peacock prince.

The costumes were really colorful.

These funny guys were in a playground area of the park.

One of the performances was an enactment of a traditional Khmer wedding.  There was quite a crowd there and I didn't get there in time to get a good seat.  A very nice security guard gave up his chair for me, but I didn't have a very good view of the stage because of sight obstacles.  I was considering taking a seat on the ground where I would have a better view when one of the performers left the stage and approached me.  I finally understood that he wanted me to come up to the stage to play the mother of the groom.  I couldn't have had a better seat!  That was another theme of the park's performance program--audience involvement.  It was great fun, and I really enjoyed this day of music, dancing, acting, and laughter, and I didn't even break a sweat!