South East Asia on a Hamstring – 2000

Chiang Mai, Thailand – February 15, 2000

Our train arrived early, apparently for the first time in Wendy’s history of leading on this route. This was good for me because it meant that I could go to Thai cooking school for the day.

The Chiang Mai Cooking School opened at 10am and they were kind enough to send a driver to fetch me. I was the only one from our group to go – the others

split up between a temple and factory tour and bamboo rafting.

Me and around 12 other tourists went in two songthaews to a cooking school outside of Chiang Mai. We each had our own grill and assorted piles of ingredients. The instructor showed us how to cook on a big central grill and then we would go and replicate the process at our own stations. We made a curried pork dish, sweet and sour vegetables, and a chicken in curry sauce. Everyone else made a fish dish too but I wasn’t getting anywhere near that.

At 2, satisfied with my self-made Thai lunch and quite stuffed, I made my way back to “People’s Place,” our guesthouse.

At 4pm, our group met in lobby to go to a Wat on a mountain. Monks, in their orange robes, did their daily chant there at 5pm so we got to watch, surrounding by opulent gold-lined temples. The nuns were forced to chant next door, staring at walls and not at the monks or of the image of Buddha.

My favorite part of the temple was this big framed, black-and-white photo of a rooster. Wendy told me that the rooster used to go around and peck the shoes of people who didn’t take their shoes off to enter the temple.

I devoted the night to the Chiang Mai night market, a tremendous grouping of stalls selling textiles and kitschy souvenirs. I bought a few things and promptly sent them home from the local Mailboxes Etc. It was my last maildrop, as Laos and Vietnam and Cambodia do not have safe postal systems. After this, anything I buy gets carried out on my back. This could discourage frivolous spending.

Dinner was interesting and disappointing. I went to the Thai coupon court, a combination between a U.S. mall food court and AstroLand. You purchase a number of coupons from a central ticket booth and then you go around with a tray and buy your snacks from different food vendors. I had pad thai and a spring roll – both were really gross and greasy but at least it wasn’t touristy – this was genuinely Thai.

Chiang Khong, Thailand – February 16, 2000

We took a 7:45 public bus to the border town of Chiang Khong, where we are spending the night at the Ruan Thai Guesthouse before boarding a morning boat across the Mekong to Laos. We can see Laos from our hotel. You could swim there, really. But we won’t. We’ll take the boat and then switch to a longboat for a two day trip down the Mekong.

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