Chiang Mai

Last week we took a short holiday from our holiday and headed up north to Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is one of the most popular tourist spots in Thailand - it’s full of Western restaurants, adventure activities and tourist traps. We had fun indulging in the tourist comforts - who can resist fresh fruit smoothies for a dollar when it’s boiling hot?!

Aside from general relaxing and sightseeing, we went to a cooking class one day and hired a motorbike on another. Sammy’s Organic Thai Cooking School was at an organic farm just outside of the city. We got to make some delicious Thai dishes and there was even a one hour “digestion break” on hammocks half way through. Thai food has quickly become one of our favourite cuisines.

We’re sure you know about pad thai as well as green/red curries, which are all delicious. Some of our other favourites include pad ka prao (meat stir-fried with chilli and basil), som tam (a sweet, sour and very spicy salad made from green papaya), tom kha gai (a spicy chicken soup made with fresh coconut milk) and mango with sticky rice.

The key to good Thai cooking seems to be good quality fresh herbs and vegetables. Sammy picked a lot of the food straight from his garden - it was cool to see it go straight from the field to the plate.

Motorbiking was also good fun. We started off overly cautious as we had seen four separate motorbike crashes just the day before! And we certainly noticed quite a few tourists walking around with bandaged legs. Luckily we got through the day unscathed.

We downed our last smoothie for a while and then boarded our flight back to school. Once we get back, there are just a few more days of classes before exam week.

We’ve also suddenly realised that we’re just three months from the end of our trip! In that time we’ll be heading to Burma for a couple of weeks, then going to Vietnam, Borneo and Singapore before (gulp) we head home at the end of May.

In our next post we’ll tell you about graduation and saying goodbye to the college and students. As we sign off from this post, the graduation ducks are wandering around outside, blissfully unaware of their fate!

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson