The Second Week: Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and the Golden Triangle

The second week was a bit of an adventure. I spend the first part of the week relaxing in Chiang Mai, spending many afternoons relaxing by the pool. Of course, you can't relax all the time so I took a Thai cooking course. The teacher was Charlie's friend, Boom, who is an excellent chef. The morning started off with a trip to the local market where she told us all about the different veggies and such and we bought ingredients for our recipes. Then we drove to the cooking school, located in the country. We got our aprons and chef's hats on and started cooking! The first dish was Pad Thai: noodles with chicken, egg and other veggies, one of my favorites.

Next, we made Tom Yum: a spicy soup with prawns.

Then we had a choice of red or green curry. I chose red, my favorite, with chicken.

Then we made mangoes and sticky rice with palm sugar.

Next was chicken stir-fry with cashew nuts.

Finally, we made Thai green papaya salad, very spicy. When I eventually get home I'll host a fabulous Thai dinner party.

At the end of the week Charlie, Naz and I took the bus north to Chiang Rai. We did a day trip to the Golden Triangle, where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar (Burma) meet. Getting there was really easy. We followed the info office's advice and took a bus to Chiang Sean, then a minibus to the Golden Triangle. We got there find, walked around, saw a giant buddha, ate lunch. We then walked to the Hall of Opium, recommended by some guy to be much better than the House of Opium. The entrance is a long tunnel with colored lights and strange people-like creatures coming out of the walls. Apparently, its supposed to be like an opium experience. The rest of the Hall is 3 floors of video presentations, dioramas, and artifacts going from the history of opium to the addiction and victims. Very informative, but I was sick of reading by the end of it.

Now, is where the adventure got interesting. We thought we could just go back the way we came. We walked back to the busy part of the Golden Triangle and looked for a minibus to take us back to the bus. Unfortunately, there were no minibuses going back. Every way we could get back wanted a lot of money which we didn't want to part with so we started asking people if they were going to Chiang Sean. We found a really nice young couple going and they offered to take us all the way back to Chiang Rai. On the way they took us to some interesting temples and showed us around the University where she worked. When we got back they refused to take any money or let us buy them dinner. Very nice people.

The next day, Charlie and Naz headed back to Chiang Mai. I was going to wait until the next day to leave, but I met a German girl going the same way I was so I left with her. We took the bus to Chiang Khong and crossed the Mekong into Laos.

Facebook is giving me problems today, sorry I'll try to post more pictures in a few days.