Chiang Mai - Jewel of Northern Thailand
8/28/06
Well we finally decided to forgo the arduous route through Mae Sot and Mae Sariang to Mae Hong Son and opted to head for Chiang Mai first, figure out what to do and then head down to Mae Hong Son and the area perhaps to trek a bit. The bus to Chiang Mai was about five hours, not to bad all things considered. We had read about another really nice place in Chiang Mai called Baan Orapin but the emails to them bounced and it is supposed to be small so we figured we would stay one night in one of the places recommended by Lonely Planet and maybe wander over to Baan Orapin in the morning. When we arrived in Chiang Mai, it was pouring rain and we were immediately barraged by touts trying to overcharge for Saamlaw and convince you to stay at their guesthouses.
We thought we would be smart and try calling the one of the places recommended by LP called the Galare hotel, located on the banks of the
We eventually convinced a smiling woman of a reasonable price into town, and hopped in the back of her “taxi” for the rainy, traffic-y ride to the Galare guesthouse.
We strolled across the river for an early river-side dinner at a somewhat touristy place sitting on the banks of the 
8/29/06
After a quick breakfast at the Galare, we hopped in a tuk-tuk, went through the requisite haggling to get a reasonably fair price, and checked into our new digs at Baan Orapin across the 
We spent the day wandering around the
We walked down to one of the bigger Wats in Chiang Mai, Wat Phra Sing, and wandered around the grounds (at least this time, no one told us it was closed until 2:00 pm!) and watched some of the really young novice monks dressed in saffron robes chanting (and giggling at the farang) as well as some hilarious young boy scouts doing marching drills (they also were much more interested in us than their drills…).
That evening, we went to another of the river-side restaurants for dinner and I noticed a tall, thin, striking woman in an evening dress and lots of makeup who appeared to be the hostess or waitress or something. After ordering beers from a young Thai boy, the woman strolled over to our table to take our order. Imagine our surprise when her voice was deeper than mine and definitely NOT female. Who knew - not only do you get inexpensive tasty food and beer, but you get a transvestite waiter thrown into the mix for free!
I had some noodles and Cindy had some not so great fried rice and suddenly I realized that my head was on fire. Somehow I managed to eat a tiny chili so hot that it made my cheeks sweat -probably one of the infamous little ones known as “mouse shit” chilies (supposedly a direct translation from Thai since they are tiny little things, not much bigger than what they are named after…).
The highlight of this particular restaurant was the local entertainment, first a woman doing reasonable covers of lots of female ballad singers like Tracy Chapman, Fiona Apple, etc. She was not bad, although Cindy did mention that it didn’t seem like the words were correct or that she really knew what she was singing. Well, she was followed by two guys who proved Cindy right. At one point, the started doing a cover of Neil Young’s Heart of Gold and something sounded wrong. I listened intently and realized that they were singing something to the effect of “she keeps me singing for a kind of gold” and generally messing up the words - completely apparent that they had no idea what they were singing (which made it all the better).
8/30/06
The next morning, we were picked up by our instructor, Suh, of Thai Farm Cooking and we hopped in the back of a Saamlaw and joined the other students, all young, a couple from
Next we were off to the school which was a good 30 minutes out in the countryside on a really pretty little farm. Suh walked us around the gardens, explaining about the various herbs and plants, all of which were pretty familiar to Cindy and I but not so much to the rest of the group.
Our next task was making the Curry Paste the real Thai way, by grinding it all up by hand in a mortar and pestle. Suh explained all the ingredients (garlic, galangal, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, chilies, garlic, kaffir lime rind, etc.) and all eight of us started pounding away with a fairly large mortar and pestle, eventually mushing everything into a relatively smooth paste - all in all, quite hard work compared to buying the stuff at 99 Ranch Market at home!
After making the paste, we went into the kitchen, a kind of cool, open air bamboo building with individual workstations, where we ended up preparing chicken in green curry paste, Tom Yum Goong soup (spicy shrimp soup), chicken with chilies and basil, sticky rice, Thai egg rolls and bananas in coconut milk.
8/31/06
Well today it rained and I mean it rained pretty much, all day so after breakfast, we went into the main building at Baan Orapin and was going to spend some time on the internet updating this blog and doing photo stuff. We ended up chatting with an American guy named Chuck whom we had seen at breakfast a few times. It ended up that Chuck was from 
Well lunch rambled on into happy hour cocktails in Chuck and Jane’s bungalow. They are a really nice, hilarious couple that has been married 30 years (hard to believe) and we spent the evening trading travel stories. They ended up coming to Thailand on a fluke - they were supposed to go to Croatia with their son and his girlfriend who is Serbian, when they found out that the girlfriend was not a US citizen and only had a Yugoslavian passport (which I presume is somewhat defunct at this point considering that Yugoslavia hasn’t been a country in quite a while).
Suddenly we realized it was already 10:00pm, we had killed both their bottle of wine and half their bottle of rum and we were hungry so we plodded out in the rain to the night market and ended up having a pretty good dinner before heading home, wishing them well on their trip to Phuket tomorrow and passing out for the night.
Our next stop is off to some mountainous areas in
Sa wat dee
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Baan Orapin is a fantastic bed and breakfast type place located just across the Ping River in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It has beautiful, large rooms in a teak building with a four poster bed, sitting area, balcony and spotless bathrooms. Also, they have added a set of six or so new rooms in the back that are even nicer and are currently (Oct 2006) working on adding a new building with a few more rooms. Baan Orapin is owned and run by a really nice, incredibly helpful couple, Opus and Air who’s family has owned the impressive, manicured house and grounds (there are several buildings) for several generations, originally built in 1914 or so. This place is really nice and comfortable and outside the noise of the walled city which is about a 10-15 minute walk away.
There is a walking bridge that crosses the Ping River to the night market area (about a five minute walk) and lots of close riverside restaurants and internet access. This was one of our favorite places to stay in all of S.E. Asia and I can’t recommend it enough!
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