Chiang Mai and Bangkok

After our trekking adventure in northern Laos, we took a series of buses and a boat to cross over to Chiang Mai, Thailand. We have now crossed every country border in SE Asia in a different way: one by walking, one by bus, one by plane, and this one by boat. Crossing the river from Laos to Thailand reminded me of all of the Hmong refugees who had to escape across this very river to the refugee camps in Thailand. It's so interesting to be in places you've read about but have always seemed so far away! In any case, we found the Laos people to be among the kindest and friendliest we've met...a very warm place.

We weren't sure if we wanted to stay in Chiang Mia because 7+ Western tourists had died of food poisoning in the last 4 months! Strange and terrifying, especially because it is considered the culinary and intellectual center of Thailand. But we made it out alive! Lots of great books shops and markets and restaurants. It was actually nice to be in a city with familiar things like Starbucks and McDonalds....it's embarrassing to say, but it was great to eat something that reminded us of home! I took a cooking class at Basil Healthy Thai Cooking School and absolutely LOVED it! It was something I had wanted to do for a long time and am so glad I did! It was an all day thing, and the first time Jon and I had been apart for more than 15min since we began this trip!! But I think he enjoyed his day off! :) The class included a trip to the market to learn about the variety of Thai vegetables, spices, and rice. Some very unusual things! Apparently the locals use steamed chicken blood in their curries, but they assured me I wouldn't need to hunt that down in the states! Relief! Most of the dishes we learned were vegetarian, or could very easily be, and were so fresh, healthy and delicious! We used a mortar and pestle to grind our spices and everything was made completely from scratch. My favorites were pad thai, penang curry, tum yum soup, green papaya salad, and sticky rice with mango. I really look forward to sharing them with you when we are home!

We are now in Bangkok again and heading to Istanbul late tonight. We are flying Qatar Air, and have a layover in Qatar...should be interesting! Its hard to believe that we have completed this loop around SE Asia! It is so hot here that we have been hanging out in the humungous shopping malls in the afternoons, as we've already done all the major sights, plus the Bangkok Zoo which was horrifying, but that's another story! (p.s we also visited the new Bangkok Art and Culture Center which is a really great contemporary art museum...would def. recommend it.) The malls are insane! We have honestly never seen anything quite like it anywhere...very very high end. The food courts are immaculate with expensive restaurants, and every major European designer has a shop. Oh so tempting!! We had some extra Thai Baht that we needed to spend, so yesterday we each took half, split up for two hours and met back at the mall movie theatre to share our finds! It was so fun..like a little scavenger hunt. But for an indecisive person like me, it was also super overwhelming! You could spend days in those malls and not see everything. Bangkok is completely different from the rest of SE Asia, and truly feels like another big global city, and we enjoyed it more this time around because we took our time a little bit more and didn't rush around to all the tourist sights. It makes us realize that places like Hanoi have really kept some of their unique flavor. Maybe that's why we liked Vietnam so much. But now that we've invested some time here it will be interesting to see how this region changes in our lifetime....
That's all for now, folks!