Chiang Mai

So it’s been around 6 weeks since our last blog post.  We’ve been getting subtle (and not so subtle) hints that we really need to get blogging again soon, so here goes...

Just because we haven’t be posting here doesn’t mean we haven’t be up to anything.  Our 6 weeks here in Chiang Mai have been really enjoyable.  The city is a great place to live and we’ve really embraced the idea of getting a bit settled into a place rather than running from one city to the next.   After being gone for a year now (we passed our 1-year travel anniversary 5 days ago..) travelling has become less about moving from place to place than it is about just being in foreign places and really getting to know them.  Our desire to see as many different things as possible just isn’t there anymore.  For us, it’s more about getting a deeper understanding of a few places, rather than a quick overview of many places.  Quick overviews are great for frequent blog posts, and I guess longer stays mean longer times between updates.

So - Chiang Mai.  It’s a large city in northern Thailand with around a million people in the surrounding area, so it is basically the main hub in the north.  It’s a very scenic place. It is surrounded by jungle and small mountains.  The weather is great – it’s been in the mid-twenties the entire time we’ve been here, and it’s only rained twice – once the day we arrived, and then a little bit a few nights ago. Many travelers come to Chiang Mai, and so the locals here have set up quite a lot of things for you to do.  There is trekking,  zip-lining, zoos, elephant farms, tiger farms, shopping, lots of great restaurants and bars, and with all that comes a fairly decent amount of people that can speak English quite well.  There are also quite a lot of expats here.  A lot of retirees either live here, or at least spend half of each year here.   We’ve met quite a few people that have just left home, found a Thai wife, and opened up a restaurant or a guesthouse or tour company or whatever.

The food here in  Chiang Mai has been really good.  There are small restaurants and street food vendors all over the place selling really good food for very low prices.  We have a few favorites including a soup vendor that we go to pretty much every day for a bowl after our evening yoga classes.  Most of the Thai food has been really enjoyable, but to be honest after 3 or 4 months of dinners focused on rice or noodles, a few cravings for other foods start to arise as well.  The expat population has taken advantage of this, so all over Chiang Mai you can find food from many different cultures.  We have a favorite falafel stand that we go to often, as well as a lovely bakery selling French bread and pastries.  We also found a great deli serving things like corned beef, pastrami, sauerkraut, and dill pickles (all things I have been craving lately for some reason).  You can also get pizza, or pasta, or curries, or pretty much whatever you want.  We even found a Dutch place selling croquettes and bitterballs!

We have been enjoying some of those style restaurants, but the focus of course is still on Thai food.  Some of the food, like Pad Thai and Tom Yum Soup have been especially good, so we had intentions to learn how to make them ourselves so we could eat them once we’re back home as well.  There are many places here that can teach you how to make these dishes, so we enrolled in a cooking class for a day.  We got a tour of the local market and learned about the ingredients, and then went back to a kitchen to cook.  We each picked around 4 or 5 dishes to learn and then started chopping up veg and stir-frying everything up in their woks.  The food ended up pretty good.  We’re looking forward to going home and checking out some of the Asian markets there to see if they have some of the exotic ingredients we used. Hopefully we’ll be able to make a big pot of Tom Yum soup for Sunday lunch at home.

The main thing we’ve been doing here in Chiang Mai is yoga.  We have two classes every weekday – one at 9am and another at 7pm, and one on Saturday morning, and then a rest day on Sunday.  That means eleven classes a week, and we’ve been here for six weeks, and missed only a couple of classes.  So our total number of classes is somewhere around sixty.  With sixty classes under our belt we’ve learned quite a lot, and improved immensely.  This being my first try at yoga (Joh has done a fair amount in the past), it was pretty frustrating for the first two weeks. I couldn’t even sit on the ground with my legs crossed or touch my toes.  Slowly but surely though, improvements were made, and I can now easily touch my toes and sit cross-legged -  which were my two main goals at the beginning.  I have enjoyed yoga a lot more than I thought I would.  The first few weeks were painful and frustrating, but now I am genuinely excited about going to class and working on different things.  Focusing on stretching and strengthening each individual muscle while using controlled breathing  is a real challenge and it is exciting to see improvement and to test the outer limits of your physical potential.  It is amazing how much your body can change it such a short time.  It definitely affects all areas of your life outside of class too.  Your posture gets much better, and all your movements become more deliberate and controlled as well.

Recently we also went on an excursion into the jungles and villages north of Chiang Mai to do some trekking and to see some of the local farms and villages.  We booked a trip with a guide and got grouped up with a bunch of other travelers. We started our tour at an elephant farm, where we got to ride one around for 20 minutes or so.  We then hiked through the jungle and around some local farmland for around 3 hours and ended up in a small village for the night where we had a great dinner and a campfire with everyone.  The next day we hiked again for a few hours, checked out a waterfall, and then went white-water rafting for a bit as well. All in all it was a pretty exciting trip.

So now we’re back in Chiang Mai for our final two days before we head south to Bangkok.  Joh’s brother Chris and his friend Anthony are travelling in Thailand as well so we’re going to meet up with them on Tuesday morning and travel with them for a few weeks.  It will be great to see some familiar faces again and catch up on what is happening back home. We’re really looking forward to it. We’re not sure of the plans for the upcoming weeks, but I’m sure they will involve some pretty fun times in Bangkok and some nice relaxing time on the beaches of southern Thailand.  Should be good…

Chiang Mai

Trekking Tour in Northern Thailand