Taste

Here I am, at lunchtime on the Gap Thai cookery course, wondering what to eat first. We prepared five dishes each in the morning, ate these at lunchtime, then prepared three more in the afternoon. That's what I call a good value course.

The Culinary Art of Mr. Wrigley

Paul perfecting his spring roll technique. He has since tried this at home - with great success.

Markets, massage and food

Markets, massage and food sums up my Chiang Mai experience. They were all great - a feast of the senses! I loved Chiang Mai and hope to go back there again some day. Perhaps I'll go and refresh my massage skills by doing a 10-day course in Thai massage in Chiang Mai. We did do a lot of Thai techniques on the diploma course that I did in Leeds in 2001. I wish I'd used and developed my skills!

Thai people are great too - although I know that this is a gross generalisation. But if national traits can be said to exist, then Thais are so good humoured that even bartering becomes something to be enjoyed. Our last night in Chiang Mai, as we were walking through the Night Bazaar one of the street vendors - a young man - approached Paul saying 'Tuk tuk?' Paul's response of 'No thanks' was met with 'Taxi? ... Massage? ... Oh come on!' We both glanced back at him to see him shrugging his shoulders and laughing.

On the subject of massage, I aimed to get one a day, as advised by Cate in Byron Bay. I didn't quite achieve that even though on some days I had both a head and shoulder massage and a foot massage, separately. I used up my remaining baht at Bangkok airport, before I left, by having first a 45 minute foot massage (in the Chang Massage Spa on the 4th floor of the main concourse) and then a brief, 15 minute, head and shoulder massage at Gate 15 in the departure area.

The worst massage was the one we had in the place around the corner from SK House, which Aisling mentioned several times - although she didn't ever go there herself. My massage - from a blind woman - wasn't too bad, once she'd got into it and stopped acting like she couldn't be bothered. Paul's massage was painful though and when he fed this back to the guy massaging him - as requested - the guy said 'it's good for your back'. Next day I noticed that his back was covered in blue-black patches of bruising.

On the day after the trek we had lunch with Aisling, Fernando, Marius and Lindi. Marius and Lindi were leaving that day to return to Bangkok, where they had to go to the South African Embassy to request temporary passports so that they could continue their travels on to Cambodia and Laos, as planned. A bag containing their passports and tickets had been stolen whilst they were on the overnight train from Bangkok. As it turned out all six of us had travelled up on the same train. Paul and I got first class tickets though, being told that there were no second-class tickets left. This meant that we had a cabin to ourselves, with a lockable door. Marius and Lindi were anticipating problems and delays in Bangkok, although they were remarkably philosophical about it. I checked their blog the other day and learned it took only 3 hours before they got their temporary passports.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that Paul and I were going on a Thai cookery course. The course, was run by Hoi and Joe of Gap's House. We met some more interesting people, had a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining day of cooking, and eating, and each came away with an evening meal - which we ate later on, beside the moat - a fair-sized recipe book and a certificate from the Gap's School of Thai Culinary Art . The course included a trip to the market in the morning. By early afternoon we'd cooked four or five dishes, which we ate for lunch. On the strength of this experience Paul has decided to forget his ambition of being a rock star and become a Thai chef instead. I'm getting some great meals - even better than the ones he cooked before!

Gap's house seems like it would be a good place to stay on a return visit to Chiang Mai. We weren't that impressed with SK House. The room was clean to start with, but wasn't cleaned again even though we left the sign on the door requesting room cleaning. The bedding - though clean and smelling strongly (if not pleasantly) of highly-scented washing powder - was torn and stained. By the end of our stay there a cockroach had taken up residence in the bathroom and caused me to shriek by scuttling towards my toes as I sat on the loo.

In spite of the growoing shortcomings of SK House, we were both sorry to leave Chiang Mai. Bangkok wasn't so bad the second time around though. We got back there early on Thursday afternoon, on a flight from Chiang Mai. After booking back in to the Bel Aire Princess (on Sukhomvit soi 5) we went to the Khao San Road. It was a good journey travelling by Sky Train and ferry: train from Sukhomvit to Nana then the ferry from Saphan Taksin to Phra Arthit, passing a lot of Wats on the way, including Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace. We had visited there on our first day in Bangkok, which seemed like a long time ago now. We spent the afternoon looking around the markets and around the Khao San Road, which is in the backpacker's district. Turning the corner of a stall we came face to face with Anne and Jeanette who had started out on the trek with us in Chiang Mai. They were flying home to Manchester that evening.

On the morning of Friday 9th I had my last Thai breakfast of noodles, then left for the airport. Paul's flight was about 12 hours after mine so he had some more time to spend looking around.

My flight out of Bangkok airport was delayed for about an hour due to an impressive storm over the airport - thunder, lightning and a deluge of rain. Apparently it was dry in Bangkok.

The flight back to the UK was uneventful. I watched four films, ate two meals and went to the toilet four times - once after each film (they were that bad!). What else is there to do on a plane.

The only truly notable occurrence on the plane was that one of the two lads that I was sitting next to thought I was Australian! He asked if I was going to the UK to visit friends. When I said I was going home he looked a bit puzzled. Later on he asked where I lived and how long I'd lived there, following my response with the comment that 'you've not lost the accent.' It was my turn to look puzzled as I hadn't mentioned being a southerner originally. He was from Norfolk himself. All was made clear when he said that he thought I was an Australian. I'm sure that Mark and Kim will find that very amusing.

Trekkings and wettings

The red trek bus - a ten-seater, open backed, jeep-type affair - picked us up from SK House early on Thursday morning - April 13th. We were immediately each issued with a plastic bag and advised to put everything in it - including any money, cameras or documents, because 'you will get wet'. Our driver and Lahn, our trek guide, wound up the windows of the cab and left us to it. I thought they took some pleasure in cruising slowly alongside other vehicles and slowing down as we approached groups of people. At Songkran, anyone in an open vehicle is a sitting target - from the people lining the streets and from people in other vehicles. The journey out of the city took about 1 1/2 hours. The floor of the truck was awash with water before we got out of the city centre. As Paul remarked several times, it is amazing that there aren't a lot of accidents caused by scooters and vehicles swerving and skidding.

On that first day of the trek we went bamboo rafting. This involved the women sitting demurely on the raft whilst the men punted. It's not uncommon for the rapidly constructed rafts - made of bamboo and strips of rubber (old tyres) - to fall apart on the journey down the river. Ours didn't, although it did need a few running repairs. We had to get off the raft and into the water a few times, but as we were already wet this didn't matter. I lost a flip flop at one stage, but it was recovered. There were a lot of families out on the river, picnicking on the banks as well as rafting, and a lot more water was thrown around.

After lunch we walked for about 3 hours until we reached the Karin village where we were to stay that night. This was a settlement of the Karin Skho hill-tribe, in an area of reserve land to the south-west of Chiang Mai. About 50 people live there - along with numerous dogs and cats, buffalo, cows and pot-bellied pigs - tilling the fields and growing rice.

There were ten of us on the first day of the trek: Paul and I: Aisling from Ireland and Fernando from Argentina; Marius and Lindi from South Africa; and another couple from Germany and Italy; and Anne and Jeanettte from Manchester. We all slept in a bamboo hut on platforms of bamboo and matting, draped with mosquito netting. It wasn't particularly comfortable!

On the second day Aisling, Fernando, Marius, Lindi, Paul and I carried on with Lahn, walking for about another three hours to a camp by a waterfall, where we stopped that night. The others left us to return to Chiang Mai as they had only booked a two-day trek. We were joined later in the day by another group of trekkers, two of whom retrurned to Chiang Mai with us on the following day. The camp was about an hour's walk from the nearest village. There was only one man there when we arrived, but about three more turned up the next morning, each coming alone and carrying provisions - among these some moonshine and some monkey meat, both of which they consumed eagerly. The monkey meat was raw and mixed with spices. I didn't try it. Lahn had told us the day before that there was no wildlife left in the hills, so presumably it's all been killed for food?!

I thought the actual trekking was disappointing, because there was no wildlife and few birds even in evidence. There weren't many wild flowers either, apart from the small purple orchids. There has been lot of logging in these hills in the past. It's now illegal, but I wonder how much still goes on. There are serious signs of soil erosion, no doubt added to by the trekking. As soon as the path becomes unusable a new path will be created to one side of it, thus adding to the problem. There were no visible signs of that the reserve was managed, apart from by the hill tribes themselves, who still use a form of slash and burn agriculture (the reason why there is a haze over the hills viewed from Chiang Mai). The camp where we stayed on the second night was on a steep slope on the banks of the river. In the rainy season it would be unusable.

Paul did enjoy the trek, so perhaps it was just that I was making a comparison with Australia and the abundant wildlife there.

The final day of the trek began with a short walk of an hour or so, followed by an elephant trek. We were entertained by the elephant in front which took every opportunity to stop and scratch itself, on and with whatever was available. It even picked up a small piece of bamboo in its trunk and scratched each foot in turn, front and back and all around - tops, soles and toes.

The journey back into Chiang Mai was wet again. We were dropped off about half-a-mile from the SK House - where Aisling and Fernando were also staying as it turned out - because the roads were closed to traffic.

After a while being wet does begin to get tedious and I had an attack of wimpishness that evening, being reluctant to venture out until the celebrations had died down. We went to explore the market on Ratchadamern, which leads off the Tha Phae gate, in the old city. There's a market here on Sundays, known as the 'Sunday Walking Market', but there seemed to be a market there for the holidays too. There were some great food stalls on this street, as well as all the clothes and jewellery stalls. I got 2 pairs of earrings for 10 baht a pair. We also had several of our many Thai massages on this street. The most memorable of these was the one we had on the last night of Songkran - the night we got back from the trek. We decided to go for the full body massage and lay on the ground behind all the massage chairs, looking up at the sky. An electrical storm started soon after our one-hour massage had begun. It was amazing to lie there, in a relaxed state, whilst flashes of lightning regularly rent the sky and thunder cracked overhead. The woman who was massaging Paul kept getting the giggles because she was getting tangled up whilst trying to manage his long legs! My masseur found it very entertaining when my shoulder muscles were making scrunching sounds: 'Skryck skryck,' she laughed, digging into them again, 'Skryck skryck.'

Luckily the rain held off during our massage, but we got caught in the downpour as we walked back to SK and had to change into dry clothes yet again when we got back. The wettings still weren't over though. We went and sat in the SK lobby and had a couple of bottles of Singha beer and then got soaked right through again just walking the few yards back across the courtyard to our room!

New Year in Chiang Mai

We arrived in Chiang Mai on 12th April, on the overnight train from Bangkok. Our arrival co-incided with the start of Songkran, the Thai New Year, and Chiang Mai was a wet place to be! Thais celebrate Songkran with fervour and enthusiasm, and with liberal sprinklings of water. From what I've read about it, I understand that the water focus of the festival has its origins in sprinkling water over monks and elders, as a means of showing respect, but Songkran as it is celebrated now - or at least in Chiang Mai - has gone beyond the sprinkling of water over a select few. The main aim is to ensure that everyone gets wet; and not only partially wet but thoroughly soaked. People go out of their way to see to it that everything you are wearing or carrying is made as wet as possible - they do this with much humour and goodwill, and with determination. Water is not only sprinkled, it is thrown from buckets, squirted from water pistols and sprayed from hose pipes. Some aim for extra effect by adding ice to the water and this certainly provides shock value. Actually a bucket-full of lukewarm water in the face is quite a shock anyway and momentarily painful if it gets you full on, especially in the eye or across the ear. I know, because I got several hits like that!

Special pumps are installed in the moat in Chiang Mai in preparation for Songkran. The pavements on either side of the moat are lined with people armed with implements for the dispensation of water. As the photo shows, people lower buckets into the water. The street vendors pile their stalls high with plastic buckets and with water pistols in various colours and sizes. Elsewhere in the city, people stand outside shops and houses with oil drums full of water, or hose pipes.

Paul and I had decided to go and investigate the Night Bazaar on our first evening in Chiang Mai and. I had suggested earlier in the day that we should arm ourselves with water pistols if we were going out later on. Paul seemed reluctant at first (his teacher side was still to the fore at this stage I think!) but by the time we'd got 100 yards down the road we were both getting a bit wet and the streets were thronging with people by this time. We stopped and bought a small water pistol and a larger 'weapon' with a pump action which was filled from a handy water-carrier backpack. Paul was already carrying a backpack, so I took the larger weapon and acted as the advance guard, Paul following on behind with his pistol. Paul tells this event differently; in his version - which he of course illustrates with mimed actions and reactions - I took the offensive and he got all of the retaliatory soakings (he likes to tell this story) . In fact we were both soaked through before we even got halfway to the Night Bazaar! We were as wet as the people in the photo below.

I do wonder why this strange custom came about. Water is a cooling element and Thailand in April is very hot, so it does have a practical purpose. It's towards the end of the dry season too so perhaps serves the purpose of letting people vent frustrations whilst also acting as a precursor and celebration of the wet season to come. I've just googled 'Songkran' and found the following:

'Songkran is a Thai word which means "move" or "change place" as it is the day when the sun changes its position in the zodiac. It is also known as the "Water Festival" as people believe that water will wash away bad luck. [...] [It] provides the opportunity for family members to gather in order to express their respects to the elders by pouring scented water onto the hands of their parents and grandparents and to present them gifts including making merits to dedicate the result to their ancestors. The elders in return wish the youngsters good luck and prosperity. In the afternoon, after performing a bathing rite for Buddha images and the monks,the celebrants both young and old, joyfully splash water on each other. The most-talked about celebration takes place in the northern province of Chiang Mai where ... people from all parts of the country flock there to enjoy the water festival, to watch the Miss Songkran Contest and the beautiful parades.'

Songkran is celebrated over four days, from the 12th to the 15th April. Before we left Bangkok, we had booked to do a three-day trek from Chiang Mai, from 13th to 15th. As we discussed with our fellow trekkers, this was probably a good decision as it wouldn't have been possible to do much in Chiang Mai, or at least not without getting wet.