Catching up

Another random list! (Also, I was racing the clock....so my apologies for the incomplete sentences and spelling errors. I promise I'll run a spell check one day.)

1. Food: I'm way way behind on food. We've had some amazing food in Laos, and it's surprisingly different from the food we enjoyed in Thailand. I'll start with tonight and work backwards, I guess. We met a lovely man and fellow foodie at dinner last night who said the best meal he'd had was at the Luang Prabang night market. We didn't even know they had food there, but sure enough, there was a little alley at the end crammed with stalls and tables with random people crowded around them. The food was fantastic. We had a whole fish grilled over charcoals, spring rolls, and dessert (mine was a quarter of a pumpkin that had been steamed with coconut pudding/flan-esque something or other inside.....sarah got coconut stuffed bananas). Deeelicious. Last night we ate "Thanksgiving" dinner at an American owned restaurant around the corner form our guest house (more on this below, too). It ended up being a bbq where turkey was the special meat option of the evening. We all gathered around a table, then the waiters came and removed the center tiles from the tabletop and lowered in a pot full of glowing charcoals. We then got a basket of glass noodles, herbs, vegetables, etc....a bucket full of chicken broth, and a platter full of raw chicken and buffalo meat. I'll have to rustle up a picture of this contraption, but you basically set a piece of pork fat on top of a domed grill that was on top of the charcoals. There was a ring around the dome where you could pour broth and add the vegetables and noodles to make a soup. After griling up our meat, we slathered it with a peanut tamarind bbq sauce....soooo good. Not Thanksgiving dinner (although Jeff, the lovely man mentioned above, ordered some potatoes that he mashed up with some of the broth....that's as close as we got), but pretty excellent. Before that there was some phenomenal fried fish (with ginger, lime leaves, and chiles), more amazing fruit shakes, and oh! (I just remembered) the most incredible bakery in southeast Asia. Mango crumble. Mango....crumble. We've gone every day. One day we went twice. This morning we discovered they had pumpkin pie, and apparently someone there knows how to make the real deal. It was phenomenal. Luckily they have another location in Vientiane.

2. PAD: This whole protest, airport closing thing is absolutely ridiculous. Nobody seems to know what the PAD's problem is. The only answer I can get is "they don't like the prime minister for some reason". I'll wikipedia it soon. We're not planning on being back in Thailand until December 4th, but we do have a ticket out of Bangkok that day. They need to stop being ridiculous. Them and the government. If they don't, we're starting to entertain ideas of changing our tickets home, hanging out in Vietnam, and flying from Hanoi to the US.

3. Thanksgiving dinner: I sorely missed family, scalloped oyesters, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pumpkin desserts. We heard from Jacob via email that there was a Thanksgiving gathering at Lao Lao garden, so we went down there last night to chekc out prices. On our way to the restaurant, another American (he was the first one I'd met in Luang Prabang) mentioned he was also on his way to Lao Lao and we ended up joining him. We ended up at a big table full of Americans longing for the full meal but ready to settle for turkey cooked on the Lao-style bbq. It was a blast. And Jacob was there! (We randomly ended up at the same table.)

4. Now I have to go because the battery is dying on Sarah's laptop :-/

Love you all!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Eat extra pie for me.

Luang Prabang=Absolutely Amazing

Today was our first full day in the absolutely beautiful Luang Prabang. Aaaabsolutely beautiful. It's surround by mountains and made up of small streets lined with French colonial style buildings and overflowing with plants and flowers. Also, they have taken all of my favorite colors (all of them) and decorated everything from temples to Tuk Tuks. It's beautiful. We've had some delicious Lao food and some interesting Lao coffee, but spent the rest of the time strolling around. We did make it to a couple of Wats: one covered in sparkling mosaics and the other on top of a small hill where we could watch the sun set over the mountains. Beautiful.

In other good news, all the beautiful souveniers are very expensive, so I can't buy them! We're calling all the shops and markets "museums" now. Tonight we visited the nightly handicraft street museum.

The kids here (at least the ones we've met) are a little on the bizarre side. Sarah got attacked by one weilding a handful of straws at a cafe the other day. One girl was very very curious about why on earth I had bought my dress. (I don't think it's that offensive? Black shirt dress?) And two little boys (we're talking 4 or 5 years old) thought it would be hilaaaarious if they ran up behind me and tried to lift up my crazy black dress. Hilaaarious. Tomorrow we're going to hang out with some more kids at a literacy center. I'll report back on those.

:(

Sigh. We said goodbye to Chiang Mai today. My mom asked me when we first got here if there was a city that I could compare Chiang Mai to. I think I said Florence just because of its energy level/size/accessibility, but I ended up falling for Chiang Mai the same way I fell for ol' Firenze. (And actually, now that I'm typing this, I'm remembering that last night as I was running out to get some last minute bus supplies I ran into a couple from Florence who had also fallen in love with Chiang Mai.) The community was friendly, the cafes and restaurants charming, and the river a hub of activity.

Things I will miss:

1. Libra Guesthouse (clean room, our own bathroom, ridiculous but friendly family running the place, and the "American Breakfast")
2. Tuk-tuk man on the corner (Every day he stood out there and asked "where you want to go?!?" Today we told him we wanted to go to the bus station. On the way there he was very curious about where we'd been walking off to every day for the last 3 weeks without his help.)
3. Kanjana's (Best pumpkin curry and mango sticky rice ever. Friendliest chef/dishwasher wife/husband team ever.)
4. Crazy expats and their wealth of well-intentioned advice
5. Goodview Restaurant (good view)
6. Sunday night market (endless dirt cheap samples of tasty Thai treats and handicrafts galore!)
7. Old City alleyways
8. Well-dressed dogs
9. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Today we hopped on an early AM bus to Chang Khong on the Laotian border. It only broke down once! After the bus driver tried banging on some things (literally) to try and fix it, we got a new bus, where he cranked up the music and didn't even bother putting his unform shirt back on (I wouldn't have either). We succesfully crossed the Mekong River into Laos without much fanfare (what it lacked in fanfare it made up for in visa fees). And now....Sarah and I will work on mastering the dollar/kip conversion rate which is much less fun than the dollar/baht conversion rate. Woo :-P

Mae Sariang

This weekend Sarah went to Chiang Rai to do some leadership work, and I headed west to Mae Sariang to do some relaxing and cycling where I didn't fear for my life. It has been so lovely! I bought a book yesterday so I could read it in the riverside restaurants this weekend, but it was such a good read that I'd finished it before the bus ride ended. (Water for Elephants...great book) So today after a lovely bike ride through some Karen villages and a hike to a mountain temple, I began Nanny Diaries which someone had left on the guest house shelf.

It felt so good to get out on a bike, breath in mostly smog free breathes, and go for a few hours without seeing a farang (foreigner). At first I was trying to take pictures of everything, but then I decided today could be my 100% "enjoy the ride" day, and I'd capture things on film as necessary tomorrow.

After I got back from the ride, I went out to walk around and find dinner. I noticed all the cafes were absolutely packed, and then I remembered that today was the princess's funeral. I felt a little awkward being the white girl with Nanny Diaries to plop down and interrupt their event, soooo I went back to the guest house where the crowd was a little more mixed but where they still had the funeral on so I could get a sense of what everyone was crowding around televisions to watch.

Tomorrow=early AM breakfast, morning market, more biking, eating at the cafes now that the funeral is over, river sunset, bus to Chiang Mai.

This is just going to be a random list of things. Sorry :-P

1. Loi Krathong: This week, Thailand celebrated Loi Krathong. In Chiang Mai, they also celebrate/combine this holiday with the Yi Peng festival (read more here), and boy do they know how to throw a festival. The whole week was absolutely spectacular. We went to the opening ceremony a few days ago, and for the first time heard this lovely little tune: Once was enough to get it stuck in my head, but just in case it wasn't.....they played it everywhere, all the time, all week. There was a parade each night, and each was more extravagant than the previous night's. The real party, however, was at the river. There were oodles of fireworks and oodles of teenagers anxious to set them off (we're not talking the dinky safe kind either), countless krathong stands, and hundreds of people setting off hot air balloons. The hot air balloons were beeeautiful. It looked like someone had thrown stars into the sky, but these were dreamy and constantly moving.
2. Pictures: I've discovered (or confirmed, really) that my photography skills are abysmal. However! I am taking pictures. This is a significant accomplishment. I really will put them online someday, but just a heads up....there will be 4 albums: exciting thailand trip pictures, ridiculous dogs, backs of heads of people who decided to stand right in front of me while i was taking a picture, and white guys who obviously moved to Thailand so they could get a girlfriend.
3. Cooking school: Sarah and I went to cooking school today at one of our favorite Chiang Mai restaurants. We'd gone a week or so ago to a class run by an organic farm outside of town. During that class, we met some very interesting people, enjoyed the beautiful farm, learned a lot, and left absolutely stuffed. This time around it was just the two of us and the restaurant owner in her home kitchen, and it beat the pants off the other class. We went ot the market that morning with her husband who taught us a lot about the different things we could buy there and how they're used in cooking. We came back and spent the afternoon with Kanjana, who was an excellent teacher and very patient.
   
4. Haircut: It is not horrendous! She did a great job.
5. Starbucks: Always there to remind me that it's the holiday season in the US. Dark cherry mocha and cranberry bliss bar, fa la la la la. However, should you find yourself in Chiang Mai getting coffee at Starbucks and feel compelled to take a picture....do not. They will get mad.
   
6. Monk chat: We've had some really interesting conversations with Em at one of the temples near our guest house. We're hoping we can bring him a monk "care package" (they sell them all over the city) before we leave.

Hope you're all doing well!

Thai Massage

Best $4 I've ever spent.

A watermelon shake and a cataloup shake....

That's all it took to put me right again. The trek was a blast. Dan and Clint, twins from New Zealand, Tim from Australia, Sarah, and I piled into the back of a pickup truck (with a roof!) and drove a few hours north. We did stop at the Tourist police office so they could give us some safety information and make sure we were all accounted for, but if this trek had been in the US I'm pretty sure there would have been about 19 safety forms to sign and far more life jackets involved. Nu was a great guide though and we all came out alive, so nown we can just look back and laugh.

First day was a few hours of hiking with a waterfall stop. (I'll probably post again about the trek once I have pictures). This is when we saw the first signs of the magic one can do with a big knife and some bamboo. Nu and our porter disappeared and did some some chopping, and 10 minutes later we had a bridge to cross the river with! 3 minutes later, the bridge was gone.

We spent the night in a Lahu village. That was a bizarre and fascinating experience that I'll have to recount when I have more computer time (maybe in the picture post). The Lahu tribe is from Burma and moved to the village 35 years ago or so. Apparently only half of them are in Thailand legally, so whenever the police come....the other half run across the border again until the police are gone.

The next day we did 4 or 5 hours of hiking, and my quads did lots of burning. Hong, our porter for that leg of the journey would periodically disappear from the trail and we'd hear more chopping. We ended our hike at a picnic site beside a river, where Hong proceeded to turn two bamboo logs into 5 bowls and handed out freshly whittled chopsticks!

The neeext leg of our journey was a bamboo raft to the village we stayed in the second night. The bamboo rafting was awesome. I don't have a picture to post yet, but just to give you an ideal....

It was a lazy river with a few light rapids, so we mostly just watched the mountains, trees and flowers go by. The highlight was the passionfruit that Nu picked as we floated along.

The second night we stayed with the Lisu hill tribe, who came to Thailand from China several hundred years ago. Their village was about half the size as the first one but much closer to cities, so there were more modern conveniences it seemed like. However, our accomdations were pretty much the same, a hut with a raised floor.....only this time with multicolored mosquito nets. Again, this village was fascinating, but less awkward than the first. This village also had more vocal animals. We had a pig friend that "slept" (maybe she just snores a lot?) under our hut, a cow that sleepwalks with a bell around its neck, chatty dogs, and roosters that really need somebody to tell them when the sun comes up.

Today we went caving and rode elephants, which were both lots of fun. Elephants are massive and bats smell bad.

The fruit shakes were glorious and now I'm going to sit here and hurt.

Love you all!

:)

I have 19 things I want to share, but we have to leave in 5 minutes for our great trek into the jungle. I'll just leave a little note about the election though...

We watched the coverage with a bunch of local expats and some other foreigners who were interested in both the election and watching the Americans watch the election. It was so cool. I think everyone, inlcuding myself, constantly went back and forth between being jubilant and crying. After we left that party it was strange, and I kind of wished I was in the US for a day. Life was going on as normal and nobody was talking about it :-P

Sad about proposition 8, but so so excited otherwise....and relieved!

Revisiting the pharmacist

A quick trip to the pharmacist around the corner pretty much cured my leg woes. The ol' legs have done an excellent job carrying me around the city all day. Sarah had a rough day today (too much delicious fruit?), so I went back to see if they could help us out again. I returned with a magical stomach potion that had ginger AND mint and some bonus rhubarb too! The woman on the bottle looked extremely happy so we're hoping that's what Sarah will look like when she wakes up in the morning :)

Today was supposed to be decision day....should we go to Laos or Cambodia? what are the "must do" things before we leave Chiang Mai? Where we can we watch the election results? It seems like having even a rough calendar mapped out will take away some of the stress over wanting to do everything and not having time. So far we've decided that both Laos and Cambodia would be awesome, there are lots of things we want to do in Chiang Mai, and that UN's Irish Pub seems to be the place to go. (One decision down!)

I did some more walking around Chiang Mai, which is very accessible by foot. We're staying in the old city, which is surrounded by a moat and is primarily a pseudo-grid of "soi" or alleys. The city center and the Ping River are to the east, which is where you'll find the night bazaar (not my favorite of the many markets we've been to), silk and fabric shops, the large produce market (see old post), etc.

Tonight was also the Sunday Market, and although I was thinking I was marketed out at this point, it's my favorite of the ones we've been to so far. It had a wider variety of crafts from some of the hill tribes which were a nice change of pace from endless stalls selling fisherman's pants. (By the way, you all need some of these pants. I wore my new ones today, and they are literally the most comfortable things I've ever worn. I only looked a little bit like a hippie earth mother.) The market was also dotted with musicians ranging from a 5 member Thai boy band to a one man band playing 4 instruments (there were lots of toes involved).

And now, bedtime. We have to wake up early for cooking school!