Day 6 Chiang Mai

Due to popular demand, I am proud to announce that I finally ate some crickets. For those of you of European origin, that would be grasshoppers. Either way, I had to start my blog today saying that I ate them. Four of them, to be exact. What are they like? They are quite tasty. Crispy, as they are deep-fried. I wanted to eat just one, but they come by the plateful. I made Nank eat two first, before I had enough courage to eat them. He chomped happily, reassuring me with "mmmm yummy." I had to stop looking at the plateful of them before I popped one in my mouth and responded "mmmm yummy!" There were also larvae and cicadas to try, but the cicadas are really big... I think I can check "eat bugs" off of my list of things to do and move onto bigger and better things (pun intended).

So the bug cart came by while we were sitting at a "sidewalk cafe" for dinner. Nanda wanted us to try Isan food (Isan is the NE region of Thailand), which is super duper spicy. She didn't get back to the hotel until about 9pm, so the first five places that Nank took us to turned us away. We finally found a rickety shack-looking place with TV tray looking tables and mismatched chairs lined up along a busy street. There's nothing like eating fiery spicy food while inhaling the black smoke spewing from passing traffic. We ordered two kinds of soup (tom yum gai - the spicy lemongrass soup with chicken - and fish egg soup), some sticky rice, BBQ pork, roast pork and basil beef. The BBQ pork was yummy but predictable, something I associate more with Chinese rather than Thai food. Well, we are pretty darn close to China here. The roast pork looked very nondescript, but it was SO DELICIOUS! I couldn't get enough. Nank told us that the tom yum gai was less spicy than the fish egg soup, so I had that first. The chicken drumsticks inside are so tender they fall right off the bone, and it was a really tasty medium-spicy soup. The fish egg soup was so spicy, I had to to stuff my face with sticky rice to douse the fire in my mouth. Nanda bit into a chile on accident and I thought she was going to pass out. She likes spicy food alot and tolerates it well, but she looked like she was going to faint. Oh and I have been enjoying the local favorite spirit, rice whisky, with Coke. Nank had some with me too. Nanda and I have been pressuring him to join us for our meals (he always hesitates, because he knows we will offer to pay for him) so that we can ask him a bazillion questions about what we are eating. What's this? Is this fried? What spices are in here? What are they eating (we point at other peoples' food constantly). He has to work hard for his free $3 meal! We had him drinking, but a drunk tuk-tuk driver isn't a good idea. But I think he can hold his liquor.

We went back to the hotel absolutely wiped out from the day. We went to bed immediately to prepare for our early mornings -- Nanda for her first day of school, and me for my cooking class.

Nanda was up before the sun (it was cloudy this morning) and on her phone. She bought a SIM card before leaving the US so that she can use her phone here (very expensive, but she has a massage business to keep afloat while she is here) and she uses it constantly. It's very convenient when I am with Nank because she can call him and reach me most of the time. Anyway, she was out of the room before I got up to shower. I had 30 minutes to spare before my cooking school was going to come pick me up, so I went to the 7-Eleven to break my 1000B bill (that's $25, which no one can break on the street). I got myself the Thai version of Yakult (a Japanese yogurt drink) and some mystery rolls (I thought they were going to have red beans in it, because they looked like an-pan but it was cream-pan instead). The bread here is super sweet, kind of like Hawaiian bread. Very yummy for breakfast!

The Smart Cook truck came to pick me up 25 minutes late, and I was mildly freaking out that I misunderstood something. I called Nank and he was heading over to pick me up, but the van showed up late. Our class had a ton of people -- 3 college grads from Britain, a couple from Northern Ireland, a family of 3 from Sydney, a couple from China, a professor from Germany and 2 British girls teaching English in Bangkok. We headed to the market to learn about our ingredients and get our supplies.

Our teacher is a good-looking, fast-talking jokester of a chef and he keeps cracking jokes that we understand 2 seconds later than when he expects us to laugh. He is really funny though. He showed us the difference between regular rice and sticky rice and how they are prepared. Then we learned about the various kinds of noodles in Thai foods. We then got a crash course in Thai veggies and all the ingredients which will go into our dishes. One alarming thing was watching an older lady preparing some mystery fish. There are tubs of them still alive in water, with a net over the top so they don't flip out. She takes it out of the tub and clubs them to death (I hope they are dead) before she cuts into the gill area to pour its blood over the previously filleted fish meat. After laying out the blood-marinated filets on banana leaves, she shoves a wooden stick through the fish's mouth and scales them with a wire brush. She then removes everything except the meat. She does all this with no emotion on her face, as if she is on auto-pilot. We were mesmerized.

This market must be close to tons of Chiang Mai cooking classes, because we ran into a bunch of other farangs (foreigners) with baskets following around some Thai folks. After dodging traffic back to our lovely teak house, we were ready to start cooking. I chose menu A with Penang curry, which included Pad Thai, tom yum kai, spicy glass noodle salad, chicken with cashew nuts, and Panang chicken. We learned that all Thai dishes include 4 flavors -- salty, sweet, sour and spicy-hot or bitter. It's a shock to find that all of these dishes have fish sauce, sugar, lime/lemongrass/kaffir lime leaves, and chiles in them. We chopped all of our own veggies as instructed and walk over to our open kitchen, where a clean wok and workstation is waiting for us at each course. They provide the chicken (a really tiny bit of chicken, we noted), oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar and oil and we mix the ingredients together when the instructor tells us to do so. Everything was surprisingly simple and easy to make, other than that we have to keep changing the heat (start high, then turn down to low, then back up to medium or high, then off just before adding the fresh herbs). They gave us cook books at the end, so I hope I will be able to successfully reproduce them when I get back. We learned how to make our designated curry paste from scratch, but it is seriously hard work to chop everything as small as we can then smash everything together in the mortar and pestle. I noted that when I make this at home, I will be using the pulse function on the food processor! The instructor told us that when a girl is single, she needs to learn how to make really good curry paste or she will not find a husband. Men listen for the pounding sound of the mortar and pestle while walking up and down the street, listening for the girl who pounds the fastest. He invited me to try smashing the curry paste, and I was so slow (the pestle is HEAVY) that I told him no husband for me, thank you very much.

After making each course, we get to eat our final product. The other students were laughing at me because I would take pictures of all the ingredients after I chopped them, then follow it up with a photo of the finished product. I was impressed at how yummy everything tasted, except for my tom yum soup which was a bit too watery. I guess I could turn up the heat and let it boil away a bit more to concentrate the flavors a bit more. We went from 9:30am to about 3pm and got to know each other pretty well. Everyone has such an interesting story! The Irish couple are continuing on for a bit longer in SE Asia before heading to China and Japan. I gave them my email address in case they want to keep in touch, as well as one of the three Brits. Surprisingly, many of them had never gone to the US before, so I told them that they could stay with me if they ever want to come visit.

Nank came to pick me up at 3pm, and he took me to some handicrafts shops until it was time to meet up with Nanda. We went to a silk shop where they were spinning silk thread, then weaving them with looms. Their showroom was very impressive with bolts and bolts of silk fabric as well as clothing, scarves and tons of knick knacks. The ladies in the store all said I look Chinese or Thai, and one said that Nank and I have the same smile. I told him that he can be my little brother. There was a really nice sleeveless top and matching skirt that I saw, but at over $200 and no room to spare in my backpack, I was able to walk out without buying anything. They say Thai silk is the best in the world, but I think Japanese silk is nicer. And at this store, Thai silk was just as expensive as silk suits in the US. We then went to a lacquer store, but again, I am used to Japanese lacquer so I was not impressed. The ladies in the store really wanted me to buy some lacquer elephants with gold decorations but they looked kind of scary. Next was the mulberry paper and umbrella store, where I spent about 3 minutes before returning to Nank. He then took me to the jewelry store, supposedly the largest jewelry store in the world. There were tons of farangs buying a ridiculous amount of not-so-nice looking jewelry. The lady assigned to me kept showing me one case after another of sapphires, rubies, garnets, topaz and I was telling her that I am not going to buy any jewelry but it did not deter her. I told her that I wanted to see something that looks more "traditional" and she showed me jewelry with elephants and Buddhas on them. Geez. I felt so badly that she was showing me so much, that I relented and bought a jade beaded bracelet. When I was with one of my many wat guides, one told me that because I was born on Wednesday, my good luck color is green. I don't own anything green because it makes me look jaundiced, but I figured I could afford a $5 jade bracelet for good luck. She tried 3 more times to make me buy an onyx ring (it was kind of nice but I really don't need any more rings) but Nank finally came to find me and rescued me from her.

Nanda is at the dentist right now, getting her teeth cleaned. Apparently, dentistry is pretty good here and lots of people get their teeth worked on while visiting Thailand. Who knew!? We are going to hit the Night Bazaar and turn in early. Tomorrow, I am going on a trek out to the jungle on elephants and possibly do some bamboo rafting. At night, we are going to do the traditional dinner with the traditional dancing (it's called the fingernail dance -- wonder what THAT is going to look like) and presentations of various hill tribe people from the area. I feel badly to say this, but I am not all that impressed with Chiang Mai. I don't think I like their wats as much, and the novelty of the food has worn off. I may leave on the 15th afterall on a train to head down to Sukhotai, one of the ancient capitals and the site of some big Buddhas and more wats. According to my history lessons, the Sukhotai and Ayuttaya area have more impressive sites. I will keep you posted.

That's it for now! I hope I'm not boring too many people with my food diary -- keep posting your comments as I look forward to checking them every day!

love and hugs,
asami