We made it to Chang Mai in our lovely comfy airplane and decided to book a hotel in advance at the airport as we wanted somewhere with a pool. This sounds very flash but I was desperately in need of lying in the sun time, and besides the extra couple of dollars for the pool keeps me from spending money on clothes! So we picked the cheapest and got a taxi there. It was horrible. Just had a really uneasy feel about it and was dirty, so I decided (after a small tantrum) that I was prepared to cover the cost (Mik was happy to stay there) and we should find another hotel. We did. The staff couldn't quite understand why we might pay for a room and then not stay in it, but hey it just gives them another reason to believe that us westerners are wierd. Nearly forgot to point out that as we were leaving we passed a sign showing the regulations of the hotel - they included one which said all vistors to the rooms should leave their 'Thai' ID cards at reception and that a fee would be charged. Hummm - no wonder it felt so sleazy!
Once settled in our lovely new hotel instead of hitting the pool we watched 3 movies in a row in our room. I think we had just both reached that point of complete lethargy! I spent the next 2 days round the pool while Mik, not being a great one for sunbathing, found himself something else to do. He slept. For 13 hours straight at one point - quite unbelievable.
Evenings were spent at the night market where they had a food court with lots of local food at cheap prices bought with vouchers. The last time I was here (1997 I think - Brigitte you can correct me) there was small, cute night market. This has now at least trippled in size and sells everything from t-shirts to ninja stars, which looked like they could do some serious damage - nice!
We then signed up for 2 days of a Thai cookery course with the Chaing Mai Cookery school and set off for the house of Thai celebrity chef Sompon Nabnian who actually taught us on the second day - a funny man with a very dry sense of humour. Now, I was looking forward to this as I thought I would be able to make all the traditional dishes and just not add in the chilli! Perfect. And it worked very well - from green curry, to hot and sour soup to fish cakes - but guess what, I actually chose to add the chilli - and we ate everything we made, so by the end of it I was very proud of myself! I was also spending a bit more time on the loo as my stomach obviously wasn't used to that amount of chilli. I shall try not to let that put me off in future.
After catching up on the website a bit and trying to decide whether to fly into Laos or do it the more adventurous way by bus and slow boat, we opted for the 3 day slow boat trip - you'd have thought we would have learned already.....!
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