Sunday in Chiang Mai

Thai cooking extreme style!
One of the things which I have been keen to do every since I first thought about coming to Thailand was attempting to learn to cook Thai. As a great lover of all things Asian, especially the food, I have found Thai food one of the most interesting specialities. Living with Simone in Newtown in Sydney further increased my appretite for the food.

So as soon as I arrived into Chiang Mai I looked into the possibility of doing a one day intensive course which would cost only about A$25 and I would get five meals included! Eventually I found the perfect course at a hostel called Eagle House. The name of the cooking course - 'The Chilli Club' gives a lot of clues away as to what the food was like. Held in the forcourt of the hostel the course was held outside and very relaxed.

The course was rather unique in that it gave the students the option of choosing five different dishes from a list of over thirty. When most of these dishes are appealing it was an extremely hard choice to make. Eventually I wittled the list down to:

1)Fried Rice with chicken
2)Thai Red Curry (with chicken)
3)Stir fried rice with chicken and cashew nuts
4)Noddle soup with chicken
5)Lemon Grass Fish (as I felt I should have something non-chicken!!!)

My teacher was a Thai man called Visutt who spoke excellent English. A small man in his 40's he's of Chinese descent and spoke in great length about his love of Thai culture, food and history. Although he had a tendency to speak rather fast I found him to be extremely amusing and laid back. This was helped by the fact that when I arrived I found I was the only person on the cooking course! I had seen the courst attended by 8 people the previous day and knew I was just lucky in this case!

The day started with a visit to the market where Visutt explained all the ingredients that we would be using, including their medicinal value and what they would normally be used for. The markets themselves were interesting to experience. Visutt informed me that they are open every day of the week 365 days a year. Unlike in many Western countries the Thai's prefer to shop on an almost daily basis for ingredients prefering fresh food to frozen or stored food. The sheer amount and variety of vegetables, fruit and meat on offer certainly adds weight to this approach.

Aside from the fish dish I found cooking Thai food to be suprisingly simple. It's actually a very easy cruisine to cook and not as time consuming to cook as you would think. The friend rice and stir fry chicken with cashew nuts were extremely enjoyable dishes both to cook and to eat. By the end of the day I had eaten 5 main meals within a 6 hour period and felt like I would not need to eat for another week! I sincerely hope that I can replicate what I learnt when I return home!

Chiang Mai and its people
One of the great things about Chang Mai is that it really is a very pleasant and relaxing city to walk around at any time of the day or night. Based on a grid the city is easy to navigate and very relaxed with relatively few cars especially at night. Ever since I have arrived I have found the people to be very friendly and happy to talk. Unlike Bangkok the main central Old City has remained relatively unspoilt by modern development. Walking around the streets I can't help but be reminded of first visiting Pokhara in Nepal 8 years ago. Back alley streets are lined with small family run hostels which offer very friendly accomodation whilst tuk-tuk drivers don't hastle you in the same way they do in Bangkok.

The people in Chiang Mai are from a wide variety of backgrounds with relatively few Thai in ethnicity. Their is a large number of Mon and Karen hill-tribes people as well as a large community of Chinese from the south of China. Added together this forms a rather interesting and diverse community.


Wats at night
During the day the Wats which can be found throughout the old city are undoubtedly the main attraction to be found rising above the surrounding streets. In the evening they are even more beautiful as some open their doors to Thais and tourists to prayer or to simply enjoy the experience of visiting them. In the evening the Buddha's within many of the Wat's seem to glow lighting up the surrounding areas. Watching Thai's come and prayer in front of the Buddha's you get a real feel for what it feels like to be in Thailand. Religion is considered one of the three fundamental pillars of Thai society along with nation and monarchy and in the evening its clear that this is still the case. When Thai's sit in front of the Buddha's they do so on their knees with hands held together in an upright posture. They then proceed to prayer and bow down to the ground with their heads eventually touching the floor with their hands rested on each side of their head.

Sunday markets
Walking around the city as it got dark I could hear the sound of a large number of people a few streets down from my hostel. As I walked down I found myself in the middle of an immense open-air night market which had sprung up from no-where on streets which are normally pounding with tuk-tuks and taxi's. The market is one of the largest I have ever seen. Running along a central axis along the main Rachdamner Road from the Phae Gate towards Wat Phra the market has many side streets running parallel or shooting of it in different directions. Lining both sides of the streets sellers sold a wide range of goods, predominatly handicraft, souvenirs and cloths. I later found out that the market runs every Sunday from about 5pm - 10pm and is well attended by most people in Chiang Mai.

I would have expected most of the public to have been tourists but I found there to be relatively few. Instead the streets pounded with thousands of Thai's shopping and generally enjoying themselves. In the middle of the street scores of street buskers played music and entertained the audience. Many were skilled blind musicians and young children playing traditional Thai instruments with great skill and care.

Aside from the main stalls the streets were lined with massage parlours and food stalls selling traditional Thai fruit. For less than a pound you could enjoy a Thai massage for half an hour! I had learnt at the cooking course that there are a lot of unique and unusual Thai fruits some of which I had tried. They were all on offer at the market and many seemed to be enjoying them.

Aside from the stalls and buskers walking down the densely packed streets were lines of school kids in uniform promoting something. In the two hours of so I walked the market I was unable to figure out exactly what it was they were promoting as they were speaking Thai. Many of the children in their teens were dressed up, many of the boys in drag which made them very funny and amusing to watch.

Perhaps one of the oddest and most peculiar sights I saw was a show promoting a live play of Jospeh and the Technicolour Dreamcoat. About 15 dancers dressed in strange combination of Biblical and thai clothing danced in the street singing songs from the show! A very unusual sight to see on a Sunday afternoon!

Many of the main Wat's in the city had stalls and places to eat contained within them which really bought the Wat grounds to live as the sound of people and children playing echoed around them. It also provided a chance for many Thai people to visit the Wat's with many praying and relaxing in the main temples.

Perhaps the only thing which upset me was the presence of a large number of Christian missionaries giving out pamphlets in Thai, often outside the grounds of Wat's. Using comic book images and basic Thai they were preaching to people to try to convert them to Christianity. I have many Christian friends and have the utmost respect for the Christian Church but found their approach and attitude frankly annoying. The fact that they did this outside Wat's was also immensely disrespectful to both the Thai people and the established Buddhist Church in Thailand. I approached a couple of them to find out where they were from and from what I could tell they were all American missionaries, often in their teens or twenties, who had come to Thailand to 'convert the heathen'! I only hope they show more respect in other areas of their lives.

Nightlife in Chang Mai
Whilst visiting one of the Wat's during the market I bumped into an American who had been working in Brazil called Lewis. A very relaxed and interesting guy to speak to he told me he was a pshycologist and that he had been drawn to Asia and was seriously considering moving to Thailand. He also told me about a couple of Thai bars which he had visited which were not well frequented by falangs so it would be likely I would be only Westerner their.

Taking his directions and instructions onboard I headed for 'Warm Up & Monkey Business' which are in the north of the city some way out of the main Old City Walls. Walking around both bars was a very interesting and unusual experience. As expected I was the only foreigner there. Most the people seemed to be high-school and university students who seemed to know how to enjoy themselves. Drinking Heineken and Scotch Wisky they stood and listened to a rock band which was surprisingly good although I did not understand a word of what they said.

Considering that a lot of bars in Chiang Mai and Bangkok which tourists visit are pick-up bars and basically a front for brothels of sort this was an interesting difference. Getting away from the main tourist bars and 'traps' was good fun and well worth the effort.