Green Curry and Hmong Villages

3 days ago we signed up for a Thai cooking course.  It was taught by a very funny man named Pom, who liked to laugh at his own jokes and tell us about Thai babies named Shit and Fuk.  First, he took us to a market and explained all of the ingredients we would be using and how to buy the good ones.  He showed us 100 year old eggs, which look like a pink Easter egg and smell awful.  Then we hopped in the back of a pickup trunk - these are the only "taxis" in Chiang Mai besides tuk-tuks.  The trucks have covers over the bed and bench seats.  Some are nice and have padding and lights, others are just old and rusty.

Once we got to the cooking school we all put on aprons and got our utensils and our stoves set up.  For each dish we had an option of 3 meals to make.  The first meal I made was coconut milk soup with chicken.  It was delicious.  Then as a whole group we made vegetarian spring rolls with some sauce (i don't remember), papaya salad (really spicy) and sticky rice with mango (my favorite meal - been looking for more ever since).  Then we made 3 courses which we waited to eat until they were all cooked.

I made pad thai with tofu, green curry with chicken over jasmine rice and sweet and sour chicken with stir-fried veggies.  Thai cooking it seems is more about preparation than cooking.  We spent a lot of time preparing the vegetables and little time actually cooking them up.  We learned all about the chilis which are used in almost every dish.  The amount of spiciness depends on how young the chilis are and how many you put in.  Also there are quiet a few vegetables that they add just for flavoring and not for eating: ginger root, chives, and a bunch more that I wrote down but don't have in front of me.  All in all it was a really cool experience and I would like to try some Thai cooking when I get home.

After the cooking course, I went for a Thai massage.  It was quite different from the Swedish massage technique that I learned taking the bodyworks course at Tufts.  Thai massage is more about applying pressure and releasing and stretching than rubbing as Swedish massage is.  I went to the most legit looking massage parlor I could find where I paid 150 baht (~$5) for an hour massage.  First, the woman washed my feet, then gave me slippers and led me upstairs.  She told me to change into the linen clothes they had laid out for me.  The pants must have been size 46 because I had to tie a knot in the waist to keep them on.  The technique for The woman (nice looking, about 35 years old) started with the legs, stretching and pushing on all my muscles, then went to the arms.  These parts felt great.  When she had me turn over to do my back, the pressure was intense.  She was using her feet, knees and elbows to push on me and stretch me.  I was a bit sore after.  I think Thia massage was more intimate than Swedish as the woman was using her whole body to applying pressure and stretch me.  That's just my opinion though.

The next day we started our trek.  We hopped in the back of a pickup with 8 English guys and a girl and 2 guides (one of which stood at the back of truck bed most of the trip and the rest sat on the top) and started driving north.  Along the way we stopped at an orchid/butterfly farm (which was cool as the orchids weren't growing in the ground but hanging from ropes) and a market (where we bought a kilo of tamerands).  Then we ate lunch at a gazebo and sat around for a while.  At this point we thought we might not be trekking at all, though the English guys had sobered up by this point.

Finally we started hiking up through the jungle.  The surroundings were green and lush and wet and the ground was red with clay.  The hike started off easy, repeatedly crossing a little stream, then got steep and hot.  The afternoon sun was burning us as the shade was minimal.  We stopped often for drinks and to catch our breath.  Hearing complaints between gasps in an English accent is very entertaining.  When we got to the top it looked like we had just hiked through an episode of Lost.  The last half mile was through corn fields and rice paddies that the Hmong villages harvest.  We spent the night at the Hmong village at the top of the mountain (the mountains I found out were part of the lower Himalayan foothills!) in a 3 room bamboo hut.  The village had 35 families and countless chickens and dogs running about.  There was sporatical trash embedded in the clay ground around the village.  All of the huts were made entirely of bamboo: bamboo posts in the clay, unrolled bamboo for the walls and floors and shreds of bamboo layered thickly for the roof.  Each hut had a porch area with clotheslines, pots and pans strewn about and a large solar panel.  The outhouse had a spout of rain water and a squat toilet.  From what I noticed the men and women in the village were mostly separated in their tasks and there was little interaction between them.  That night were ate a good meal of yellow curry and rice and then sang, drank and talked with our guides and a few men from the village.  We slept in one big room in the hut under mosquito nets.

The next day, after breakfast of hard boiled eggs and toast with jam, we started downhill.  The trek down was easier than the day before and less exposed.  Though as we got close to a waterfall for a cool down, I slipped on a rock and sliced my hand pretty good.  I'm hoping it leaves a scar so when people ask about it I can say I got it hiking in the Himalayas!  We cooled off under the waterfall and then continued following the river downhill.  The river was brown with silt and minerals.  After another 45 minutes we arrived at the elephant camp where we rode Wallace for about 40 minutes.  He didn't smell very good and was constantly begging us for bananas, which we didn't have because we had left our money back at the camp.  After the ride we ate some pad Thai and then got suited up for "white water rafting."  I put this in quotes because there was one small rapid and the rest of the time was spent splashing the other boats.  Then we switched to bamboo rafts, which were cool for a little while.  They were hard to keep balanced and steer down the river.  We then took a pickup truck back to Chiang Mai.  It smelled awfully of diesel exhaust the entire time and was a miserable hour ride.

Going out with some peeps from the hostel tonight.  Went for a run today - I'll blog about that tomorrow before we head back to Bangkok.  Sorry this was such a long post.  Will try to keep them shorter from now on.