Cooking, hefelumps and water(falls) (EN)

Night market
In every Asian city, you will find a night market. Not only is Chiang Mai no exception to this rule, one could say this city has gone completely OTT (over the top) with the whole concept. The market is so spread out, it seems to take up about half of the city. Stalls are lined up everywhere. On streets, on squares in alleyways, there is no escaping it and it is rather brilliant. They sell about anything and everything you have no particular use for or interest in. Fortunately the choice of clothes, knick-knacks and jewelery is so overwhelming, you end up simple buying nothing at all. That is, if you keep moving just fast enough to avoid (eye)contact with any of the venders. Slow down and you inevitably fall pray to any vender within a five meter range.

Eat it!
Having survived the night-market without any purchases it was time for our next challenge in Chiang Mai: cooking and eating a Thai meal. Baan Thai is one of the many cookery schools of the city and was recommended to us by my niece. A very good tip we might add!
Our group consisted of nine people representing five nationalities. In all, there were 22 people in three groups. The system is simple and entertaining: everyone gets to choose what he or she would like to prepare and you are all divided into groups according to the dish you are about to cook. This means that with every course of the meal you are likely to run into other people. Cooking and chatting away, travel stories and tips are shared and once done, you return to your main group to devour your culinary creation. With six dishes in one day (including making curry paste from scratch!) I can assure you, there is no room left for more food when you finish the cookery course at 4 pm. As Peter and I each chose different dished for every course, we only met back at the dinner table and now have 10 dishes to choose from that we can make at home. If we can find all the ingredients of course... Do you know there's three types of basil over here? We're lucky just to get the regular one! That said, our Thai chefs provided us with alternatives 'for your country'. All in all it was a brilliant outing that was closed off perfectly with a bit of bathing for both of us: Pete doing the sunbathing on the roof and me doing some laps in the pool (how else to get rid of the sticky rice and mango, water chestnuts in coconut sauce and deep-fried banana – yes, I had just about everyones dessert – and I don't even have a sweet tooth!!)

Elephants and rafting
After a day of eating it was inevitable we should get some exercise! So a tour was booked! Unfortunately, so did three French couples. People are a very important part of traveling (and life in general of course). Some you get on with, some you don't. Now we don't mean to sound prejudiced or anything, but we were not looking forward to a day out with six over-aged frogs. And they failed to prove us wrong. No matter how hard we tried to strike up a conversation in our best french (which really isn't all that bad), piled together for at least an hour in an open truck, they failed to take away our negative view on the French. Snooty snooty. On the other hand, the three Indians also on the tour, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. These young guys were sailors and therefor much more international orientated. As the day progressed we grew closer and closer until two firm groups were formed. And it seemed to be an unwritten rule that group 1 and group 2 should not interact...
The first activity of the day involved elephants. Riding elephants. That means the elephant does all the work and we merely had to sit and feed him copious amounts of banana's in order for him to actually takes us anywhere. Meanwhile a baby-trunk kept landing in our lap for even more banana's. This little one obviously had had no lessons in modesty and easily would have eaten away most of our banana's in 10 seconds flat had it not been for our firm: no banana! He would then wander off for a few moments and return for more with his snotty snout.
From elephants to a village of the Karen people, a people originally from Burma. A community of only 150 very simple living people. Bamboo houses with fireplaces on the 'veranda' to create smoke against insects, a pig per household for good fortune and one massive arial for tv-reception... Bright coloured clothing, very friendly atmosphere, but a time-warp if ever there was one.
Time for one of the highlights of the day: an easy walk to a waterfall for some swimming and relaxing. The 'hike' (more like a walk in the park) took only about 15 minutes but did take us through some beautiful scenery. The waterfall definitely wasn't a let down! Freezing cold water, but so much fun! Once you had gotten used to the temperature you could try and swim upstream. I don't know how salmons do it, I wasn't moving an inch! The frogs meanwhile sat watching from afar and not smiling... More watery fun followed with bamboo-rafting. A very tempered affair yet again, but it was fun seeing the frogs getting soaked as they hadn't really dressed for the occasion. Pete and I were on the Karaoke-boat with a Thai/French lady (Yam) and her non-speaking French husband. Yam kept asking for more songs, so we sang a lot of Carpenters... The Indians meanwhile rocked there boat so hard they lost clothing and camera – and then to think they are sailors...
The evening called for some good food of course so off we trotted to around the corner. This compact little square housed several restaurants and bars and offered plenty of entertainment. Like live music and... elephants! It is a funny sight indeed to look up from your plate and see an elephant heading straight for you! The Roots, Rock and Reggea bar next to our restaurant had a lvery decent live reggea/ska band so we settled there for a while, till a baby elephant came along to rock the square some more. He was cute, but looked rather sad, making money for his owner.