Pai back to Chiang Mai and onto Laos

November 29, 2010

Ad and I enjoyed our week in Pai, a small and quiet town 5 hours and ‘762 curves’ north of Chiang Mai. During our last few days, we enjoyed a full-day Thai cooking class at the Pai Cookery School. The options of what to cook were a “green” course, “red” course or “yellow” course which referred to the type of Thai sauces you wanted to make; I chose the red course while Ad chose the green. My menu included mango sticky rice, pad Thai, red curry, tom kah soup, cashew nut stir fry and papaya salad while Ad’s included masaman curry (an Indian curry), tom yum soup, holy basil and pork, mango salad and sweet and sour pork.

Included in our class was a visit to the local market with our Thai chef, Gaew, a really fun and hip woman. As we strolled through the market, Gaew explained the different fruits and vegetables used in traditional Thai dishes. We also had the opportunity to try a few Thai ingredients like buffalo hide, coconut cakes, tamarind and banana sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf.

We also biked to an organic farm called Bueng Pai Farm, located a few kilometers out of town. The farm is situated on a small pond for fishing and surrounded by bungalows, small open air bamboo huts and a chemical-free swimming pool. Most of the food was grown at the farm and used in the dishes. I ordered muesli with fruit and yogurt which consisted of over 30 ingredients such as popcorn, yam chips, oats, nuts, edible flowers, and delicious fresh fruit like mangos, melon and bananas. Ad ordered the Bueng Pai fried rice which was fresh brown rice mixed with red and green peppers, chili peppers, cucumbers, carrots and topped with an egg; both were so delicious that we ordered the same things the following day. After a week of relaxing and enjoying the night markets, we headed back to Chiang Mai to see a traditional Thai festival.

Back to Chiang Mai

Back in Chiang Mai, we enjoyed the Loy Krathrong Lights Festival; a Thai holiday celebrated on the full moon of the 12th lunar month which, in this case, was November 21. The Thai translation for Loy is ‘to float’ while Krathrong is ‘raft’. The holiday is about letting go of the “old” and welcoming the “new” into your life. The tradition includes lighting Thai paper lanterns and setting them off into sky for good luck and floating candle-lit flower boats down the river for new beginnings.

The celebration took over the whole town as thousands of paper lanterns filled the sky, a Thai parade marched down the street, music blasted throughout the air and fireworks boomed all around us like a New Year’s celebration (yet in this case, it was Thai-style meaning anything goes). You could light fireworks, walk around with beers, or set up a stove and sell food on the street.

While in Chiang Mai, we were able to see our friends Brett and Jenny from Boulder who are also traveling around the world. They started their trip in early June and we were finally able to connect with each other, it was great seeing familiar faces from home. We shared stories of our travels, discussed our upcoming adventures and empathized with each other about missing home and our excitement of returning with new and fresh outlooks from our travel experiences.

Thanksgiving and Cathy's 40th Birthday in Luang Prabang, Laos

After the festival in Chiang Mai, we left the next day to head to Luang Prabang in Laos. Our travels included: a 5-hour bus ride to the border of Thailand, a longtail boat to the border crossing and a 15-hour overnight bus, whew! It was by far the hardest overnight bus ride; our seats did not recline, legroom was minimal and the old bus crept up and down mountains stopping every few hours to give the brakes time to cool off.

Luang Prabang is situated in northern Laos, surrounded by mountains and bordering the Nam Khan and Mekong River. (The Mekong River is one of the world’s longest major rivers that runs through many countries in south East Asia, including China, Myanmar/Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.) This unique city is Unesco-protected and combines French architecture with Buddhist temples. Streets are filled with European and authentic Lao cuisine restaurants, a healthy night market and a stream of tangerine-robed Buddhist monks taking alms at 6:00 am each morning. In Buddhism, alms or “giving materially” (such as food, clothing, etc.) by ‘lay’ people to monks “to nurture virtue, merit and blessings and ensure monastic continuity”. Or, doing good in order to receive good.

During our stay, we enjoyed our time exploring the town, trying traditional Lao cuisine and teaching English at a local non-profit organization called Big Brother Mouse (one thing I really wanted to do on my birthday/Thanksgiving). One of our favorite Lao cuisine restaurants was a place called Tamarind. The family-run restaurant served amazing food including a dish consisting of a light, white fish baked in lime juice with fresh herbs, wrapped in a banana leaf and served with warm sticky rice, yum! The owner explained to us that you eat with your hands by pulling a chunk of the sticky rice, rolling it, and then dipping it into the dish. The dish was delicious and we enjoyed a few of their lemongrass-lime and ginger-lime granitas (crushed ice drinks) to wash down our food.

One of the highlights of our trip was volunteering at a non-profit organization called Big Brother Mouse. The organization’s goal is to promote literacy in Lao by producing, publishing and distributing books to locals hoping to make literacy fun and accessible. We met a few of the organization’s illustrators at the local night market who mentioned they needed English-speaking volunteers to help at their office. So for a few hours in the morning, Adam and I helped teach English to a few very grateful locals. It was wonderful to see (and for us to feel) their enthusiasm for learning.

After 4-days in Luang Prabang, we headed south on yet another very windy, 6-hour bus ride to Vang Vieng, a peaceful river village along the Nam Song River surrounded by beautiful mountains. More to come!

Love and miss you.
Cathy and Adam