Well, after quite a few hours of travelling we made it to Chaing Mai which is situated in Northern Thailand. We stayed at a place called Baan Nud-Kan that 2 Israeli girls told us about; the owner, Tao, was really nice and helpful plus the rooms were super clean. Chaing Mai has tons of cooking class options, so naturally we took 2. One was through a place called Baan Thai Cooking Class that was really cool. We had a good group and they walked you through cooking each individual dish, then you ate it before moving onto the next one. It took about 7 hours to go to the market and cook 6 different dishes plus they had a fridge full of beer - we had a great time! Dinner was not happening after we left there. The other we took was through Chaing Mai Cooking Class and we didn´t like it as much. They had it set up so you watched them cook the dish in a classroom setting then you went and cooked it on your own. It turned out to be hectic when you were trying to cook it on your own with them yelling "throw that in now" or "stir, stir, stir!". But they did teach us vegetable carving at the beginning - Ben can do amazing tomato roses or a tomato lotus. The great thing about both classes was you got a small cook book with a bunch of different recipes in it.
We also booked a 2 day hike through the jungle that included an elephant ride and rafting down the river. As we were going to our starting point, one guy that was in our tuk tuk continued to ask the guide why he was with all the people trying to do rafting and elephant riding when he signed up to do just trekking for 6 hours each day. The guide told him that we just started in the same place but he would go off and hike before us. When we arrived we did our elephant riding first. It was kind of cool, but sort of sad to see these massive animals chained to trees and just walking in a big circle around their "camp". Our elephant was the tallest and did not like dogs. While we were riding her, she started charging at a dog and trumpeting - it freaked me out, I
thought we were going to fall off her! They also had a baby elephant that was named James Bond that was too cute.
From our ride we walked about an hour towards the village we were going to stay at before a woman in our group decided it was too hard and hot so she wanted to turn back. We had to wait on the trail for about 45 minutes while our guide walked her back to the road and had someone come pick her up to bring her to the village. Why she thought the hike would be easy - and in jeans - is beyond me. Anyway, we hiked for about 4 hours stopping at a bat cave on the way. There were no bats there, just a cave. We stayed the night in a camp style bungalow with mattresses on the ground for us. The guy that signed up to hike got into it with the guide because he walked the same path we did and it only took him 2 1-2 hours. Not what he signed up for and apparently this was his second attempt at just trekking because the first time he got lumped into a big group doing all the other activities too. Our guide, Tuck, said he was going to kick his ass, but nothing came of it. Tuck made the guy sign a waiver basically stating he would not be refunded his money. The next day we hiked for about an hour before we hit a waterfall that we could swim at. The water was freezing but felt kinda good after hiking in the heat. Ben jumped off a cliff into a little lagoon along with Tuck and some other guide - there is a video on Flikr. The "rafting" part of our trip was just like bumper boats. We got into these 4 person inflatable rafts and just ran into a bunch of rocks to have them push us down stream; regardless of our guide saying "paddle, paddle". Not the most exciting rapids we have seen.
We made it back to Chaing Mai to see the Flower Parade that they have every year. Each float was covered in these wild orchids and other beautiful tropical flowers. Along the side of the road they had flower stalls with huge bouquets and the min roads were shut down. It was cool to watch, but way too hot to stand out there for a long period of time. Apparently the parade is a big deal each year which you can tell from all the preparation that goes into some of the floats. They had dancers out and about along with trucks following their float blaring music.
Our visas are just about expired so we have to make a run to the Burma border, cross over into Burma and come back to get another 15 days in Thailand. So we are heading to Pia which is further north and supposed to be a cool.
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