After our full day adventure with elephants and jungle trekking, we took it easy the next day. We hung out around our hotel which was in the walled old town of Chiang Mai. It was more quaint here and easy to walk around the small streets to temples, shops and restaurants. We did laundry in the morning at a little laundromat just steps from our hotel. We ate lunch at a little Thai restaurant to sample more of the local specialties, ending with the always good mango and sticky rice.
Our hotel was right next to a temple complex where novice monks were being trained. Almost 90% of Thais believe in Buddhism. Sophie read that all men in Thai culture are expected to live as monks at some point in their lives. This could be for a day, a week, several months or even the rest of their lives if they choose. During monkhood they learn Buddhists chants, meditation, spiritualism, self-discipline, self-actualisation, etc. The ultimate goal of a Buddhist monk is to achieve true enlightenment.
I spent some time in one of the temples during a service where the monks and participants were chanting. At certain points in the chants, they all changed the position they were in. For example, from sitting with one leg folded back to sitting on their heels with their toes on the ground. They then kept that pose for a long time until apparently the verse or chant changed again. I tried sitting on my heels like that and lasted about a minute before my toes ached. I guess I need to do more yoga…. It was also interesting that there were a few dogs in the temple who walked from one monk to another or just sat around for awhile. The large Buddha in the front of this temple had little lights that would sparkle and change as the service went on. It was brilliant.
Another temple here had life-size figures of famous monks from the area. They were very life-like, and you could sit on the carpet in front of each one and pray or meditate. While I thought this might be a little creepy, it was actually a very calm and zen experience to see them and imagine how they dedicated their lives to meditation and teaching.
At a small night market that evening, there were all sorts of fried and grilled food on display. I wasn’t very hungry, but one thing that looked interesting were these grilled, caramelized bananas on skewers. An old lady was manning this stall in a dark alley as I was exiting the market. I asked her for one (well, pointed really and put my finger up for one) thinking they were all ready to eat. She proceeded to touch several of the skewers with her fingers to find one what was apparently sufficiently soft to her. Then, she picked it up and squeezed it again with her fingers in several places to make sure she was satisfied. She then wrapped it in some cellophane and put it in an ancient homemade wooden press in front of her. She smashed and smashed the bananas several times. She then took it out, peeled the cellophane back and touched it again in several places. Not satisfied, she removed the skewer and repositioned it in another place and put it in the press again for several squeezes. Finally she seemed satisfied, so she dipped the whole thing in a large sauce pan filled with a milky substance. Then she put it back on the grill to caramelize each side. Finally she was satisfied and handed me the skewer, and I handed her a 10 bath coin (about 30 cents) and a big smile of appreciation. The treat was pretty good. It tasted more like a plantain than a banana, which now makes much more sense as a banana would have never survived all that punishment. Not bad – dinner and a show for 30 cents!
The next morning, Sophie and I took another cooking class. This was similar in format to the one we enjoyed in Cambodia, but there were more people in our class (nine in our group). We started with a market tour, which wasn’t as primitive as the one in Cambodia. A lot of similar vegetables, fruits and meats, but displayed a bit more modernly. We noticed eggs that were pink and asked our guide about them. She said they were what they called 1000 year old eggs, which means they were fermented. They colored them pink so you could distinguish them from the fresh ones (smart idea). Apparently they smelled really bad, and no, we didn’t try any.
Back at the class, they had a nice, large garden with lots of herbs like different kinds of basil, mint, asian coriander (which looked a lot different than cilantro, but had a similar smell), lemongrass, galangal and also kefir lime trees (we used the leaves) and tamarind pods. They also had fruit trees like papaya, mango, coconut and a flowering vine called butterfly pea. It looked kind of like a sweet pea, and it produced a bright blue flower they use to make tea and to color things blue (like sticky rice). They also showed us three different kinds of eggplants, one producing small round eggplants about the size of marbles. These are somewhat bitter and we used them in some of our soups.
For the class, we each prepared three different dishes of our choosing. I chose to make stir fried cashew chicken (Gai Pad Med Ma Muang), chicken in coconut milk (Tom aka Hai) and Green Curry (Gang Kheow Wan). Sophie chose to make everyone’s favorite, Pad Thai, Hot and Sour Prawn Soup (Tom Yum Kung), and Khao Soi (Chiang Mai Curry Noodles – a specialty of Chiang Mai).
We started by making the paste for the curries. Lots of herbs, roots, garlic, shallots, spices and hot peppers all pulverized in a mortar until smooth. It smelled really good until we added the fermented fish paste, which gave it a lot of flavor, but smelled like you would expect. Most dishes use fish paste as it’s akin to chicken bouillon in western cooking. To cook the curries, we heated some oil in a wok, then added the curry paste until fragrant, then added the chicken, and finally coconut milk and the other ingredients. It cooked down pretty fast. Sophie’s Khao Soi was unique in that it had two types of egg noodles in it: some soft ones in the curry, and fried crunchy ones added on top.
Our next dishes were the soups. Lemongrass, galangal, kefir lime leaves and chili peppers were added to coconut milk or boiling water to make the basic stock. Then we added our other ingredients like onions, vegetables, mushrooms, chicken or prawns. We seasoned it with fish sauce and palm sugar to give it that sweet and sour taste.
My final dish was the coconut cashew chicken. This was pretty quickly and easily done in the wok. SautĂ© garlic, dried chilis (not spicy) in the wok, then the chicken, then the vegetables and seasoning sauce (fish sauce, soy sauce, oyster sauce, chili paste and ground pepper). Add cashews and spring onion at the end and serve. This was my favorite dish – and one we will probably make at home.
Sophie made her pad Thai similarly in the wok starting with shallots, garlic and dried shrimp, then adding the prawns and finally cracking an egg and scrambling it. She then pushed everything to the side in the wok and added rice noodles and the seasoning sauce (fish sauce, palm sugar, oyster sauce and tamarind sauce). Once tender, she added bean sprouts, chives and carrots and stir fried a few more seconds before plating with fresh lime and peanuts. This was also her favorite dish.
For dessert, we all made sticky rice with mangos, and Thai ice tea which is a powdered tea with sweetened condensed milk. The secret to the sticky rice was first, using the right type of rice. Second, steaming it in a cloth in a bamboo basket for a long time. Third, cooking the rice again in coconut milk and sugar until the milk is absorbed. It was fun seeing first hand how all these dishes are made. I think we might try modifying some of them at home to reduce the amount of sugar and salt in them, and maybe bump up the amount of vegetables to be a bit more our taste.
After the cooking class, we had several hours to explore the old town of Chiang Mai some more and see more very old temples and shrines. We also went to a Hmong market to look at the interesting clothes, scarves and earrings they made. I added a picture of power lines that was pretty common here and in Bangkok. Sometimes it seemed like there were hundreds of lines! Our flight to Phuket in the south of Thailand was that evening.
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