Tonight is our last night in Chiang Mai (5th night) and it's been pretty cool. We've only eaten street food and in little open cafes with dishes being £1 at the most, usually under.
There is a massive night bazaar here. We bought enough! We did go to a ladyboy cabaret on our 2nd night. It was very funny. They even did Britney!
2 nights ago we did a cooking course. It was 5 courses. I made chicken coconut milk soup, pad see yieuw noodles, chicken with basil stirfry and red curry. The paste to make the red curry apparently counted as a course, so really it was 4 courses.
My soup was incredible!!! The noodles were disappointing, I've had better, the stir fry was good and the curry was delicious. I was very impressed that I made a curry paste, crushing all the ingredients in a big stone pestle and mortar. I love how they don't really bother chopping things up either. Garlic and chillies just get walloped with a massive knife on your chopping board to open them up and the skin goes in too. I think it makes a big difference, you don't lose any flavour by chopping and chopping. Ben made hot and spicy soup, pad thai, chicken with ginger and green curry. We're available for hire from February 2012.
The woman teaching us was really good. Even though there were many choices of what you could cook, it was simplified that a lot of Thai food has the same ingredients or just different amounts of them. And when that wasn't the case (mainly the curry as there were about 14 different ones!) you were busy chopping whilst she was discussing another curry. There was no waiting around though and we got our breaks after each dish to test our food! She kept telling us to 'move your body' whilst stirring and doing hula hoop actions! And I loved how she said 'squeeze'. 'Seq-queeze!!!' It was very good and a bargain £10 as well when most are around £20.
Yesterday we had our first Thai massage. It was an hour massage for our feet, neck and back. The foot and lower leg bit was quite nice. I sat and read my book and tried to not laugh from ticklish feet and not cry from some sore spots in my calves. Moving on to lie down whilst she attacked my back was not fun! At one point she had both her knees in my bum, her hands on my shoulders and was rocking around on me! I'd be in jail if I gave people massages like that! I turned round to look at Ben to see if he could witness what was happening to me but he had his own problems, a man was stood up straight on his back, just having a stroll. She cracked my back so much as well, I actually thought my spine was snapping! Afterwards I felt achey like I needed a massage, that's not what it's supposed to be like!
Today we have chilled out, greatly lightened our bags by posting more things home and shopped by the Sunday market which was very pleasant.
Tomorrow we have a 6 hour bus to Sukothai.
The picture is from our favourite open cafe which we have been in every day without fail. Sometimes twice a day it was that good!