Before leaving Chiang Mai and heading south to the beach, we had a couple more adventures up our sleeves.
First up on the agenda was a Thai cooking class. This is something we talked about doing from the first moment we decided to go to Thailand and were very excited as we headed into town to attend the Siam Rice Cookery School. It started out with a tour of a local market where we learned about several of the ingredients we would be using in our dishes. After that we sat down with the other people in our group and everybody picked what we wanted to cook. Since Julie and I were enrolled in the full day class we picked 7 things each - a soup, a noodle dish, a stir fry, a curry, a curry dish (with our curry), an appetizer, and a desert. We would cook a couple of things and then eat what we cooked before cooking the next dishes. Needless to say we were completely stuffed by the time we left the class. It was as much fun as we hoped it would be and is high on our list of favorite things we have done on the trip.
Next up was a caving trip with Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures. We originally hoped to do a multi day caving trip, but they only had one of their caves open so they helped arranged a home stay and a day of zip lining to go with our caving, making it an overnight trip. The trip started with a 40 minute drive out of Chiang Mai to their rock climbing spot called crazy horse. Next came a quick lesson on the gear we would be using and then we went into a practice session where we learned to climb a static rope with our jumars and to rappel with our stop tools. Shortly after that we started into the cave and had to descend almost 30 meters straight down to the cave floor. We ate lunch in the cave and spent the next couple of hours exploring the underground world full of stalactites, stalagmites, spiders, and mud. At the end of the tour we had to go back up the rope that we had rapalled down earlier, and I'll tell you that using a jumar to ascend that far was no easy feat. By the time we got back to the parking area we were all quite tired.
The next morning we ate breakfast and were waiting to be picked up by a staff member at 7:45 as instructed. Around 8:15 someone came by and told us to head down to the shop and when we got their we were rushed to get set up to go with the first group of the day and they acted like it was our fault we were late...we hoped the rest of the day wouldn't be so obnoxious. Thank goodness it wasn't. Or two guides, or sky rangers as they were called, were absolutely hilarious and the group we were with was pretty fun as well. We spent the next two hours riding cables from tree to tree as we made our way through the course in the forest. Some lines were shorts and some were long and there were even a few where we went two at a time, but mostly it was awesome. They provided lunch and we had a short visit to a waterfall before heading back to Chiang Mai.
After all of our northern Thailand adventures we were ready for some beach time! Next stop, Phuket.
To see all of our Chiang Mai pictures click here
First up on the agenda was a Thai cooking class. This is something we talked about doing from the first moment we decided to go to Thailand and were very excited as we headed into town to attend the Siam Rice Cookery School. It started out with a tour of a local market where we learned about several of the ingredients we would be using in our dishes. After that we sat down with the other people in our group and everybody picked what we wanted to cook. Since Julie and I were enrolled in the full day class we picked 7 things each - a soup, a noodle dish, a stir fry, a curry, a curry dish (with our curry), an appetizer, and a desert. We would cook a couple of things and then eat what we cooked before cooking the next dishes. Needless to say we were completely stuffed by the time we left the class. It was as much fun as we hoped it would be and is high on our list of favorite things we have done on the trip.
Next up was a caving trip with Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures. We originally hoped to do a multi day caving trip, but they only had one of their caves open so they helped arranged a home stay and a day of zip lining to go with our caving, making it an overnight trip. The trip started with a 40 minute drive out of Chiang Mai to their rock climbing spot called crazy horse. Next came a quick lesson on the gear we would be using and then we went into a practice session where we learned to climb a static rope with our jumars and to rappel with our stop tools. Shortly after that we started into the cave and had to descend almost 30 meters straight down to the cave floor. We ate lunch in the cave and spent the next couple of hours exploring the underground world full of stalactites, stalagmites, spiders, and mud. At the end of the tour we had to go back up the rope that we had rapalled down earlier, and I'll tell you that using a jumar to ascend that far was no easy feat. By the time we got back to the parking area we were all quite tired.
There was a small wait before we got picked up and headed another 30 minutes or so away from town. The zip line company, Flight of the Gibbon, was now in charge of us. We drove a short distance up a dirt road to a small house where we learned we would spend the night. The guy who met us spoke okay English and told us that we would have dinner and a massage later that night before leaving us. The lady who owned the house did not speak any English, but showed us the bathroom and our bedroom. We showered to remove all the mud from caving (Julie was covered head to toe) and then sat awkwardly reading our nooks in their living room until the man of the house made some grunting noises and pointed us across the street to dinner. The food was really good and that was followed by an hour long thai massage in the living room before heading to bed.
The next morning we ate breakfast and were waiting to be picked up by a staff member at 7:45 as instructed. Around 8:15 someone came by and told us to head down to the shop and when we got their we were rushed to get set up to go with the first group of the day and they acted like it was our fault we were late...we hoped the rest of the day wouldn't be so obnoxious. Thank goodness it wasn't. Or two guides, or sky rangers as they were called, were absolutely hilarious and the group we were with was pretty fun as well. We spent the next two hours riding cables from tree to tree as we made our way through the course in the forest. Some lines were shorts and some were long and there were even a few where we went two at a time, but mostly it was awesome. They provided lunch and we had a short visit to a waterfall before heading back to Chiang Mai.
After all of our northern Thailand adventures we were ready for some beach time! Next stop, Phuket.
To see all of our Chiang Mai pictures click here
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