Mother Daughter Adventure chronicles V: Chiang Mai II- Food Frenzy

Chiang Mai is a pretty popular place to do all sorts of courses and training courses.  Cooking classes, massage classes, meditation retreats, elephant mahout camp, and the like are among the most common.  Mom and did a great cooking class for a day with Asia Scenic Thai Cooking School . We went to the market, we met great people, learned a lot, and cooked and ate a ton.  I took some food home.   

Market pictures:

Different qualities of rice.  Sticky rice rice is at the end!

Coconut Milk- nom ma praao

Mangoes- ma muang

All sorts of stuff in plastic bags- peanuts, sunflower seeds, chips, dried pumpkin

Let the overindulgence begin:

Meang Kum "Eat in one bite".  It's sort of like an appetizer.  Everyone does a little cheers and you eat it together. Chok dee!  (The Thai 'cheers'.  It means good luck.)

Spring rolls!  Who doesn't love spring rolls? They're not too tough to make, you just need a little finesse.

Roll- deep fry- present- ta dah!

Som tam- spicy papaya salad- a Thai staple.  This is a pretty spicy dish, so when you order it you can request the number of chilis you'd like.  I'm pretty good at eating spicy food by now, but still I can only really tolerate 2 chilis.  That's enough to keep you sweating more than you already are!

The lime trick- squeeze the lime over the spoon.  You definitely get more juice this way.

Um, classic.  Sorry Mom- but I had to!  This is priceless!  Getting directions when cooking desert.  I don't know if mom thought she could handle the directions or something, maybe she was nervous she'd mess it up.  Thai foods cook very quickly so if you cook something too long or miss a step while it's on the heat it might turn out quite different than you'd planned.

Time to stuff ourselves!  This was I think the third time we stopped cooking to eat.  It may not look like a ton of food- but we'd already eaten spring rolls or papaya salad, rad na (not pictured- rad na is a gravy noodle dish) or pad thai, and these are some pretty filling dishes!  Tom yam koong (spicy soup with lemongrass, galanga and shrimp), some kind of vegetable dish with rice, Kow soy or 'Chiang Mai noodles', and kaao neow ma muang (mango and sticky rice)  And to think, we only paid 30 dollars to learn about these things in the market, get instruction on how to make it, eat all this food with nice company, and get a cookbook at the end!  What a deal.

Another 'must do' for mom completed!

Mother Daughter Adventure Chronicles V: Chiang Mai 1- A Brief Rundown

After we departed Siem Reap Cambodia, we landed in Suvhanabhumi Airport in Bangkok.  We traipsed from the arrivals up to the Air Asia check-in counter for a domestic flight that was due to leave in about 2 hours for Chiang Mai.  Of course on paper the interval between flights looked fine, but in reality we were sprinting on moving walkways just to arrive at the gate...and sit around for a while.  This happened to me a handful of times at Suvhanabhumi Airport.  Hurry up and wait I guess.

Man, Chiang Mai is just a cool city.  There's so much to do there, it's pretty affordable, the people are friendly, the temperatures nice, and the surrounding mountains are nice on the eyes.  It's just a very pleasant place to be.  This was my third time to Chiang Mai (man, life is tough for me in Asia!) but I could go back again and again and always do different things, or the same things again and still enjoy it.  

In typical Matranga fashion we had a lot of events planned for our week long stay in the ever popular mountain town of Chiang Mai.  Quick summary of activities: A boat tour, shopping, temple visits, cooking class, elephant camp, museums and the Queen's Botanical Garden and massages of course.

High lights from this go-round was the cooking class, Queen's Garden, and elephants.  I enjoyed this cooking class with my mom a lot more than the one I did the first time by myself.  We got to go to the market and learn about different types of vegetables, noodles and rice.  We also got to choose our own menus.  The Queen's Botanical Garden was pretty incredible.  So many species of different flowers and tropical plants, too many greenhouses to visit, and we got to take a stroll by a river and in the jungle.  It's hard not to enjoy an elephant camp- elephants are pretty amazing creatures.  I felt more comfortable when riding an elephant because it was the second time for me, so I was able to pay attention to mom and see that she had an enjoyable time.  We had a scare at the end of the day when we thought her glasses had fallen into the river when we were riding our elephants back to the training center, but it turned out they had fallen out of the sock she put them in for safe keeping right by the table where the guides put our things after we returned.  Phew!  I ran back on the path where we'd come from and was wading through the water when another guide ran into us and told us they'd been found.  I was quite relieved.

So, here you go- time to check out photos! 

House along the river

Mae Ping River boat tour

Neck of a dragon flanking the entrance to a temple

Bbbbiiiiggg Buddha, Big Buddha, Big Buddha, Big Buddha

Chedi (or stupa)

Temples at every turn.  Stunning day and night.

Word carving shop in the Night Bazaar

I volunteered to demonstrate.  I think it's just pad thai.

Som Tam- spicy papaya salad (nicknamed 'Papaya pok pok').  Strong work ma!

Key players in the game.

Happy Elephants

I'll be putting up another post about Chiang Mai because I want to talk a bit more about the elephant camp, cooking school and botanical gardens.  But I think this is enough for now. Thanks for checking it out!

Mother Daughter Adventure Chronicles IVb- Siem Reap- More than Just Angkor Ruins

Before our departure we decided to pay a visit to the birthplace of the beautiful silk scarves that come from Cambodia.  Southeast Asia is ripe with beautiful tapestries and all sorts of woven art, and the scarves make up a large majority of the popular woven items for sale all over the region. 

Here's a big of a photo guide to step-by-step process of how the silk scarves are made- from silk worms munching on mulberry leaves, to brilliant garments for royalty.

Cocoon life cycle

Silk worms munching on mulberry leaves

The thread that begins the silk process

Cocoons ready to be taken to boil and extract silk threads

Cocoons hanging from a basket- cocoon gathering stage

Boiling cocoons to extract the silk threads

Threads

After threads are dried they are in a raw form.  They are spun onto a large spindle that will later be used to put onto a small spindle and thinned.

Spinning from large spindle to small.  The threads are pulled and therefore thinned.

Beginning to weave plain colored threads

Dyed threads being spun from large to small spindles for weaving

Materials for dyes- I'm pretty sure the basket holds kaffir limes, twigs, leaves and other natural materials not shown here are used to make dyes

Throw it in the pot to boil and make dye...

This is how you dye!  The plain white threads are tied very tightly at certain sections to create white spaces.  This will later help to establish different patterns.  This man is a dying expert.  This was one of my favorite parts as I am a major fan of tie-dying.

Different raw colored threads.  Not sure what the Khmer tag says.  Isn't their writing beautiful?

After the threads are dyed and dried, Women workers cut off the threads.

threads ready for weaving

Loom, partially woven material,and shuttle

Textured pattern of cloth and shuttle.

Tools of old in the museum at the end of the tour

Old loom- even the loom is a work of art

Traditional garments for royalty

We didn't really know what to expect when we set out for the Silk Farm, but we were pleasantly surprised.  The farm, factory and museum were all very insightful, and the shop was pretty breathtaking as far as museum shops go.  So many brilliantly colored garments, scarves, pillow cases, table cloths, ties, purses and other items.  We weren't allowed to take pictures otherwise I would have put one in here!  We bought a few things and walked around ooh-ing and aah-ing at every turn.  While the items in the shop were more expensive than in the markets, these items were very legitimate and compared to what you might pay in the West, this was nothing.  

All in all, it was a fantastic trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia.  Always so much to see and do and I'm lucky I got to do it twice. 

Mother Daughter Adventure Chronicles IVa- Siem Riep: More than Just Angkor Ruins

Siem Reap has more to offer than JUST the ruins...as if you'd need more than that to keep you busy and enlightened.  There is also a fantastic night bazaar, which mom and I spent a lot of time exploring and shopping.  

Almost every night after dinner we found ourselves at the night bazaar.  We had so many people to buy gifts for!

Here's a bit of the night scene of Siem Reap.

Mom's checking something out.  Oh, a scarf.  Surprise surprise!

Busy shoppers and vendors adding more goods to their shelves.

So many beautiful scarves to choose from.  It's hard to pick!

Some scarves are made right here in the night bazaar.

Apsara dancers and traditional Khmer dinner

This stall was very popular- rice, cement, and food bags recycled to make purses, wallets, etc.

We bought so many things from this man also.  He threw in a free wallet, and he gave us a ride home from the night bazaar later that evening...in his Lexus.  He was incredibly friendly, something that is common in Cambodia.  I guess the big purchase was helpful.  But I think he might have given us a ride anyways because we were at the bazaar quite late.

As you can see we enjoyed our shopping experiences.  It's also quite evident that we like scarves.  They're useful, beautiful and they make great gifts!  Cambodians have many uses for their 'karmars' as I believe they're called.  With so many patterns, color combinations and material quality and sizes, it's definitely hard to only choose a few.  We bought so many I even got a free bag, which I'm actually using now.  I brought my computer in it to this particular coffee shop where currently writing this entry.  It was better than a frequent buyers card!

In the next installment you'll see how the silk scarves this region of the world is famous for are made.  Mom and I visited the Silk Farm just outside the city of Siem Reap to see how it's done.  We were fascinated.  Look forward to that!