Updated! Miriam's adventures in Chiang Mai

  Appologies for the pictures being all mixed up! There is some sort of issue with the site that I can not seem to solve. You will have to make your own sense of order out of this chaos!
Happy looking :)
M
 

 Dragon fruit! Yum!!! Its sweet and refreshing, and you can get a smoothy made from just this blended up with ice and its sooooo pink !

 Last minute swatting before our assessment for level two last Friday

Everyone happy after our class assessment (level two)! We all passed and about half are continuing nest week and the rest of us will stop for now. Maybe come back another time. A really nice class :) 

Celebration time at the North Gate Jazz Co-op on Sunday night. Lots of dancing, wonderful music with friends from ITM school.

Nasty-looking deep fried things at the market... Wasn't game enough to try :(

This is enough to put me off eating meat. I had to hold my breath as I walked past.. 

Chiang Mai was in rain for four or five days after the monsoon from Vietnam hit us. As you can see the roads are pretty flooded and the railway was closed for some days.

What I learnt to cook: (L-R) Shrimp Thom Yum Soup, Chicken cashewnut stirfry, and there is Chicken Coconut Green Curry in the bowl with the lid on the left.

 Me pretending to cook for the photo (as you can see there is nothing in the wok !!)

 At the Thai Farm Cooking School where we were taught about Thai herbs in their garden.

 All the students from the ITM (International Trainaing Massage) School for the weekly Qi Gong warm up at the park. The founder of the school is "John" (his English name which we know him by, because his Thai name is relaly long!) is the man sitting down in the centre front in the light blue shirt. As you can guess from looking at this picture, there are people from lots of different nationalities here, which makes for interesting conversations.

A gorgeous cat that came and lay on the table where I was about to eat, demanding tummy scratches

 

I got iterviewed by the girl and her friend the other evening at the Saturday Walking street market. It was for their uni assignment for English paper

 

Temple near the market at dusk.....



Buddha inside the temple

Me doing my homework for the massage course- colouring in diagrams of stretches and anatomy charts :)

Luch with Katy and Magdelena at the local 30 baaht lunch stop. We usually have rice and some curries, plus radish soup and some kind of local fruit. (its a surprise- they bring something different our every day).

DOing Thai Chi at the park on Friday as a warm up for our assessment to come later in the day. Luckily most of us passed with top marks this day :)

The fruits of my wanderings- I have given myself some themes for taking photos: graffiti, locals, dead animals and flowers. (and food, but that's more of a record-keeping thing and to make you all jealous, rather than an artistic endeavour).

Dead cat.... so cute but so sad

random flower on the roadside

The top of a temple with all these bells that jingle in the wind- lovely!

Same temple. These lions at the entrances are apparently distinctive to temples in this area, due to the Burmese influence.



Sunday walking street market. (It doesn't mean the stalls walk, it means the roads are closed and you walk down the street!)



Many many earrings for sale!

Thailand pics :)

In Bangkok. can you see the big black sculpture on the far side of the street?

Here she is, attracting tourists from all around :)

Ordering street food from a vedor... These little things are sort of coconut egg mixture, a bit like sweet custard-yum !

Pad Thai always goes down well with travellers

Hanging birds

Street stalls in the monsoon rain

Yum yum, we love the food here!

In the one of the red trucks that carts people around for 20 or 30 Baht (if you are a good bargainer)

Graceful Thai dancers at the Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai

And AMAZING ice-cream that you just want to eat more of. I had chocolate and popcorn, which sounds strange, but it was divine (buttery, a little salty and very dark chocolatey)  

There is tones of traditional and contemporary craft for sale here at the various different markets. This is a second-hand bag I got for cheap-cheap.

Morning tea at one of the nicer guesthouses we stayed at. This was the last morning before we parted ways for a couple of weeks- Jo headed to Tokampai farm for a two-week permaculture course, and I stayed in Chiang Mai to study traditional Thai massage.

Thailand so far...

We arrived in Thailand on Monday and hung out in Bangkok for a few days. We dived into the pad thai and other local cuisine (although the vegetarian food here is limited) and Miriam has been discovering new fruits :).
Miriam had a great time checking out all the market areas around Khau San (never remember how to spell that) and doing some shopping, while I wanted to get out as quickly as possible ;)

Oh, yeah and we went to see the dentist. A little place in the middle of Bangkok somewhere which was recommended to us by a friend of Saira's (is that right Miriam?). Nice little place and friendly dentist.
Miriam had been eager to come here since her last dentist appointment (a year and a half ago) prompted her to get 8 fillings!!!! And guess what the Thai dentist said; "I can't find any problems here" (even after two x-rays). So what has happened in the meantime? Have Miriam's teeth pulled a "wolverine" and magically healed themselves? Well, after a second opinion on the x rays we might know more.
In the meantime I decided I had better have a checkup too since my last one was a while ago (*hrmm*, 3 years ago). And what was the verdict? Teeth clean and 3 fillings. Alrighty, why not, it isn't gonna be this cheap in New Zealand. So I went ahead and got my fillings done and on top of that, got a fresh clean. 1300 Baht. Nice. I didn't ask about my wisdom teeth though, I think I'll leave that for another day :).

We're in Chiang Mai now and having a little trouble deciding what to do and where to go next...
Miriam is interested in a Thai massage course and I'm looking into a permaculture course at a farm further north.....

Trekking (and more) images!

Lakeside at Pokhara...

Johannes and Thinley look at the boats together...

L-R: Jyoti (aka Judith), Chloe and Johannes on the paddleboat that we hired for an hour of lake-enjoyment

Jyoti makes sure Thinley is holding on tightly!

Shopping at Lakeside tourist spot. Chloe and Remy bought Keens like mine for  about 30 bucks (instead of $400!!!), but maybe they are not as good quality, just copied to look right. Also bought a 40L pack for about $40NZ. Not bad. Here, Thinley wears fake Ray Bans...

Dawa's (Thinley's mum) birthday celebration. We had veg and non-veg lasagne made in a pot on the stove (no ovens here in the kitchens). I was so surprised that it was truely delicious. Jyoti and Dawa even made the pasta by hand!! This was Dawa's first time celebrting her birthday-it is not common in Tibetan culture.

Chloe and Thinley being crazy monsters

Me and Thinley being red tongue monsters

Up from Phedi we met these rice growers. The old woman I am next to was very crazy and  funny. The boy had good English and explained many things to us about the rice and his plans to join the Nepali army.

The six-day old goat-kids Jo wrote about. They were super cute and did these mannic jumps all over the place landing uncontrollably in strange places or on their backs! At night they were kept under a cone-shaped basket inside to protect them from running away or getting eaten by predators.

Remy tries this traditional way of carrying grass etc. This grass is for the goats and buffalo to eat.  They get fed lots and well looked after. The goats are kept for meat and the buffalo for milk. Buffalo milk is much yummier because it is creamier than cow milk. Especially good in masala tea. Hmmmm......

Cute new kitten that was the only one left of the litter of three. (mother ate one :( and one ran away, I think)

Mokkai (corn) freshly harvested and cooked for a snack before dinner. (we helped)

Johannes in his Nepali trekking outfit. (notice the umbrella-very important for monsoon downpours!)

View from Sarankot of lake and valley below. Stunning. (we had this view plus more from the 'Paboramic Guest House' we stayed in)

Walking up from the river after crossing, down from the crazy jungle descent on the last day. We joined these boys in the river for a swim to cool off and rinse our sweat.