Thailand - Chiang Mai

There’s a lot to like about Thailand such as the warm weather, lush scenery, friendly people, and spicy cuisine, and my daughter has started asking questions like, “How long does it take to fly to Thailand from where we live?" and “How much is a ticket to Thailand?”  I can see the thoughts churning behind her blue-green eyes as she contemplates future travel when she’s older and her parents aren’t twenty feet away, twenty-four hours a day—good for her.  Thailand has that kind of effect on people as thousands of expats living in the country can attest. Many westerners relocate or retire here to enjoy the low cost of living, year-round tropical weather, welcoming locals, and quality health care.  One of the most popular destinations for expats is the city of Chiang Mai at the base of the mountains in the north, and it’s our home for the next couple of weeks unless we give in to the urge to sell everything and find a small condo with banana trees in the backyard full of colorful birds and a market down the street with fresh red peppers for sale every day—I’m sure there are lots of things that need painting around here.

Our villa is located in the San Sai district north of Chiang Mai proper, and it’s about a thirty-minute ride away in a songthaew, a tricked-out pickup truck used for ride sharing at a cheap cost.  The neighborhood is small and fairly new with a main avenue curving around a large grove of banana trees and smaller streets branching out lined with three-bedroom patio homes.  The houses were built Florida-style with stucco exteriors and tiled roofs, and each villa has a small carport with a rolling security gate operated by a remote control fob.  The corners of the properties are planted with large, leafy bushes covered with pink and orange flowers, and hummingbirds zip back and forth between the fragrant blossoms.  The neighborhood is bordered by a stucco wall that’s high enough for security but low enough to view the fronds of the coconut trees swaying in the ever-present light breeze in front of the hazy blue mountains in the distance.  Did I mention we were considering selling everything?  Deena and I have a large master bedroom suite, the kids have their own bedrooms, and there’s another full bathroom just off the living room.  We have a full kitchen and a washing machine on the patio out back, and the whole place has tiled floors with textured coverings on the walls and fresh glossy cream paint on the trim and doors.  We secured this place for twenty-nine dollars a day, and we still can't believe our good fortune.

We arrived in San Sai on Monday afternoon after an early morning flight from Bangkok, and it took a while for the young people working at the taxi stand to figure out where our house was located.  We’ve learned that the locals rely more on landmarks for directions instead of maps full of street names, and it helps to have a few pictures of neighborhood indicators stored on the phones.  We were worn out from traveling back from Beijing, and once we reached our new home, we threw the bags in the corners and retreated to our rooms for long naps.  The Duchess espresso machine, my new best friend and latest Gift From the Lord, helped me out of my travel fog that afternoon, and we set out walking to the nearby village square to explore and find provisions for the next several days.  We stuck close to the roadsides as scooters zoomed by on the narrow lane weaving around larger vehicles moving slowly toward the town crossroads.  

We got a lot of curious stares but just as many friendly smiles, and we immediately felt accepted in this small community with streets lined with small shops, and a large meat and produce market situated right in the middle of the action.  We found the grocery store and stocked up on breakfast items and a few other necessities then spent some time wandering the streets scoping out possible places for dinner. We happened upon a small, open-air restaurant just off the sidewalk where the smiling proprietor and his young daughter still dressed in her crisp school uniform welcomed us for a meal.  We sat around a small wooden plank table on pink plastic chairs and watched people walk by as we ate big steaming bowls of noodles with pork, beef, and vegetables flavored with fresh sprigs of spring onions and basil leaves.  The food was nourishing and energizing, and the whole meal cost a whopping three dollars leaving us plenty of money for chocolate and vanilla ice cream bars at the 7-Eleven on the way home.

We stayed close to home the next day so we could rest and the kids could catch up on school assignments since they got a long break during our trip to China. I also wanted to have time to write about our adventures in Beijing before the images started escaping from my travel-jumbled brain.  After several cups of espresso throughout the day and an afternoon nap, I finally started feeling somewhat normal again, and we agreed that another evening meal at our new favorite restaurant down the street was in order. After dinner, we spent some time exploring the village market and discovered that we could purchase anything from flip-flops to whole salted frogs and huge ginseng roots.  We also found a lady and her young son sitting behind a stand selling the Thai version of crepes, and she fried up a couple for us topping them with evaporated milk and a generous shake of sugar crystals—they didn’t make it home.

The next day, we were ready to do a little exploring; so we went to the village square, hopped a songthaew, squeezed in with a bunch of ladies also headed to town, and somehow managed to communicate well enough with the driver to get dropped off at the Wat Chedi Luang, a historic Buddhist Temple in the center of the Old District in Chiang Mai.  We were wearing shorts, but only Deena and Deveny had to wear loaner sarongs to cover their bare legs. Joseph and I got a pass since men are obviously already well-grounded and spiritually secure enough to enter temple grounds in the garb of their choosing.  The streets around the temple were lively with pedestrians darting in and out of shops and restaurants, and the blue sky and warm sunshine appeared to have set a cheerful countenance on everyone in town.  The old stone temple of Chedi Luang was built in the thirteenth century, and it’s still remarkably intact after suffering centuries of erosion and earthquakes, and it’s the focal point of a huge complex of smaller temples decorated in typical gilded fashion.  We removed our shoes and visited a few temples containing giant golden Buddhas, some several centuries old before heading to the covered picnic tables out back for the main purpose of our visit:  the daily monk chat.  Every morning and afternoon, one or two of the resident temple monks spends a couple of hours sitting in the shade talking with visitors about their lives as monks and the Buddhist philosophy.  The event is helpful to the monks, who are looking to improve their English skills, and fascinating to travelers seeking insight into the mystery of the smiling Buddha statues and the orange-robed cenobites with shaved heads that study the tenets set forth by Siddhartha Gautama twenty-five hundred years ago.

We had the privilege of chatting with Phra Wattayah, a bright-eyed young man who joined the monastic order at age eleven. Six months ago at the age of twenty one, he passed his nerve-wracking oral examination and became a full-fledged monk.  Since he is not allowed to work, he sits with the other monks in front of the temple and receives alms in the form of food and money from fellow Buddhists showing respect to the Buddha and the monks that perpetuate the ancient philosophy.  Wattayah is allowed to spend the money he receives from alms on food at the local university which he attends for free while majoring in English. He must be a good student based on his command of the language that he said was difficult to learn.  His family lives two-hundred kilometers away, and he spends one week with them every year.  At some point, he will have to decide if he wants to remain a monk or enter a life outside the temple, but in the meantime, he wants to maintain his current level of happiness through enjoyment of his studies and daily meditation practices.  He’s also not allowed to play sports or exercise—a rule which would certainly contribute to my happiness.  We talked with Wattayah for a long time and enjoyed every minute spent with this mature young man with a playful gleam in his eye. We thanked him for his time as we left the shade of the temple grounds and headed back to the streets of Chiang Mai.  

Wattayah

The Old City is bordered by canals lined with green paths and the ancient walls, which are still mostly intact, and within the walls, there are temples, various forms of housing, restaurants large and small, and many places to spend the Thai baht, the local currency which stretches a long way in this country.  We stopped at a shophouse restaurant for a quick lunch and had crispy-fried chicken filets that put the Colonel to shame and chunks of fresh mango for dessert.  Fortified for the afternoon, we walked to a meeting point and got picked up by the delightful Fonnie, owner of the Siam Garden Cooking School, and hung on in the back of her truck as she zoomed around town picking up other culinary contenders anticipating an afternoon spent studying the intricacies of food preparation Thai-style.  We shared the truck bed with Tareesha, a young saleswoman on holiday from England, and Juliano, a massage therapist from Canada hoping to learn Thai massage techniques to enhance his business back home.  We had great fun sharing travel stories with these two, and by the time we ended up at a large outdoor market, we were joined by another one of Fonnie’s trucks carrying a couple from Hong Kong and a family of four from China.

Fonnie spent a long time with our group showing us around the market and how to identify and purchase the various herbs and vegetables particular to Thai cuisine, and we had great fun sniffing everything from lemongrass to Chinese celery, and we learned which tiny peppers added flavor to a dish and which ones were the equivalent of Thai dynamite.  Fonnie, to paraphrase Shakespeare, was little, but she was fierce as she exploded with excitement during her explanation of the basis of Thai cooking. Flush with our new knowledge, we boarded the trucks and drove out to her house in the countryside.  The cooking school was set up in a large covered patio with sections dedicated for meeting, food prep, cooking, and most importantly, eating.  The back of the patio opened up to Fonnie’s immense backyard with rosebushes full of pink blooms by the walls and mammoth banana trees bordering her herb garden with their leathery leaves flapping in the breeze - the only thing missing was a hammock.

Fonnie in her element

Each student picked dishes to prepare and cook from a card listing a curry paste, curry dish, soup, appetizer, entree, and dessert.  Between the four members of my family, we cooked twenty-four dishes over four hours of class time that seemed to whiz by like it was fifteen minutes. We were led by a young lady named Ploy and a young man named Camp, and they were experts at cheerfully encouraging novices to chop herbs and veggies and use them with meats and sauces to create masterpieces of Thai cuisine.  After completing each course, we left our cooking stations and carried our fresh, steaming dishes to low tables in a room off the patio and ate our creations washing down the heat of the peppers with cold water from metal cups sweating with condensation.  Joseph and Deveny did everything on their own, and they were pleased with every dish they prepared.  Each of us had command of our own cutting board and knives, mortar and pestle, prep station, and gas burner with sets of pans, spatulas, and a giant wok for cooking.  Over the course of the afternoon, we got to know our classmates well, and we enjoyed eating our fantastic food with them as the mysteries of Thai cooking unfolded before our eyes and pepper-stained fingers.  At the end of class, we received recipe books and encouragement from Fonnie, who personally drove us home—her house turned out to be just ten minutes down the road from ours.  Needless to say, we didn’t require dinner that evening, and we all got a little sleepy listening to our economics lesson (no surprise there either) before turning in for the night. If we didn’t have flights and apartments booked for the next three months, we would surely be expats in the making.