While I really enjoyed my time up at Wat Pa Tam Wua and certainly would have stayed longer, I had business to attend to down in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. I had a friend coming to visit who didn’t happen to be too far away, just over the mountains in the Chinese Province of Yunnan: Keri!
For anyone who doesn’t know, Keri is an old friend that goes back to the crazy year that was 2017. I was working in Shanghai at the time as a new professional, and she got brought on at the same company fresh out of college. She moved to Shanghai with her boyfriend, we all went out for her birthday, and a strong friendship was formed over drunken ramblings in Chinese. Since then I gave her some tips after I visited Kunming (where she now lives) and we’ve hung out in Rhode Island, Shanghai after she moved away, and Boston! When she heard I would be in Chiang Mai she realized it was only about 1.5 hours by plane from her Uni and we figured we could hang out.
The first thing we agreed on for the trip was that we would eat. Eat anything. Eat everything! Thailand is probably the best type of cuisine that exists in the world and there are dozens of different dishes to try. Our first stop was this PadGraPow, made out of pork. It might just look like meat stir-fried with vegetables next to rice, and that’s exactly what it is! I got it extra spicy, which prompted a nervous look from the waitress, but I assured her I could handle it. Unfazed by the spice, I loved every bite of this dish. It’s got some garlic, peppers, and Thai Holy Basil in it. It was cheap, and an excellent first step in the food exploration. Afterward we had some fried chicken (Thai fried chicken, outside of fast food, is the crunchiest in the world) and headed off for our hotel.
On The Journey so far I’ve made it a habit to stay in basically the cheapest place I can find a bed in each night. Keri was pretty interested in going a little more fancy then that due to her currently living in a dorm back in Kunming and I relented since I had been sleeping on ceramic tiles and a thin bedroll in Mae Hong San. With two separate beds in our room, we started the time at the hotel cracking open a beer, turning on some crazy Chinese soap opera (they’re all crazy) and eventually making our way down to the pool.
The pool. Was. FREEZING.
I’d been dealing with hot tropical humidity for the better part of two months at this point, so a pool at a hotel sounded like a really nice thing to have. I’d also had a pool when I visited Angkor Wat with friends back in Cambodia and that was warm so I found myself really shocked when the pool sent me shivering at just the touch of a toe! Only later did I realize two things: Chiang Mai is in the mountains, and it is the beginning of December. Realizing this, the temperature of the pool made a lot more sense! We sat there for a few hours trying the amazing hotel cocktails ($6.62 for things that would easily cost $15 back home) before heading out to find dinner.
Keri specifically wanted Pineapple Fried Rice. So we spent an hour finding a reasonably priced place to do that and, on the way, I came across the above-posted meats! Back home deer isn’t too uncommon, I fondly remember eating some deer sausages every once and a while from my manager while working at Fort Ontario. I tried crocodile while in Vietnam back in 2018. Crickets were only last July in LiJiang, China. I haven’t gotten the stomach to try Scorpion yet. All of that left Ostrich as my option for new food! It wasn’t fake, the man selling it was able to tell me the exact location from where the meat was sourced. And it was good! A lot like goose in flavor, and like really gamey mutton in consistency. I’d have it again, but not at that price. Keri got her Pineapple fried rice (also delicious) and we headed to THC Rooftop Bar. No weed available, just nice reggae music over the speakers to sip an overpriced alcohol bucket to.
The next day was a slow one as we lounged around the hotel until maybe 3pm. We were on vacation! A little lounging is okay. Our first stop after that was a massage! I’ve sort of made it a habit to go and try a massage in each country I’ve visited down here – they’re all stunningly different from one another. Keri, even as far back as 2017, told me how brutal the Thai massages were compared to other places. We went and had one, and it was something else. I heard so many popping noises you’d think I was made of Rice Krispies! Many of which prompted a concerned laugh from my masseuse. Compared to the other countries I’ve been to, Thailand certainly has the most body-crunching type! When the massage finished up we headed to the Eastern Gate of Chiang Mai’s wall where, conveniently, the Sunday Night Market started!
I’ve been to my share of night markets here in Asia by this point in my life; they’re very common in these countries. But Chiang Mai’s Sunday Night Market was easily the most crowded one I have ever visited. This photo is no good at showing that, but we both felt extremely claustrophobic going from one end of the city to the other. That’s right, the night market goes almost all the way from the eastern gate of the city to the western gate, about 2.5 km. For much of that we were forced along at a pace of maybe two footsteps every 5 seconds. It was brutal, made worse by the fact that we realized early on that the market didn’t have anything that we would want to buy. It wasn’t all bad, though. I tried an ant-egg omelet for the first time in my life there – which was disgusting. And we saw some amazing Tattoo Art as well. Eventually we found a way out of the crowd and down a street on the way to the north gate. I’d read about a bar up there that we wanted to try in the hopes of getting live music to chill out to. It did not disappoint.
Enter the North Gate Jazz Co-Op. It’s an unassuming bar from the outside, but you quickly notice the crowd spilling out onto the street because there isn’t enough space to listen to the band from the inside. It has four floors, only three of which are really usable, with cheaper prices on the top where you can overlook the ancient city moat and hear the faintest notes from the band downstairs. Which was phenomenal. Like, really good. We only stayed an hour the first night but the guitar solo we witnessed alone made us want to return the day after. It was all 70’s to 90’s classic rock they covered, things my parents played on the radio while I grew up. Brilliant! The second night had a stronger samba-feel than the first night and we danced up a storm. If I lived in Chiang Mai, it’s the sort of bar I would visit each night I had the chance. Apparently they do different music every night, and strangers from the crowd are encouraged to join in on impromptu jam sessions.
Chiang Mai has just one problem, though. Alcohol can’t be sold after 12, and bars must all close. We discovered this the first night at THC Rooftop Bar, and it held both nights at North Gate Jazz CoOp. We even tried to buy beer from 7/11 with no luck! Pretty odd, I think, but I can understand the reasoning behind it. Food, on the other hand, does not stop. And Keri had a most peculiar suggestion for where we could grab a bite at 12 o’clock in the morning…
I’m a massive fan of Taco Bell back in the states and have tried it in three separate countries. This is just a clever local taking advantage of drunk foreigners not being able to recognize the S on the end of Taco. It has nothing to do with the franchise. Even so, his food is good.
I’m not going to say it’s the best Mexican food out there, but it’s far from the worst. Certainly much better than any Mexican food cart piloted by a local has any right to be located on the bar street of northern Thailand! I wolfed it down quickly, total bliss on my face and in my stomach at the taste of something different!
The next day was mostly the same as well. We relaxed by the pool, had nice hotel cocktails, and had a second massage – this one more brutal than the first. We had plans in the evening: Smile Organic Farm Cooking School. My friend Kyle had taken one of their classes a week prior or so and highly recommended the experience. The hotel also happened to have brochures that won us over on the whole thing and in the afternoon, around 4pm, they picked us up for an evening course out at their farm. We first checked out a local market where Keri got her first taste of the amazing Pandan, a staple flavor here in SEA. Then it was off into the countryside where we found our cooking stations, a couple of beers for sale during cooking, and our guide Phuki.
First we had introductions to Phuki, a fun and energetic woman who kept calling me handsome – even sexy, once! She was essentially our teacher and guide into the world of Thai cooking. Giving us instructions, explaining why some ingredients and not others, even helped us choose which dishes we should make based on our preferences. She showed us around the garden at the school where we could see how some plants grow, and taste the difference between various ingredients, like Thai Garlic and Western Garlic, or Basil and Holy Basil (Thai Basil). It was very informative.
There’s Keri showing her Rugby muscles in crushing the ingredients for the red curry some of us would make that night. If I recall, it was something like 12 ingredients for each curry? Green Curry had green chilis (younger), another kind had fresh red chilis (mature), and the red curry had dried red chilis which made them the spiciest. I got to work the green curry paste and that was hard. Took constant effort on mine and another dudes part for maybe 15 minutes before it turned into a proper curry paste. I was luckily wearing my glasses otherwise the curry juices (which hit the lenses a few times) would have gone in my eyes…
Once done our stations were ready to cook! Eight people entered the cooking area, eight people left with delicious food. It was like an episode of Master Chef where we all got participation awards. I hammed it up, of course, and Phuki played along. But we did concentrate on making the perfect dishes. It wasn’t easy… I developed a brand new respect for street vendors who make their noodles perfect every time after the experience. All the ingredients were positioned as ready to use before we started cooking. At Phuki’s instructions we would follow. “Burner to HIGH!” She would say. “Add the sauce!… Add your spices and simmer… ADD THE NOODLES” On and one she shouted in perfect time, and we all did our best to pretend we’d been making Thai food our whole lives.
The end result was a really good Pad Thai for me! I also ended up making Green Curry (which Phuki complimented for its spiciness), and Hot and Sour Soup. They all tasted excellent. I was, however, particularly proud of the Pad Thai. The best I’ve ever had was still in Luang Prabang, but this portion was honestly in the top five I’ve ever sampled. As I cooked and ate it, I was given powerful nostalgia for my time working at AppeThaizing in Clay back in 2011. I like to think my food would have made Joe proud!
Chiang Mai was a fun time. It was filled with fun, food, and beer. It had lots of other little things that made me want to check it out for longer, but The Journey was calling me from elsewhere. Thanks to my friend Keri for asking to hang out! I probably wouldn’t have seen as much of the city if she hadn’t suggested it. It’ll be worth going back to someday, that’s for sure! If you get a chance to head to Thailand but you’re strapped for time, put this city at the top of your list. Plane tickets from Bangkok can go as low as $10.