Ciao, Chiang Mai

Following on from our time in the Laotian treetops, we headed back to where our journey had started weeks and weeks ago - to Thailand again. This time, we were looking at the north of the country, a place called Chiang Mai, which was supposed to be a particular highlight of southeast Asia - we had heard lots about it, so approached with high expectations.

As with many of our destinations, this city was very old, and as such had a lot of history. We stayed near the old town, which had in the past been a huge fortress with thick walls and a moat. Fortunately, these defences haven't been needed much in the last few centuries, and so the city has been able to spill out over them, and now goes on for miles in every direction, with temples of all shapes and sizes scattered around.

Either a very good waxwork, or an even better example of meditation

There’s not much to say about our first few days in the city, so I’ll try not to waffle. It was hot, very hot - most days were over 40 degrees - and so we even the slightest exertion left us sweating profusely and running for our next air conditioned cafe. Despite this, we managed to explore one or two of the dozens of temples, some of the many bookshops that were to be found, and a 3D art museum. The latter was a fun way to spend an hour or two, and made a change from temple-gazing. Plus, most importantly, it was air conditioned.

Wine o'clock is earlier every day

Oh, and a special mention should go to the nice Indian restaurant we found - so nice, we went twice.

After a few lazy days like this, we came on to the main events of our visit to Chiang Mai - firstly, another cookery course! Avid readers will remember that we went on one in Vietnam as well, and we couldn’t skip an opportunity to learn about yummy Thai food as well. This course was an evening affair, and started with a trip to a nearby market to learn more about the ingredients - sadly no embarrassing hats this time, except for the one I usually wear.

Once we’d finished gathering supplies, it was time to get started. This time, instead of each of us making one big dish and sharing with the group, we were each making several different dishes for ourselves, which meant for a much busier lesson!

The first dish we made was Pad Thai, a classic stir fry, that you can find everywhere - from posh restaurants to petrol stations, everyone has their own version of it in Thailand. They ranged from “meh” to “wow”, and I’m happy to say that we were taught how to make a particularly “wow” dish. The main ingredients are chicken, rice noodles, garlic, egg, soy sauce, fish sauce, tamarind sauce, carrot and beansprouts. Preparation was pretty simple, and once everything was ready to go, it seemed like less than five minutes until each of us had our own tasty dish. This is one that we’re both keen to get into the habit of making back at home - quick, tasty, and healthy!

After that, we moved on to a few other dishes. We were taught (for the third time this trip!) how to make spring rolls, and then we were divided into groups to start making different curry pastes.

Each group started with an alarmingly large pile of different spices - mostly fresh or dried chilli, depending on which curry was desired - and then started pounding them into a paste using an industrial-sized mortar and pestle. This was hard work, but made easier by sharing with team members, and in the knowledge of the yumminess this would bring about.

Red, green, penang and massaman curry pastes

After that, it was a simple matter of deciding how sexy we were each feeling - this was how our teacher asked how hot we dared to make our curries. I’ll let you guess what answers we gave.

As expected, the curries were super-delicious - I made a Massaman, and Zoe did a Penang. We’ll definitely be making more of these in the future, and hopefully with our own paste, if our desire for fresh and tasty food overcomes our innate laziness when faced with the alternative of a pre-made spice pack (boo, hiss!). Happily, we were given another recipe book here, so will have something to blame at future dinner parties, if the food is too sexy to handle.

Third time is the charm

For our final full day in Chiang Mai, it was a treat for Zoe’s birthday - a trip to a nearby elephant sanctuary! There seem to be more elephant sanctuaries up in the north of Thailand than you can shake a stick at, but it takes a bit of research and detective work to find out which are worth supporting - each one will say that they rescue these creatures from unhappy lives, but quite a few will be continuing with bad habits, and offering rides or even trying to keep them tame with threats of pain. Fortunately, our friends Heather and Laura had done all the hard work (thanks!) for us, so we were happy to follow their lead and visit Elephant Nature Park for the day.

So, we were picked up and driven to the reserve. As we travelled, we were shown a fairly harrowing documentary about the work the park does, which started by showing some of the horrible treatment an elephant has to endure to work with humans, either as an animal to be ridden, a performer in a circus, or as part of a logging team. These are wild and gentle creatures, and it’s not natural for them to do any of these jobs - in order to get them ready, their spirits are literally broken through torture and misery, until they learn that to disobey their handler means further pain.

Personally, I had known little of this in the past, and have ridden an elephant once before, years ago. However, after getting on, it quickly became clear how unhappy the animal was, with chains around it’s legs and stuck on the same route every day with heavy loads to carry. The only happy part of that experience was giving the elephant a bath afterwards, which she seemed to enjoy. Zoe has had a similar experience, and since then neither of us has had any desire to support that side of their treatment, though we can completely understand the appeal of such activities to other travellers, who may not know better.

So! As you may have guessed, the aim of this park was to rescue elephants from unhappy lives in captivity, and give them a new life as close to being back in the wild as they could manage. A big part of their plan was to motivate the gentle giants with pleasure, rather than pain - the difference between a banana and a stick. We went on a “Pamper a Pachyderm” package, where we spent the day taking four old elephant ladies on a walk around the park. Like many old ladies, their day started with being fed dozens of halved watermelons, followed by a morning dirt bath. The oldest, (and coincidentally grumpiest) of the group was a lady called Happy, who was in her seventies, and needed some of the skins cut off her watermelons, so she could manage them with her teeth - no colossal dentures were available, sadly.

Happy!

We were each given a satchel full of bananas, and took the ladies off on their stroll, giving them encouragement in fruity form whenever they became distracted. It was really nice getting so close to them again, and with our bags of fruit we certainly felt popular - there was always a trunk prodding and pestering for more! As soft as these ladies were, it was very obvious that they could crush us without noticing, if we were stood between them and a good meal. This lent an undercurrent of danger, not usually experienced on leisurely park strolls!

It was a nice day for a walk, though by the time we stopped for lunch, we could see that clouds were starting to gather, and the ominous rumblings  were starting from the horizon. Still, what’s the worst that could happen?

Oh, yeah, stampede!

So! Just as we were fording a shallow river back to the start of our stroll, the heavens opened. What started as drizzle very quickly turned to a downpour, and that wasted no time in becoming a proper hailstorm, with thunder and lightning directly above us, and chunks of ice the size of marbles being flung at us by strong wind, sending Zoe's hat flying. This biblical storm also came as a surprise to the elephants we were with, and they started running around like, well, wild animals. Me, Zoe and the other tourists were led of in one direction by our group leader, whilst the elephant minders had to run off in the other, to try and calm down their partners - I did not envy them at this point. Hysteria nearly overwhelmed the group when some of the ladies came charging back towards us, but we were fortunately able to scurry away behind a truck before disaster struck.

With that drama behind us, we were taken to shelter in a nearby porch to wait for things to die down. After a little while, the rain stopped, and pretty soon the sun was shining again, as the apocalypse had never really happened. However, our soaked clothes told a different story. Somehow, one of the guides even managed to find Zoe's hat, and the two were unexpectedly reunited. Of course, as it the way with her and headgear, this was only a temporary reprieve, and shortly afterwards hat number four was forever lost, again.

Happily, the old ladies we had been shepherding had been coaxed back to safety, and we gave them their second crate of watermelons as an afternoon snack, before saying goodbye. Our last experience at the Elephant Nature Park was a visit to their newest arrival - a baby elephant, who was only five days old! The mum already had a three year-old baby, and because she was still breastfeeding, AND the gestation time for an elephant is near two years, they had no idea she was even pregnant until a commotion one night heralded this very welcome arrival. It took some serious detective work to figure out who the father was, given that little one was conceived on the sly so long ago.

This marked the end of our trip to the Elephant Park, and of our time in Chiang Mai. Next, we were heading to the south of Thailand!

A special mention should also go the the five hundred dogs that the park has running around, most of whom were rescued after being abandoned in the floods affecting large areas of Thailand in 2011. Zoe was in heaven, and I had to frisk her afterwards to be sure she wasn't smuggling two or three out.