Thai Cuisine and More!

Cooking brings me joy. While baking stirs up my hearts passion, cooking still excites me with all the possibilities. Many of you know that Nathan and I are two people who LOVE dozens of options and possibilities. Therefore, it seems a bit like heaven when we stroll through the many markets here with hundreds of food carts, some serving the same as the next, but our options are endless! Look to the left we have rice sausages and kebabs  with assortments of veggies and meat (not sure what the meat IS... but that's beside the point). Look to our right and we have curry upon  curry... spin the color wheel and you'll be sure to find a curry in that shade. You can fry pretty much anything here... fried bananas, fried rice & noodles, fried fish entrails, fried maggots and grasshoppers... really... ANYTHING. There are no limits. If you walk a little further we find minced chicken salads, Tom Yum (a spicy noodle soup), Thai pancakes (banana and nutella toppings is a personal fave). On the more rare occasion we see a woman preparing coconut pudding... these are never passed up. I haven't even mentioned the fruit and vegetable stands and the endless amounts of beverages. Nathan can now say that he has ordered and eaten frog, although his heart ached for the little guy the whole way through.

It's amazing that spending only $2 here will fill you up for half a day. It makes sense there are so many vendors... It's much cheaper to buy an entire meal for 75 cents, rather than buy groceries. However, I do miss preparing my own food at times.

We've enjoyed the cooking so much here that we decided to join a cooking class for an entire day to learn the basics of thai cooking. We worked with about 10 other visitors in preparing 6 different dishes that we got to choose. We woke up that morning not eating breakfast because we knew we would be eating endless amounts, which certainly rang true. We first made a stop at a local market and learned about different veggies and spices that I've never even seen back home. We then went to the home/school of the lovely thai couple who run the program. We had a wonderful day preparing spicy soups, stir fries, curry paste, curry dishes, salads, and desserts. A few photos are below with some of our creations and our official certification of completion. We also received a recipe book for everything we made, which will come in handy. Needless to say, we had what we eat in about 4 days in the span of about 6 hours.

Enough about food!

Nathan and I have now safely made it up north to Chiang Mai. We've been here 4 nights after a long and dreadful trip from the south of Thailand. We've discovered that overnight trains are the way to go... that way at least there's a chance of being able to sleep for part of the 12-14 hours of the trip.

Chiang Mai is a fairly large city here. There are approximately 150,000 residents, but the streets are no where as crazy as Bangkok. We're planning to stay here for about another week until we have to renew our tourist visas for our last week, which we will either be heading to Laos for an elephant festival, or we'll just be paying a visit to the immigrations office here.

Our trip has no surprise been a day to day adventure. We've changed our plans on the fly and walked onto every island and off of every train and boat without really knowing where we're going or where we'll stay... but we love the adventure. The itinerary we had created before coming has not had one ounce of truth in it... minus the fact that we went south first and then north.

Here's our small list of cultural differences that we've discovered since being here.
1. Trash cans are rarely ever accessible... why use a trash can when you can toss your trash out the window onto the street and dump it into the river!? It's rather sad really.
2. The southern region does not have flushers on their toilets so we have a bucket of water with a pale to wash it down
3. In reference to the above, no toilet paper is allowed in the toilet... thankfully there ARE trash cans in the bathrooms. Although most bathrooms do not have toilet paper and if they do offer it you have to pay at the door for it.
4. The locals run most of their business' straight from their homes.
5. Pedestrians certainly do not have the right of way and crossing the street sometimes means risking your life!
6. We believe there must be no drinking and driving laws because we see the Tuk-Tuk drivers downing bottles of whiskey with their buddies and then wanting to drive us to Tiger Kingdom. Don't worry Dad, we walk at all cost.
7.The Thai music videos ALWAYS have a girl crying.
8. You often take your shoes off before entering a home or even a family run mini mart.
9. Spicy for us means 5-8 chili's in each dish, while spicy for the average Thai means 30 chili's!

There are of course many other differences, but these are a few that we've found entertaining, disturbing, and just worth noting.

Got some pictures for you below...

 Proof that we have been to "The Beach"

 Raggae Man's Bungalow on Koh Lanta

 Thailand does have rainy days!

 Bananagrams for the Rainy Days on Koh Jum... an island with no electricity except for 3 hrs of the evening.

 These guys like Bananagrams too.

 Chelsea Pondering Life

 Nathan feeling his mustache.

 Everybody smokes! Talk about enlightenment...

Chinese New Year in China Town of Bangkok

 Some food we didn't eat.

 Some more good food we didn't eat.

 Everybody is Chinese for Chinese new year.

 Cooking Class. Note: not so many chili's next time

 Pink is Slimming on me.

 Spicy Soup & Chicken w/ sweet basil

Homemade Curry paste and added veggies.

We send our love to our friends and family back home! We dearly miss everyone, but we are very thankful for skype, email, and blogs to be able to keep current!

Nathan & Chels