Tale of Two Cities

We've been in Thailand for a month now, and I haven't told you a single thing about it – sorry! So much has happened that I just haven't had time to blog, which I guess is a good thing. There's a lot to tell, so I've split it up into a couple of posts.

The reason we returned to Bangkok at the beginning of June was to meet up with my lovely friend Tara, who I've known since high school. Back home, we get together every couple of weeks for a good natter, too much sushi and waaaayyy too much wine. The thought of not being able to do this again for a whole year was just too much to bear, and before I left London she made plans to come out to Thailand with two of her sisters, so that we could do pretty much the same thing on the other side of the world. Sushi was replaced by green curries and pizza, and in place of wine we had some amazing whiskey shakes (think whiskey blended with fruit and ice – amazing), and a fab time was had by all.

During the day we left Karl to his own devices while we escaped Bangkok's heat in some air conditioned malls for a spot of lunch and some window shopping. All of this might not sound too exciting to everyone back home, but it's been SO long since I spent time with my friends – it's not till I spent a few days with Tara that I realised just how much I've been missing it!

Along the way, we saw some of the effects of the recent protests, which had taken place predominately in the Siam Square part of town, where most of the big malls are located. We tried to enter one of the shopping centres but were informed that it was closed. One look at the next mall along, Zen World, told us why. It has been completely burnt out in a fire – and I mean totally wrecked. There's just the skeleton of the building left.

My photo only shows a very small section, but the mall is actually an entire block long and the extent of the damage is the same across the whole thing. It was quite shocking because the buildings and street surrounding this mall look pretty much untouched. And on the surface at least, the rest of Bangkok seems to be business as usual – you'd never guess any rioting had taken place. Anyway, I just though it would be an interesting update compared to my last photos of the protesting (a couple of months earlier), when people were camped out on the streets, happily enjoying picnics and foot massages.

Tara and I also decided to see a couple of temples while we were out and about. There was Wat Pho with the huge reclining Buddha, which was pretty cool:
But the highlight was probably this:


I don't think I've ever seen one of these outside of a theme park or beach!

Meanwhile, Karl had his own adventures, making friends with a Thai guy called Daeng, and spending the entire day eating and drinking, returning home only to collect the bottle of whiskey he'd bought from duty free the day before. He stumbled in at 5am after finishing the whiskey with his newfound friends and going to a local nightclub! The next day was spent nursing a horrendous hangover, but it sounds like the spontaneous adventure was definitely worth it. Oh, and he got a haircut from a gay hairdresser who tried to cop a feel. Fun times!

After a few fun-filled days, Tara flew back to England, and Karl and I headed up Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. It's Thailand's second largest city, and it's a lot more chilled out than Bangkok, with plenty to do.

What with our love of both cooking and Thai food, it only made sense to do a cookery course. Thai food is one of those things that never tastes quite right when I try to make it at home, so I was very eager to learn how it's really supposed to be done. We chose a company called Cooking at Home, run by some friendly ladies who have a really nice open-air kitchen just outside the city. We made pretty much all of our favourite dishes – Thai green curry, hot and sour Tom Yum soup, green papaya salad, spring rolls, and mango with sticky coconut rice. These are our delicious creations:

To be honest, after over three months of eating out, it was strange to be back in the kitchen and it took a while to remember how the whole cooking thing works. For example, just after this photo was taken, Karl managed to fling a chunk of spice paste into his eye.

It took a little while to recover, but once we got going it was a lot of fun, and the food was fantastic (if I do say so myself).


We were given recipe books too, which is handy because there's no way we'll be able to remember everything when we get back next Feb!

The next day we hired a bike and rode up the nearby hills to Doi Suthep temple. Well, the bike wasn't very good, so we kind of chugged up really. And once we reached the temple, there was an enormous flight of stairs to climb – they're stunning, but a killer to climb.

At the top, once we'd caught our breath, it turned out we weren't correctly attired to enter the temple, so we hired some extra clothing to cover up. I got a nice long wraparound skirt made from beautiful blue Thai fabric. Karl got baggy pants.

The temple was beautiful, and there were stunning views of Chiang Mai too.

Plus we found some bells to play with. And in.


We'd read that not much further up the hill from the temple is a little village with an awesome coffee shop. We hopped back on the bike and chugged up a little further. We followed some signs and made our way up a very windy, very potholed, uphill lane. Very slowly, and very bumpily. According to the Lonely Planet guide, it was only supposed to be a few hundred metres up the lane, so after driving for a few kilometres we were beginning to doubt whether we were on the right track. We chugged back down, asked for directions. No, we were on the wrong road, we had to go further back down the hill.

We drove down, found a temple and asked an English-speaking monk for directions. No, we'd been on the right lane in the first place, we should go back up to the lane and drive for 10 kilometres to the campsite, and it was just past there. Should we bother, we thought? Half an hour and a lot of fuel later, we were at the campsite. We checked at reception and were told it was just a few kilometres further down an even more potholed road. Another 15 minutes later, we came across a teeny village with just a handful of wooden buildings. Finally! It was an awesome coffee shop – an open-air wooden building, overlooking a lush green coffee plantation, with the hills in the distance.

All it served was strong black coffee and Thai pot noodles. We had both, and sat for a while to enjoy the view until we noticed some rain clouds in the distance and decided it would be wise to head for home. Unfortunately, we weren't quite fast enough. Only 10 minutes later we got caught in a torrential downpour. The roads got slippery so we stopped off to shelter at the campsite for an hour until the rain had eased up, and then set off again through some lighter rain in a bid to get home before sunset.

It was pretty grim at first – the temperature is cooler in the hills, so we were damp and shivering until we'd got far enough down the hill to feel the blanket of warmth that surrounds the city. But all in all, it was a fun little adventure, and must surely be the biggest journey we've ever made for a cup of coffee!