Jillian's Travels

Thailand, Part 2

Day 51, February 17

We didn’t have any tours booked for today so we slept in a little and enjoyed a relaxing morning. We had the same breakfast as the other day (with the weird hotdog covered in ham & mayo infested salad). The eggs were good though.

After eating we dropped off our clothes to the front desk and decided to head to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. It’s a Theravada temple on the mountain overlooking the rest of Chiang Mai. But to get to it, you have to take a taxi all the way to the top. It’s way too far to walk it.

The ride was really rough. There were a lot of curves and I was feeling really car sick again. I had to hang my head out the window for a majority of the ride. Once we got to the top neither one of us were feeling well.

We found some fresh mango and ate that before walking up the, what looked like, thousand steps. By the time we made it up there, we were very out of breath and sweating. We bought a ticket and went in.

I was not blown away by this temple. It had a bunch of Buddha statues and bells, just like a lot of the others but it just lacked a wow factor like most of the others had in some way. We walked through pretty quickly and then went on the outer edge of the temple to check out the view.

The view would have been amazing if it weren’t so smoggy.

After taking in the view, our legs were feeling like jello so we sat down and rested for about 20 minutes. While we were sitting we decided we should take today easy and not do a lot of sightseeing since we were still really tired from the elephant sanctuary. We decided today would be a good day for a Thai massage.

We found our taxi and headed back down to our hostel. The ride down wasn’t as bad as going up but I still didn’t feel great. We got back to our hostel and looked up the massage place one of the fellow elephant sanctuary people had told us about. It’s a massage place that employs women that are ex-prisoners. Women’s Massage Center was started in 2014 to teach women prisoners a trade so that when they were released from prison, it would help them reintegrate into society and provide them with a job.

I had never heard about it but was really excited to try it once some fellow travelers mentioned it. We found a place that was near us and gave it a shot.

I had the best massage of this trip so far. The woman that was doing my massage actually paid attention to my body movements. All the other ones I’ve had so far don’t change their pressure when I flinch or tense up. The lady today did. I hate getting foot massages and I actually really enjoyed this foot massage.

After an amazing massage we headed out to find some food. We stumbled on a place called Monday Moon. It was hot so I was needing something fresh. I didn’t think I could handle anything noodle based just yet. So I got the tofu salad. It was really good and just what I needed.

Then we headed back to our hostel to see if our clothes were ready yet. We are heading to a ladyboy show tonight and wanted to change out of our ‘laundry day’ attire.

We relaxed in the courtyard area until it was time to get ready and heady out. My sister wanted to put some make-up on because she thought the lady-boys would heckle her. And by makeup I mean mascara and that was it.

Then we headed out to the show. We walked about a mile and saw the Stadium where the Muay Thai fighting is. We wanted to do that another night so it was good that we passed it. Once we got to the place that my GPS led us to, I realized that there is a place called Chiang Mai Cabaret Show and Chiang Mai Cabaret Theatre. We were needing to go to the show but I led us to the theater. We were now about 2 miles away and were worried that we wouldn’t get there in time to select a good seat so instead we decided to see the fights tonight.

We went and bought our tickets and then went to the closest restaurant. We weren’t that hungry, it was really to kill time. I got the pumpkin soup. It was just ok.

Then at 8:30 we headed back to make sure we got a good seat.

We had no idea what to expect. I hate watching boxing and UFC fights and all that other stuff but we were told we must see the Muay Thai fights because it is huge in their culture.

It started with young fighters and they progressively got older as the night went on. We saw probably 6 or 7 fights. By the end we were really getting into it. What I liked the most is that after the rounds and at the end of the fight, each fighter would bow in a very respectful way. That helped me feel ok about watching young kids beat up on each other.

Some of the fighters have these elaborate warm up dances and we would choose based on that if we were team red or team blue. I was surprised but it was a really entertaining night.

After the fight was over we got a tuk-tuk and had the most fun and exciting ride back. I was cheering our driver on like he was in the fights.

Day 52, February 18

Today was our cooking class day so, for me, I was going to not eat as much breakfast. But that didn’t work because the eggs were really good and we finally remembered to tell them no mayo on the salad part.

The van came to pick us up at 8:40am and we headed to the market to gather all the ingredients. It felt different going through the market now that we actually had a list of items we needed. All other markets we had been in, we were mainly looking for fresh, already peeled fruit. But now it was basil, eggplant, turmeric, ginger, etc. It was really cool to have our cooking teacher, Anne, show us what everything looks like before chopped and/or in powder form.

After the market we headed to our open air kitchen where we’d be doing all the cooking. We each got to choose what we wanted to make. I chose the fresh spring rolls for appetizer, pad thai for stir fry, tom kha kai (coconut milk soup) for soup, green curry for another main dish and we all made mango sticky rice.

I won’t even try to explain the process for each course because it was a lot to remember. Luckily at the end she gave us each a cooking book to take home.

For the green curry, we had to manually smash the ingredients to make the curry paste. It was really hard and will forever change how I enjoy any fresh curry dish.

Now for the fresh egg rolls.

After the cooking class we were really full and tired. So we went back to the hostel to rest until we had to head out later that night for the lady-boy show.

Around 7pm me, my sister and one of the ladies from our cooking class headed out to buy tickets for the show. We met 2 others from the class at the show as well.

We bought our tickets and then had some time to kill so we walked around the night bazaar.

There were a lot of neat things at the night bazaar but were told by many people not to buy here because the Sunday night market will have it all plus much, much more. Apparently they shut down a whole street for the weekly Sunday night market. So we did a lot of looking but no buying.

Then we headed in for the show. The first lady-boy lip synched to a Madonna song. She really didn’t know the lyrics so that kind of took me out of it. But the makeup, wig and costume were amazing.

Some knew every lyric to the song they were performing and some only knew the chorus part. I had to remind myself that English is not their first language. But the ones who were nailing the lyrics, I was really, really into.

After the show, we successfully negotiated a good price for a tuk-tuk to take us back to our hostel.

Comments

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   Momma Payne
   February 19, 2017

   Well this was a very interesting post. Fights, a cooking class, and Ladyboys! Looks like you girls are doing it all.

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     Leave a Reply

     Jillian
     February 19, 2017

     We’re trying to!