Adventures in Northern Thailand

It has long been a lofty goal of mine to learn to "cook" with "ingredients."

Since the Cooking for Dummies book my parents got me for Christmas a couple years ago never seemed to help, I signed up for a cooking class in Chiang Mai. I learned how to make Pad Thai, hot and sour soup, and red curry paste. "Be a good Thai wife," the instructor said as I sat on a stool hunched over the stone mortar-and-pestle trying to convert the chunks of chilies to a smooth paste.

These Thai women, who are all about the size of my arm, are much stronger than you'd ever guess. The woman who gave me a Thai massage felt like she was going to break my neck. And that pestle was really heavy. I was a pretty bad Thai wife, but eventually the chilies became paste. We added coconut cream and chicken and steamed the concoction in banana leaves. It was so good, it was hard to believe I actually made it. (I also made the banana leaf bowl. Holla!)

The following day I departed for a jungle trek. This involved a few hours crammed in the back of a pick-up truck outfitted with a roof and some benches. There were also some walls, kind of, except for the back. Thankfully we managed to stay in. (The other vehicle of backpacker-choice in Chiang Mai is a tuk-tuk, which is kind of a cross between a motorcycle and a chariot. The drivers all resemble James Bond - not in looks, unfortunately, but in their ability to speedily maneuver around other real vehicles and invent new lanes, like the dotted divider line. I thought I looked rather Bond Girl-esque, with my backpack, flip-flops and mosquito bites.)

At first to our disappointment (and later to our immense relief), the advertised "Two Day Trek" really included only 4 hours of actual trekking. Three hours on the first day, and one hour on the second day. Our guide - Chai - grew up in the jungle, and had a very good eye for snakes and massive spiders. We hiked in the humidity through the jungle up to a waterfall, and then to the guesthouses (Bamboo shacks with thatched roofs and mosquito nets, where we would soon camp for a few short hours before being awoken by an awful combination of cheap-beer-hangover and a herd of cows and their bamboo cow-bells).

We had a delicious dinner of fruit and curry. Later, all got involved in a drinking game, facilitated by the 5 Irish girls who had about 9 beers each, and also supplemented entertainingly by the other guide - Pong - saying repeatedly with much hope, "Birthday costumes!" (Pong also had a tattoo on his abdomen that said, "Free Sex," and was obsessed with the size of elephants' penises. I gathered that his life was filled with disappointment.)

The next day was an elephant ride. When we arrived at the elephant farm, we saw that they had no tusks. They had been chopped off for the ivory and I don't think they are treated very well in general. The vegetarians went for the ride, which ended up being my justification to go as well. But once I got on the elephant I saw they had these sharp hooks that they used to steer the elephants. We had the opportunity to buy a bunch of bananas for about a dollar, so I bought some for my elephant and he seemed to like it. He knew immediately and stuck his trunk up, and I fed him one and he immediately popped his trunk back up for the next one. So, I felt a little better, but overall I was kind of troubled by the experience.

Finally came the whitewater rafting, which was sweet. It was not your traditional whitewater rafting, in the sense that all 4 rafts were trying to beat each other down the river and get each other as wet as possible. You might expect that the debauchery would be limited to the "calm" areas of the river, but as we were in the Thai jungle and not a golf course, we jousted while going over the falls while our guide navigated around the rocks. Since he had "Thai Navy Seal" written in magic marker on his orange life jacket, I knew we were in good hands. At one point, two of the Irish girls were seized from their raft onto another raft.

The whole thing wore me out and actually I got quite sick for a day, but Chiang Mai has been great to hang out in. It is kind of "Backpacker Central" and there are lots of other travelers. I am in a very nice guesthouse that is only $9/night for my own room (+ own bathroom), which is very clean and includes TV with five English channels and air-conditioning. Chiang Mai also has a huge night-market, with loads of cheap cute clothing, jewelry and pirated movies. (I was very close to buying LOST Season 4 but held back... at this point, the more fine aspects of American life that are waiting for me back home, the easier it will be to return in September.)

But the best part of Chiang Mai is the plethora of used bookstores, which contain everything I've been looking for on Asia and Buddhism, and nearly everything on my "To Read" list. (Plus, many on my "Would like to read someday but probably will not" list, like Hawking and Tolstoy. Other backpackers of the smarter-than-me variety can buy those.) Anyways, the Chiang Mai bookstores are proving especially terrific, because the last place I looked for books - the Bangkok airport - was limited in selection to books about Thai cooking, transvestites (lovingly called "Ladymen" and often given a public restroom of their own), and Western men finding Thai girlfriends, like "My Thai Girl and I."