Chiang Mai Walking Street and Muay Thai Fights

Earlier this week we went to the fun but very tourisy Night Bazaar here in Chiang Mai.  Tonight is Saturday night, when they hold the weekly "Walking Street" market.  It seemed to us to be more of a fun local thing to do on a Saturday night; we saw lots of families out and about and there were definitely fewer obvious tourists.

There were lots of musicians playing everything from traditional music to singing karaoke on portable machines.  This little girl was very talented.  I think she is playing a khim, which is a hammered dulcimer.

We enjoyed walking up and down the street, checking out all the booths.  But the main reason we came here was for dinner, to try some local foods.  Of course we started off sharing an order of phad thai.

Then Kevin had a local sausage (kind of like the ones shown here, but shaped differently and from a different stall).

This lady sold all kinds of good-looking things; we bought a delicious grilled banana skewer to share.

And for dessert there was a tasty ice cream square.

There were a few delicacies that we just weren't adventurous enough to try.  Normally, Kevin loves calamari, but this squid on a stick just didn't appeal for some reason.

And not even the low, low price of 20 baht (about 65 cents) was enough to tempt us to try these fried insects.

After our street-food dinner, we took a tuk-tuk to the Thai boxing stadium.  Our driver was a lady, which I thought was pretty cool.  We haven't seen any female tuk-tuk drivers here.  She also had the most tricked out tuk-tuk in town.  The rear passenger seat sat on top of a thumping bass, and the ride was equipped with speakers that could be heard down the block. Very fun!

We arrived at the Thapae Boxing Stadium just in time for the start of the fights.

Muay Thai is a style of boxing/fighting that originated in Thailand.  It is nicknamed the "Art of Eight Limbs" because fighters are permitted to use fists, elbows, feet, and knees.

The stadium had an interesting setup.  Most of the spectators were farangs (foreigners) although there was one section full of Thai people, most likely friends and families of the fighters.  There were several bars selling overpriced beers.

Bookies competed with each other to convince the foreigners to wager on each fight.  Here are a group of tourists placing bets.

Traditional music accompanies each fight, getting faster as the rounds progress.  The clarinet-style instrument is called a Pi Muay, Pi Java, or Pi Kaek.



One of the fights we saw was a championship fight for the 85 lb weight class.  These were some tough kids!

For intermission, they also had a "special fight" -- five guys blindfolded and forced to duke it out with each other (no kicking allowed).  Things got interesting whenever they mistook the referee for a combatant.



Afterwards, the blindfolded guys came around asking for contributions and taking photos with the spectators.

"A Lot of Thai" Cooking Class

I knew our Thai cooking class was going to be great when they picked us up at the hotel in a powder blue 1973 VW bus.

The A Lot of Thai cooking school is truly a family affair.  Siripen "Yui" Sriyabhay and her husband Kwan run the class -- she does the cooking and instructing, he does the driving and web/graphic design.  Their two adorable kids Sid and Jun feature prominently in the cookbook and say hello to the class when they get home from school.  Here is Yui welcoming us to the class.

The class is taught in Yui's home, which is very close to our hotel.  This is the outdoor kitchen, with 8 cooking stations.

Clockwise from left: the ingredients for our first dish (phad thai), our woks, and Kevin modeling the "A Lot of Thai" apron.  All of the ingredients were pre-prepped so that all we had to do was chop the vegetables and measure the liquids.

Yui's teaching style was perfect for us.  She explained everything sensibly, in her own style, and with plenty of humor to keep us laughing.   She first explained and demonstrated the dish, then walked around answering questions as we made our own versions.  This is Kevin making Phad Thai; both of our finished dishes were delicious.

Next up was Tom Yam Gung, which is hot and sour prawn soup.  Here, Yui doles out two shrimp heads for each of us to add to our ingredients.

And here is my finished product.  Yui tasted it and said "Not enough heat, not enough salt".  She was right; I made it mild on purpose by removing all the seeds from the chilis and holding back on the fish sauce, so I doubt any self-respecting Thai would like my Tom Yam!

Our third dish of the morning was Green Curry with Chicken which is one of Kevin's favorites.  It has a whole host of ingredients: coconut cream, curry paste, coconut milk, eggplant, kaffir lime leaves, red chilis, fish sauce, palm sugar, sweet basil, and chicken.  It sounds complicated but is really not too difficult to make.

Here are Kevin's and my respective dishes.  Kevin made green curry; I made red curry.  But mine isn't very red because I wanted to make sure it was not spicy so I used less red curry paste than the recipe called for!  In Thai, the word for "not spicy" is "mai phet"!

And our last dish in the morning was Cashew Chicken, which is my absolute favorite.  I have even learned to say it in Thai, but it took a lot of practice because it has a very long name: gai-pad-med-ma-muang-him-ma-pan.  My version turned out fantastic, but that's probably because I followed the recipe exactly since this dish is not spicy.

After eating all morning, we took a break to go to Yui's local produce market.

She took us around to each stall and showed us many of the local veggies and what they are used for.

This woman sold banana leaf bundles containing all the ingredients to make your own curry paste (mortar and pestle not included).

Clockwise from left: yellow persimmons, green mangoes, bumpy jackfruit, vats of uncooked rice, garlic and shallots, red and green chilis.

Various eggs for sale.  The pink ones are "century eggs" -- they are cured in a clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice husk mixture for up to 5 months and then dyed pink (to distinguish them from regular eggs).

The egg inside is a black gelatinous color.  Yui said that Thais call them kai yieow maa, meaning "egg urine horse", although horse urine is not actually used in the process (it doesn't have the right pH to cure them).  Maybe they got that name because of the smell?

Photo courtesy of www.foododdity.com

Well I hope everyone's hungry now.  Because after the market we went straight back into the kitchen to prepare sweet coconut sticky rice with mango, a traditional Thai dessert.  First the glutinous rice (it doesn't have any gluten, just a high starch content) is soaked in water overnight.  Yui includes a little bit of black sticky rice for nutritional value and to give her rice a purple color.

Then the rice is steamed for about 15 minutes.

Afterwards you remove it from the heat and mix it with coconut cream, sugar and salt.  Once mixed, cover and let it stand for a half an hour.  Just before serving, top it with diced mango.  You can then add additional cream or even Thai custard.

Our final dish was traditional fried spring rolls.  First we stir-fried a mixture of garlic, pork, cabbage, sprouts and glass noodles with sauce.

Then we wrapped the rolls using the technique Yui showed to us.  According to Yui, if you wrap them correctly they should not be very greasy.

Next step was to deep fry for one to two minutes.

And the end result is two perfect, non-greasy, spring rolls.  Here is a photo of our last two dishes.  Delicious!

We really had a wonderful day learning to prepare these dishes.  I would highly recommend A Lot of Thai cooking class to anyone planning to visit Chiang Mai.  Now we can bring the taste of Thailand home with us!

Chiang Mai Night Bazaar

This morning we left Bangkok bright and early to catch a plane to Chiang Mai, in the north part of Thailand.

Guardian statue like the ones at Wat Phra Kaew in the Departures area

Our hotel in Chiang Mai (The RatiLanna) is gorgeous.  The lobby and common areas are all decorated in the Lanna style.  The Lanna Kingdom existed in the north until the early 1700's, when it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Siam.

Our room is stunning, with hardwood floors, a waterfall next to the tub, and even traditional clothes for the water bottles.

Our balcony has a lounge bed and fantastic views of the Mae Ping river and the lily pond below.

We spent the day lounging at the hotel, and then went for dinner and shopping at the Night Bazaar.

It is a huge tourist attraction and it's open every night of the week.

Vendors sell clothing, DVD's, knockoff luxury goods, and local crafts.

I did buy a few things: a pair of "Havianas", a "Pandora" bracelet, a scarf, and a belt.  Most of the vendors spoke English but they seemed to like that I was able to say numbers in Thai.  Very helpful when haggling!

My favorite things for sale were the colorful lanterns, so pretty!

We also made sure to stop at some of the food kiosks for dinner.  Chicken satay with peanut sauce in the food court...

And these delicious banana cake/crepes covered in chocolate sauce from a vendor cart.  Yummy!

Of course, some people find shopping boring so there is always the nearby cabaret show.  We didn't go (we might another night), but the "ladies" were kind enough to let us take a photo!