Nan

In Nan we decided to do some adventuring and the guidebook recommended Fhu Travel. We wanted to do a 2 day trip with hiking and river rafting, but with just two people, it was too expensive. We went to the nearby morning market to try and round up some more farang to go with us. I spotted a couple that had been on the bus with us from Phrae and noticed they were eating khanom krog (a delicious breakfast sweet) for the first time. Using food as a conversation stater, we chatted with them for a while, but ultimately chickened out when it came to asking them about the rafting trip. Fhu Travel was closing soon, so we went back and instead decided to sign up for a 1 day jungle hike.

The next morning the guides picked us up in a jeep at our hotel and to our surprise, the couple from the market had signed up for the same trip. There were two guides who never told us their names. They were both young, one thin, and one larger and more muscular. It was soon apparent that they were both tricksters, especially the bigger one. On the drive, they pointed out different crops and plants we drove by, and then the big guy pointed at a motorcycle and said "Tiger" and then laughed and said "No, Thai girl!"

The thin one led the hike and made us all walking sticks out of fresh bamboo using his machete skills while the big guy made his banana into a pig puppet for us (I'm still trying to figure that trick out).

The first half of the hike was through bamboo and dipterocarp forest. They showed us termite mounds, an ant-lion trap, and they even cut open a big stem of bamboo to harvest bamboo grubs, which people in Thailand love to deep fry and eat. Another trick they showed us is how to take this grass, which was a lot like pampas grass, and make a little dart launcher out of it. We had contests to see who could launch their grass stem the farthest. The guides had a lot of fun scaring us and scaring each other and shooting their slingshot at red ant nests in the trees. They also had us taste this fruit called a broad olive.

It was about the size of a small lime and was one of the most bitter and astringent things I've ever tasted in my life.


Lyndsay, of course, liked it. They said that if you ate it, water would taste sweet afterwards. The water did taste a little sweet, but it was barely worth eating that thing.

The giant bamboo was beautiful, and we also saw some other great plants. I spotted this flower and immediately grabbed it to take a closer look.


Then I heard the guide shout "DON'T TOUCH IT!" Apparently this flower could give you a very very itchy rash. They helped me rinse my hands off and I was somehow rash free. Here are some other flowers we saw.



The second half of the hike was through slashed and burned forest converted to corn production. It was still beautiful--Lyndsay didn't even notice the corn at all.



We ended up at a hill tribe village where the kids thought Lyndsay was Thai (a Tiger) and the bigger guide put some berries in my hand and squeezed.


They showed us different plants and fruit trees growing in the village including this flower that Thais use in making garlands. Aren't they cool? I think its a milkweed species.


We stopped for a snack consisting of a soda, a quarter of a pineapple per person, and some fishy, sweet, chewy things on a stick that I liked a lot. We were so full after eating all this since for lunch we had pork and rice with si ew sauce and they had given us a whole hand of bananas and a bag of som (Thai oranges) to eat on the hike!

On the drive back we stopped at a paper making place as a surprise. The paper was made from a tree bark and was used for making paper flowers.

Then they pulled off the road again at a temple. We though this was another surprise stop, but they told us to stay in the jeep and they both jumped out excitedly to pick some fruits from a tree. They brought them back and the big guy stuck his fingernail through the skin of the fruit making it bleed a milky sap. Lyndsay has forbade me from posting a picture of this fruit on the blog, so all I'll say is that it was somewhat obscene and pretty hilarious. The funniest part though, was that they stopped at this temple just to show us this trick with the fruit.

We had such a great time and really loved our guides. They really had a lot of fun doing their jobs which made the trip great for us. I'm really sad we never got their names, so we can't specifically recommend them to anyone, but Fhu Travel seemed like a pretty good place.

When we got back from the trip we signed up for a full day of kayaking with the same company. There were no guides this time, just a two person kayak and a lunch for each of us. They drove us up the river and we were to paddle back at our leisure.



After a while of floating, we realized we weren't really getting anywhere with just the current pushing us. We started paddling. The river was so slow that we had to paddle almost the entire way and it still took us more than 6 hours (they had told us 4-6 hours). It was pretty scenery, but after 6 hours of paddling, we were getting pretty tired of seeing the same riverside gardens and fishermen. No more kayaking on this trip.

The food in Nan was pretty good too. They had a great morning market that had a variety of things we didn't really see anywhere else. One of the weirdest things we saw was live bee larvae and pupae. These are supposedly a delicacy and the couple that went on the hike had tried them (and somehow thought we were adventurous for having tried fried crickets). This was also the first time we had fried chicken in Thailand. Now I understand why Wat Mongolratanaram in Berkeley (AKA "The Buddhist Temple") serves fried chicken--Thailand knows how to do it right. We also happened to be there during a food festival by the river. It had a lot of beer food like grilled clams, fried peanuts, fried spring rolls, and various fish, pork, and chicken meatballs on skewers. There was a pretty awful middle-school aged band there playing traditional music through extremely loud speakers. Lyndsay and I escaped the noise and walked along the river and listened to the frogs sing instead.

Yes, we're still alive!

Sorry we haven't been writing, but between me being sick twice and being in the care of a protective mother in Hanoi for 5 days, we haven't had much time to update the blog. We're really behind now and we probably won't catch up before we come home. Expect updates to be sparse at best for the rest of our trip. Don't worry, we'll catch you all up when we get back.

Phrae

We decided to stop at Phrae on our way back south from Chiang Rai and we aren't sorry about our decision to take a different route. Phrae was another small, manageable city surrounded by city walls and seeming to specialize in copy centers and computer stores. Our place for the night was the first real hotel that we have stayed in. We were able to determine this by the small foyer between the door to our room and the actual bedroom as pretty much every American hotel has. The most amazing thing about the room was the way the lights worked. To turn them on, the magnetic key fob needed to be inserted into a slot next to the light switches. Our hotel was just outside the city walls and we arrived there late enough for the area to seem dead so we waited until the next morning to venture out.

We decided to see some of the city's attractions and headed for the small morning market. The market contained mostly produce and meat rather than prepared food so we bought some fruit and ate some noodles elsewhere instead. The small shop charged us 12.5 baht each for our bowls which was the first time we were ever charged half of a baht for anything. We continued to walk to the Vongburi house, a teakwood building that was the former home of Phrae's last prince. A nice woman gave us a quick tour of the many rooms and artifacts despite the little English she spoke.



We then stopped at another example of teakwood architecture which we walked through on our own.




Next we walked to the bus station and, after some confusion with translation, we chartered a songtow to Phae Muang Phi, meaning city of ghosts. The forest park contains unique rock formations often characterized as mushroom-like. They were different from anything I have seen before, so I took lots of photos.




Unfortunately few of the signs were written in English leaving us with many questions. We had time to hike down the paths surrounding the formations and spotted many trees coated in lines of mud created by termites.


When we tired of exploring the park, we returned to the city to explore again. The area is known for their indigo-dyed clothing, in addition to the teakwood, so we each bought a shirt from this nice Indian couple who spoke very good English.


The man, who had lived in Thailand all his life, told us of his plans to send his daughter to the U.S. as an engineer and where to go for the best trekking in Thailand. Because of his recommendations, we decided to travel to Nan before heading to Loei in northeastern Thailand. The next morning we packed our bags and set out for Nan with plans for adventure.

Food in Chiang Mai

Probably my favorite restaurant that we have eaten at so far is Heuan Phen in Chiang Mai. This place has more atmosphere than any other restaurant that we have been to. There was nice wooden furniture and wooden antiques and plants all around. Their specialty is northern Thai food which is served with sticky rice which is meant to be dipped into a dish's sauce. We had been anxious to try banana flower so we ordered a pork and and banana flower soup and also a grilled eggplant salad. The pork broth was simple but delicious and was more bland than other Thai soups that we have tried. We dipped balls of sticky rice, served in straw boxes to keep from drying out, into it.


The salad was also excellent with small pieces of grilled green eggplant. As we were eating, we noticed another list of appetizers on our table and spotted fried, stuffed bamboo shoots. They were greasy and hot but great too. Each of the three shoots were filled with pork and covered in like flakes of breading.


After all of that we were too stuffed to think about trying dessert.

Another Chiang Mai specialty is a bowl of noodles called Khao Sawy. Although it is a well-known dish, we had a hard time finding a place that actually served it. Our search was worth it and we finally found them near Chiang Mai's mosque as it is originally a Thai Muslim dish. The noodles are similar to baa mii (egg noodles) but thick and chewy and come served in a rich curry broth. They are served with crispy fried noodles on top and with lime, raw sliced shallots, and pickled cabbage on the side. Khao Sawy commonly contains chicken or pork and ours came with chicken. The broth turned out to be much sweeter than I expected so I added lots of lime, but it was very flavorful without the addition and the noodles were a great texture.


Also in Chiang Mai, we had a variation on Sukothai style noodles which we had missed out on while in Sukothai. They are served with all sorts of delicious sides including green beans, pickled cabbage, pork rinds, coriander, peanuts, green onions, and chilis. I liked these even better than Khao Sawy partly because the woman who served them to us was very friendly.

Okay, while I am on the topic I might as well tell you about one of my favorite types of noodles, baa-mii, even though they are not specific to the north. As much as I love rice noodles, these fresh thin egg noodles are wonderful in soup. What makes them even better is that they are often served with small dumplings made with a similar egg wrapper. These dumplings contain just a small circle of meat with the wrapper folded up around it. They also come with pieces of morning glory and what is called red pork in Thailand but what I would call cha-siu. These thin pork slices are tender and flavorful. The broth is slightly sweet and fragrant. We had these noodles for the first time in Sukothai when we went out of a late-night snack. Although we had already eaten noodles twice that day, we couldn't pass up this vendor whose tables were packed with happy customers.

I hope this catches you up on northern foods for a while.

Updated Finally!

We finally got a chance to finish the Chiang Mai entry, so scroll down and check it out. We also added pictures to the Bangkok entry a while ago and did some editing of our other posts. Thanks for reading.