Chiang Mai - A home from home

The hostel we stayed at in Chiang Mai was amazing (SpicyThai Backpackers), the atmosphere was so welcoming, after an hour we knew everyone in the entire place and over the week we made some really good friends, 7 of whom we’re still traveling with now. The guy that ran it organized activities for us everyday, stuff that you’d never normally get to see as a tourist. On our first night there he brought the whole hostel to his home village (this involved fitting 22 people into a tuk tuk), we had a traditional thai dinner at his mum’s house and drank (lethal) thai whiskey with his dad and the locals. Dan tried some local delicacies, fried pig intestines and crispy bamboo worms, but I declined. It was like we were part of a big hostel family, we could have stayed forever. Unfortunately we realised too late that our visa ran out two days earlier than we had thought, so we had to make a trip to the immigration office and ask for it to be extended. We were told to dress smartly which is easier said than done when you’re traveling but we must have made a good impression as for a hefty fee they let us stay for an extra week, thai prison successfully avoided.

Thai Dinner at Noom's House

We had a pretty action packed week, visiting temples, lakes, universities, playing minigolf, eating bbq's, indulging in massages and, the best thing of all, shopping. I have never seen a shopping mall so big in my life! Chiang Mai’s also famous for cookery courses so we decided to indulge and increase our culinary repertoire. The cooking school was set in an organic farm so we got to see all of the lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, galangal, papayas, mangoes etc actually growing, the herbs looked so different to the dried stuff we get at home I hardly recognized them.

Then it was time to cook, a frenzy of chopping, stirring and grinding, trying to keep up with our teacher. At one point i turned round and Dan was concentrating so hard he hadn't realized that his wooden spoon was on fire! We made so many things, curry paste, chicken with cashew nuts, pad thai, tom yum soup, sticky rice with mango, and then we had to eat them all, it was all so tasty even if I do so say myself. Hopefully we’ll remember all of this for when we get back home so we can impress you with our new skills!

After a week we thought it was time to drag ourselves away from SpicyThai and make our way to Laos - we couldn't get too homesick as we were heading for the sister hostel SpicyLaos. Six of our friends from the hostel also decided to some too, so now there were eight of us – Lukas and Matthias, 2 guys from Austria, Matt and Kath, a couple from London, An from Belgium and Mark from America, you'll hear lots about them later.

The intrepid 8 head for Laos