Eric: Our body clocks still haven't adjusted to Thailand time, so we woke up really early (around 6:00am). After putzing around long enough for some shops to open, we headed out in search of breakfast and decent coffee. We ended up going to Smile Coffee.
The food and coffee were OK, but I really liked the proprietor. He was a young guy, maybe early 20s, with long hair in a pony-tail. What I liked about him was how earnest he was and how much he really cared about his little 4-table restaurant. He had one small food prep area where he made the espresso drinks and cooked the food, which he did on two portable gas ranges. After putting the food on the counter, he would literally run around to the other side to carry the food 5 feet to our table. I went back to him the next day, not for the coffee, but because I felt good giving him my money.
Carrie: Here's a matter of practicality that was part of Eric's morning, that he had left out. We packed things very carefully, not more than two t-shirts or shorts etc. And in this hot weather clothes laundry day comes pretty quickly. We brought this little tube of travel detergent, but for much cheaper (and yeah, less effort) you can have your clothes washed. 30 Baht per kilo, however much that may be.
Eric is very on top of things especially in the mornings. And he swept up all the dirty clothes and whisked them away while I pretty much sat on the bed and did a sudoku, advising him on what of mine was dirty. Well when it was time for me to get dressed, what's this?! No underwear. He had taken it ALL to be washed. So I spent all day au natural.
Eric: Afterwards, I went to an internet cafe to research cooking schools, and we found a place--Gap's Cookery School--that was highly recommended and also is experienced at teaching vegetarian meals. They picked us up from the hotel at 8:40 (they had told me 8:55, so I had just turned off the shower water when they arrived...we've never packed more quickly!). The class started with a tour of a local Thai market by a really funny 20-something Thai named Yaa.
The Thai market was so different from the ones more directed at tourists that we had been walking through. I was surprised at how few things I recognized. We saw lots of interesting and crazy stuff, like live and roasted frogs, live eels and catfish, people processing raw coconut to make coconut milk and cream, fried larvae that live in bamboo shoots, and at least 5 different kinds of eggplant (Long, bitter, crispy, crunchy etc.) Thais eat most of their eggplant when it's still green and bitter...an acquired taste, I guess, because none of the westerners who took the class really liked it.
After the trip to the market we went to the school, which was an outdoor canopy covering a dozen or so individual gas stoves, surrounded by vegetation so thick that the hot Chiang Mai sun was completely blocked out. Including Carrie and I, there were 7 students: Jan, a Kucinich-backer from San Francisco; Charlotte and Dan, a couple from England; "Tanja 15," a German who was staying in room 15 at the Gap House guesthouse; and "Tanja 16," a German staying in room 16. The teacher, Joe, was one of the quirkiest, funny guys I have ever met.
Carrie: In nearly every sentence he'd use someone's name. "Perhaps Carrie not like salty, she put in only 1 fish sauce. Tanja 16, she like spicy, she put more chili. 'E-lic' he can not have peanuts. No peanuts for E-lic," all the while using a bamboo stick to tap our cookbooks and scold people who were on the wrong page. It took me a few hearing to figure out that Elic was Eric.
Eric: Here's another example: at one point, I blew an ant off the edge of a bowl that had our to-be-cooked food. He used his stick to shoo me away from the bowl and said "we're not vegetarian; we eat the ant!" Then he gave a weird happy-maniacal cackling laugh.
We got to cook and eat all of the dishes he taught, which was great. I also appreciated the cooking tips, like when to use medium-low heat (most of the time, to my surprise!) and when to use high (rarely, only when bringing liquid to a boil). We made green chicken curry (including from-scratch curry sauce!), Thai fish souffle, spring rolls, chicken and cashew nuts in a light red curry sauce, squash/coconut custard, cucumber sauce, fish cakes, and pad Thai.
What we couldn't eat for lunch, which was a lot, we brought back to the guesthouse for supper. The only problem is that we left feeling like we were very capable chefs, when in reality 5 people were constantly working with military-precision to prepare the ingredients, so it was all deceptively easy. They also, would catch you before you could make a mistake. "Turn down the heat!" We also learned how to carve lotus flowers out of onions and turn tomato skins into roses. Carrie's were beautiful. Mine looked like they were carved by a meat cleaver.
During our class three dogs would wander in and out of our area. It was so quiet and peaceful, it was easy to forget you're right in the city.
While we were at class we were also keeping our fingers crossed that a room would open at Gap's House. We were temporarily homeless until we managed to snatch up our beauteous bungalow. The rooms have wood walls and are filled with antique furniture. The only downsides are the considerable number of mosquitoes and the thin walls. But we're staying her 2 nights longer than we had originally planned, which tells you our opinion of the place.
Carrie: One more thing, though we adore the bungalow, the mosquitoes are driving Eric crazy. Before we went to sleep he jumped around the room with two bedroom slippers slapping them together in hopes of bringing down the insect population. The next night we discovered the mosquito net in a bottom drawer. Such joy!
I've been keeping a tally of my bite count. Right now Eric and I are tied at 5 each. That's a reasonable amount. Except Eric has four of them in a centimeter radius on his ankle. Mine don't even itch.
Eric: After returning to Gap's House at around 4, the Tanjas, Carrie, and I headed to Wat Suan Dok to chat with monks. (Our class got along really well, and while talking we found out the Tanjas were planning to do a monk chat, too.) Every Mon, Wed, and Fri from 5-7 pm, monks hang out in a room and talk to tourists. It gives them a chance to practice their English and us a chance to learn about Buddhism. It's a win-win.
So all four of us piled into a Red bus -like the back of a covered pickup and about as comfortable- and head over to the wat. We mostly talked to Novice Thong, a 22-year-old from Laos. Here are some highlights:
*Average day in the life of a monk -- Monks wake at around 4AM and spend the first few hours chanting (like group prayer) and meditating. From 6-7, they collect alms. From what I have seen on my morning strolls/run, this entails walking up to a food cart and standing there until the people offer food. In Buddhism, people earn merit though good deeds, and this merit ensures that in your next life, you will be born further along on your path to enlightenment. This leads to an interesting component of alms-giving: the monks never "beg," rather, as part of the ritual in which food is given the lay-people thank the monks for the opportunity to do a good deed. At 7, monks return to the temple for morning classes. At 11, they eat the food received during the morning. (There is also a breakfast somewhere in here that I missed). They have to finish eating by 12, and then their afternoon is filled with more classes, meditation, and chanting. Young novices (people under 20-years-old and who live according to 10 principles) have to go to both class sessions, whereas some older novices only go to 1. I'm not sure if monks (who are over 20 and live according to 227 principles) go to classes.
*The story of the Naga -- According to legend, a sea-serpent/dragon wanted to become a monk and took a human form, but was found out and expelled from the temple by the Buddha because the monastic life is reserved for humans. As a consolation, the Buddha let the Naga leave his symbol and name to adorn temples as a lesson to future generations. I didn't exactly catch what the lesson was, but I think it's about the fact that the Naga wanted to be a monk so bad that he sacrificed his natural form, and humans should be willing to do the same. In any case, just this little bit of knowledge has made both Carrie and I drawn to dragon iconography in ways that we aren't drawn to other beautiful images that have no meaning to us.
*Thai "girlyboys" -- Thong was fascinated by girlyboys, who are transgendered/transvestite males. He wanted to hear if the US had them and how society treats them (girlyboys are allowed to be monks in Thailand). This was the last topic of conversation we expected to have with a monk, but it was a good reminder that the novices are not the equivalent of priests, so much as like students at a religious boarding school.
Anyway, this was the first day where, at the end, I had this great feeling that I learned something meaningful about Thai culture. This was exactly what I had hoped this trip would be.
Also it was nice to team up with some English speakers who were interested in seeing many of the same things we were.
