November 15
After going to bed at midnight, we woke up at 5am to catch our bus for a visa run at 6am. Creepily empty and dark outside, we managed to find a Tuk Tuk who took us to the bus terminal where we had some healthy breakfasts - Mcdonalds for me and Subway for Hila... Should have gotten another hash brown since I was still starving after. Anyways, we rode the bus but both had a tough time falling asleep even though we were so exhausted.
4 hours later, groggy and confused, we hopped into a Tuk Tuk with several other people to take a 10 minute, 15B ride to the border. Once there, we were astounded by the chaos around it - there were people standing everywhere and little stalls selling trinkets - but we found out that the border is not usually like this and that a revered monk was having a procession across the border literally at the exact moment we decided to cross ... Literally the exact moment meaning we were standing at the Thai immigration window showing our passports when the officer just walked outside to take pictures instead. Luckily we found some American man who said we could follow him through the procedure since he's done it before. We realized that the whole process actually would have taken ~5 minutes had we not had to push our way through mobs of people chasing this monk and deal with the distracted officers. Luckily for us the parade was farther now and the streets mostly cleared out when we had to cross back to Thailand from Myanmar and we no longer had to fight our way anywhere.
All in all, it was pretty interesting to witness the parade and it took up some extra time so we ended up with only a couple hours to kill. We found a little restaurant that was quite busy - always a good sign - and had wifi! We ordered some lunch (and it actually came out vegetarian this time) but Hila's green curry came out cold which weirded us out and spoiled our appetites. We hung around there until we decided it was time to head back to the bus station to get back to Chiang Mai.
November 16
Today we're doing an all day cooking class
We were the first people to be picked up, at around 8:30, and our instructor was so friendly and nice. We were handed a laminated sheet with all the meal options and told to check off 5 that we wanted to make. Of course Hila and I made a point to choose different ones so we could have double the variety :). We picked up 4 other passengers, Jamie - 22 year old British guy, Raquel - 18 year old British girl, Ralph - German man, and ___ youngish Canadian girl...
We drove for about 25 minutes to a market where our teacher showed us all sorts of things - we examined different kinds of rice, looked at some curry pastes, taste tested fried bananas and fried sweet potato - and lastly went into the butcher area which was pretty horrifying and really made me question eating meat ever again... At one station there was live fish and frogs, and Jamie ordered some frog which the woman at the stall horrifyingly slaughtered in front of everyone (Hila and I squeamishly looked away but I glanced back over too soon and saw her skinning it or something blegh). We passed by big pig heads and blobs of meat before escaping back to the vegetables where our instructor explained to us about lemongrass and types of basil leaves, etc... Happy things woo! We then hopped back in the bus to the adorable farm where our instructor lived and the class would be held. There, we each stood at our own little stations and began crafting delicious meals! We started with different soups - I made Tom Yum with tofu and Hila made chicken in coconut milk soup - amazing. After dining on those, it was back to the stations to make our curries and chicken dishes! We all started with a slight variation of the same 5 ingredients, which we mashed with a mortar and pestle into curry pastes! Yummy! We then returned to our stations and added ingredients to our pastes. Hila made green curry and I made Kao Soi so my meal had noodles, half of which I boiled and the other half deep fried :). After our curries were made, we moved on to our chicken dishes - I made Chicken with basil leaves and Hila made Fried Chicken with Cashew nuts! With those complete, it was time to help our new friend Jamie fry up his poor little frog (which Hila and I both took a bite of anyway...)! It tasted kinda like chicken and was not as strange as I'd assumed it would be.
After lunch we had a little bit of down time where we read and journaled as the 'staff' prepped for our final dish and desserts! For our final dishes, I made pad Thai and Hila made fried rice with pineapple - both to die for - and then sticky rice with mango and pumpkin in coconut milk yuuummmm! Afterwards, I managed to harass this amazing woman for all she was worth and got the recipe for my favorite rice cakes, and Hila's favorite, papaya salad WHICH we got to make - and put 10 chilies in which was unbelievably spicy so I only had like 3 bites before I died for about 10 minutes. Then, some of our group was in a big rush and annoying, so we hurried our way to the lantern festival. At the festival, we waited for about 1.5 hours listening to monks pray and stuff which made us pretty antsy... Finally, we heard over the loud speaker that it was okay to start lighting our lanterns (Hila and I shared one) so we held it over one of the hundreds of torches all lined up in the grass (that somehow were lit all of a sudden hahah) and then everyone lit theirs and theeeeen there was a big firework and we all sent our lanterns off and it was actually the most magical thing I've ever seeeennn!
November 17
Hungover (eh still drunk), we went and got some breakfast to recover - the stupid Asian in our room woke us up at like 4am packing up or something? So annoying... But then we decided to rent bikes and drive up to Mae Rim waterfall - climbed the 10 different levels and went swimming a bit!
