Chiang Mai - Cooking, Monk Chat, Day tour

We both did a one day Thai cooking course which was great. We were the only ones on the course that day so we got the instructor to ourselves ...... some would say we (Carl) needed it! It included a market tour which was great to check out the local fruit. Really tasty. We ended up cooking Pad Thai, Tom Yum Soup, Savoury chicken salad, (making) green curry paste, Chicken green curry and water chestnuts with coconut milk. And yes, we ate it all. Suffice to say there was no need for dinner that night.

This is just before getting stuck into our first dish - Pad Thai.

(I know, nice headgear aye!)

After the cooking course we went to this thing called 'Monk chat'. This is where tourists are invited to go to a local monastory and talk with monks about anything. The idea is so that the monks can practice their english and that tourists can ask them questions about how they live or buddhism or whatever. We even overheard a monk asking an American man, "Do Americans have sex all the time like in the movies?". The monk we had spoke to was from Cambodia and 26 years old. Miranda had to make sure that she did not touch any of the monks too. It was a really interesting hour and a half.

The next day we went on a day tour. First up was riding an elephant which was a bit of a work out to stay on when we were going downhill, good fun though. We then went on a walk/trek for about an hour to a waterfall. Some of the so called bridges that we walked over were very far from that. They were literally a single plank so our balance had to be good. A swim at the waterfall was dam good after walking in mid-30 degree heat. The afternoon entailed whitewater rafting and bamboo rafting. Both were great!