Thursday, January 19, 2012

1/17 – 1/18 Chilling in Chiang Mai 2

So, day 2 and 3 in Chiang Mai – and truly – we are just chilling!  We’ve walked the neighborhood, getting the lay of the land. Found the great Pad Thai place (a Richard recommendation) across the street, scoped out the restaurants and the nail places nearby – and generally just get a feel for what’s going on.

Tuesday, we eat lunch in.  Eggs and bacon.  Yummy!  Then after hanging at the pool, we head out to the “old city”, inside the moat for drinks and dinner.  We had read about a cool little bar called the Lost Hut – so we meandered over there.  It was cool – but not as cool as we had thought!  (The one cool thing was the mobile food cart that drove up – pulled by a scooter – and made the rounds of all the little bars in the area that didn’t have food – now that was pretty wild!)  Oh well, a beer and a wine and we are on our way. 

Just wandering around – looking at bars and restaurants until we land at  Tiger Kingdom In Town – a great restaurant with live music.  We sit outside and order app’s – some that don’t really translate – like my “Fried Sun Pork of Chicken” – huh?  Actually, I think it was supposed to be “or” chicken – but fried sun?  It ended up being strips of fried pork with a yummy dipping sauce.  We also had fried chicken (good little drumettes) and fried sausage, which we were hoping were Chiang Mai sausage. We did ask – and got a non-committal reply.   The sausages ended up being hot dogs – but the presentation saved the day – they were hot dog “flowers”!  Too funny – and not all that bad in the final analysis!

The bands were great – the first band sang Hank Williams (Big time on the Bayou) – hmmm….a Thai band singing country….gotta love it!  Second band was a male (well sort of, probably more Katooey than male) singing sweet love songs with a guitar accompaniment.  Definitely a place for us to hang out again for certain!

Day 3 and we do the same chillin’ thing – hang out, read, hit the pool.  But for lunch we head to the Thai restaurant with the Chinese name.  There we have an omelet – not the normal pork omelet we love, but a vegetable one – holy cow! It is huge. Stuffed with all sorts of veggies in this great sweet/sour sauce. It’s big and round and thick – awesome. We also had the deep fried fish with tamarind sauce.  A street food favorite – this one was excellent!  Perfectly done and the sauce so delicious.  Oh – and also – the rice! The rice comes out on a little plate in the shape of a teddy bear.  Too cute! 

Next up – it’s mani-pedi time!  There’s a place close to the condo where you can get both for 350b, which is about $12 US.  No kidding.  So – I head there, Ed heads to the cafe next door. We both end up spending a lovely couple of hours – me being clipped and manicured, Ed drinking cappuccino, beer and water and surfing the web on the free wi-fi!

Dinner tonight will be light – so we head out through the night market in search of something not Thai (we’re going to do the Thai cooking school tomorrow).  Tall order to fill!  We wander, and wander, and wander and all we find is overpriced German food, lots and lots of Indian food (not in the mood), and tons of THAI!  Well, heck, we are in Thailand after all!  So after, seriously, and hour of hitting every restaurant we can find, we end up back at O’Malley’s where I have fried cheese sticks (great dipping sauce) and chicken tenders and Ed blows it all out and has fish and chips (which is humongous – so much for the light meal!!! – and excellent – snapper so fresh and crisp and good.  Yum!).

Back through the craziness, we manage to make it home to sit on our balcony in the relative peace and quiet – and cool night air – relaxing before hitting the bed.  Pix tomorrow from our cooking outing!

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