We start our first week off with a visit to the grocery store to stock up on snacks, drinks, food for lunches and a couple of dinners. We love it because they deliver. So nice! We take the cold stuff home with us then just hang out and wait for the delivery with the rest of the heavy stuff. Very civilized.
At dinner, we head to the Gecko Garden (Greasy Gecko) where we find, as usual, ex-pats surrounding the bar and a semi-talkative Rudy (the owner of the bar). Beer, wine and food good (and cheap) as always – we have fried nuts to start (coz we are snacky) and then Pad Thai and Stir Fried Pork with Basil leaves. All excellent
Tuesday finds us bumming around, reading, writing, and then taking a walk after lunch to buy our rice cake snacks and fermented pork sausages at the store on the corner. Since we are so close, we go back to Greasy Gecko for an afternoon beverage, then back to the condo for the afternoon. Tonight we decide to go Western – and we find a burger joint that gets good reviews on Loi Kroh road, over in the backpacker area. Called, Rock Me, the burgers are good (better than my special grilled pork sandwich), staff is great (especially the manager/owner guy) and we get our western food fix taken care of!
Wednesday flies by, again, doing what? I don’t know. We went to Warorot market and bought up the place. Vegetables (yum, cauliflower!), spice mixes for curry and Khao soy, fresh Chicharonnes, eggs, jackfruit (I’m addicted to jackfruit) and pomelo. We’re fully stocked now. And we cook in tonight for dinner using the curry paste – which is totally spicy – so glad we mixed in lots of coconut milk. Yikes!
Thursday we actually get motivated and go over the Nimmanhaemin, the “trendy” area in ChiangMai. There are lots of shops and restaurants and bars there and we figure we should at least see what it is like. Tons of places, all higher priced than our side of the moat, and over run with Chinese. Everywhere! We walked up and down the street, but didn’t really find anything too terribly interesting. We had read some review of the Nimman Promenade, where the woman had spent all afternoon there in the shops and dining venues. Well, the Promenade we walked through didn’t have more than a dozen stores, all overpriced ($600 purses? Really?) and no restaurants to speak of. That’s a disappointment.
We wander around a bit more, but there really isn’t anything we want to do. We finally stumble on Move Up restaurant, where we can sit on the 2nd floor balcony and watch the traffic whiz by on the road below.
It is a nice place to sit, a good breeze and the food is good as well. I end up with Pineapple fried rice (which typically comes in a big pineapple half – but not here – which is no big deal since the pineapple shell would just go to waste!) and Ed gets Khao Soy.
The food takes forever to come out of the kitchen, but that’s ok. We’re in no rush. So we just take our time eating and watching the world go by.
On the way back up the street – we’re heading toward the mall (yes, the mall – but only to find a tuk tuk), we pass this little (or big!) guy at an ice cream place…
..then up to Think Park, where there are all these “pop up” bars. Since it is early afternoon, the bars have not “popped up” yet – they are all there, just shuttered up, so we can’t go to the “Basic Bar” or the “Dogaholic” cafe. Darn. But instead, we end up at Kurtosh – the home of the “chimney cake”. It’s those awesome dessert cake things we had in Hungary! Oh my gosh! We go inside and the owner is there, making the cakes fresh. We have a chocolate piece and a cheese and olive piece – and Ed gets an iced cappuccino. How yummy! The guy’s family is originally from Hungary, but settled in Israel. How he got to Chiang Mai, I don’t know, but wow, I’m glad he did. These are awesome. If only he was on our side of town!
Back down the street in search of a tuk tuk, we pass a little cafe that I am glad was closed. This looked entirely too good!
For dinner we cruise the Night Market looking for Shawarma. We find a couple options (we think) and plan to go back later, after drinks at The Roadside, which is thankfully open (phew!). Our same cute bartender is there, and she remembers us! I show her a picture of us from 2 years ago and she laughs and laughs. She continues on with our Thai language classes – this time I’m writing everything down though!
We end up staying there for dinner – Pad Thai, chicken wings and 
chicken with cashews. There is music – a violinist and guitar player that used to play at Tiger Kingdom in Town. Minou (the bartender) says she’s going to play a song too, but she never does. She’s really busy, and after a while we head over to Bamboo for drinks and more music with Patrick, the guy who’s been there before and who we like.
Friday? Who knows? We cooked in for dinner – but daytime? Can’t remember. Sad…but true….we’re having fun, just doing what, I’m not quite sure. LOL.
No comments:
Post a Comment