Having discovered With Locals, we now look at tours everywhere we go. In Chiang Mai there are all the traditional Wat, city and country tours, but there are also craft making tours. We book a half day tour with Suranat Leather, that includes Pad Thai for lunch. We figure it is a fun and different way to spend a morning.
We order an Uber, which works well, except she can’t find us – her Uber map shows the condo in a weird location. We message her with the actual location, and she arrives quickly to pick us up. Suranat’s studio is all the way across town, near the University and airport, almost a 30 minute drive and the Uber only costs $2.60. Crazy. We do get a little turned around when the street we need to turn on is under construction. But our driver manages to turn around – I can’t even begin to tell you that story – and finally deposits us at the front door of the studio about 15 minutes early. We figure we’ll just hang outside until 10, and peruse the neighborhood, but there isn’t much around this street except another residential looking building. Suranat sees us, comes out and introduces himself and suggests we go to the coffee shop up the road. Can do.
Up the street, is Factory Coffee, a cool little urban type joint in a very rural setting. We waste our 15 or so minutes drinking our usual cappuccino, which are quite good, and surfing the web.
On our way back down the street, we notice the next building is also a coffee shop – and not just your normal run of the mill coffee shop, no, it’s the “Lucky Bunny Cafe” which features Bakery, Coffee and a Bunny Show. A bunny show! It’s not open, darn it! But I’d love to have gone there for coffee and a show.
Back to the studio, we get down to business with Suranat who is a joy with which to work. He was a clothes designer for years, became tired of it and started doing hand made leather work. He has some beautiful pieces in his studio, and he’s teaching us how to make little wallets today. First he lays out the tools and explains each one, and then the steps we will take to complete the project. First we make the template, which he explains step by step, then we get to cut the leather into the right shape, then stamp a design, put on snaps, and finally sew it all together.
He is so patient and kind. An excellent teacher, and a lovely conversationalist. We chat the entire time about his work, Chiang Mai, how the artists are moving out of the city into this area because the rents are rising so high (sound familiar?), and just about life in general. All the while Herbie Hancock is playing in the background (I’ve now become a jazz fan), his partner, Janni, works on the computer and Suranat continues to coach us. As a bonus, he also takes pictures and videos while we work. What a fabulous experience!
Lunch is an excellent serving of Pad Thai to which Janni adds a bowl full of lime, scallions, lettuce and beautiful flue butterfly pea flowers that are completely edible and grown in their backyard. So sweet – and so yummy.
What a fun morning/afternoon. We hate to leave, and we sure hope we can meet up with these two again sometime soon. At some point in time, Suranat had mentioned the Wat Umong, a little ways up the street, as being one of the more unique wats in the area, because it is a “jungle” wat and consists of a system of tunnels. Well, heck, we’ve got nothing else planned, so we’re going exploring.
We say goodbye to the guys, and walk up the street (The Lucky Bunny is still closed darn it) to the Wat complex. I’ve got on my skorts, so I rent a sarong, and we make our way through the wooded paths, surrounded by monks who are working on the walkways. Along the way are a series of poster/signs with Buddhism sayings, using the poker playing dogs as visuals, which must have some deeper meaning that I’m not getting.
We walk through the jungle and up some stairs to the courtyard before the tunnels, passing by the statue of King Mengrai, the first King of the Lanna Kingdom and who is responsible for building the Wat.
As the story goes, in the late 13th Century, a monk by the name of Thera Chan originally lived in a wat within the city walls, and used a tunnel to meditate in peace and quiet. When the city started growing and became busier and busier, the monk found it harder to find peace and quiet to meditate. The King, who regularly consulted with the monk, ordered tunnels to be built in man made mounds outside the city, with brick lined walls painted with Buddhist murals. The monk now had a place to come for peace and quiet and continue on in his meditation. Even with people here, it is a serene and peaceful place. There is a large meditation retreat here as well, which makes sense as the Wat was built just for that purpose.
Entering into the main tunnel, you can feel the peace and tranquility of the place. The entry tunnels running perpendicular to the main Buddha shrine tunnels are quiet, most with small alcoves cut into the brick walls for miniature shrines.
We make a pilgrimage to all 3 of the shrines in the main tunnel, as well as a couple in the back tunnels that lead to the Chedi….
…then reverse our steps back through the tunnels to the main entrances again. Here we can wander through the display of murals that have been recreated to indicate what the original tunnels would have looked like, and out into the garden area where original statuary is displayed.
Sunny gets into the act, praying to the Buddha and finding a friend at the bottom of the steps leading to the wat.
We find an odd representation of the Buddha with hair, holding an alms pot, and stop to snap a picture of one of our favorite sayings and a placard that totally sums up our thoughts about religion and religious persecution….
..then make our way to the entrance to summons an Uber to take us home.
Dinner tonight is at Shiok about Food, the new Singaporean restaurant on our street. Shiok means “great” or “cool” or to express “happiness,” and the owner, Gabe, does just that with his food and his personality. We are the only customers there tonight, so we get his full attention. He just got back from Penang so we have some great discussions about that city, and end up talking to him throughout the evening as he cooks for us and fills us in on his background (Chef in a huge kitchen, hundreds of employees, gave it up to start his own thing and live life less stressfully; started the restaurant on the other side of town in a building not well kept, found this place and settled on it in a day).
His communication skills are only eclipsed by his cooking skills as we soon find out when he brings us a little bowl of roasted peanuts and garlic to start on while we wait. Those things were totally addicting! I just want the garlic. I quiz him on his technique when he comes out of the kitchen (I’m replicating this when we get home) and he mentions a friend of his says he should sell them. I agree, I’d buy a jar!
He goes back to the kitchen and soon our starter of chicken wings (perfectly done) appears, followed closely with my boiled chicken (excellent sauce, perfectly prepared) and Ed’s Mutton curry (which is actually beef curry tonight because there was an anthrax infection in the goats recently and Gabe won’t trust goat meat for a while).
Wow. Great food, good company – and so close to the condo. Definitely on our list for a repeat visit.
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