Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai

"I will teach you to be a good Thai wife!" The enthusiastic little Thai cooking spitfire told us as we pounded out the green curry paste with a pestle and mortar. And i don't know about that, but I will be cooking some badass Thai food for myself as soon as I have a kitchen at my fingertips again. I learned to and created the following, phad thai, spring rolls, tom kha soup, green curry paste and green curry w/tofu, and mango w/sticky rice! All delicious, they totally did everything for you to make success inevitable but whatevah i had a great time. Also in Chaing Mai we traipsed around the Sunday night market and I ate some weird wafer tacos filled with what tasted like marshmallow paste, had a badass and not too painful Thai Massage, and then we were off to Chaing Rai.

Chaing Rai was another quirky mountain side town with an equally short visit. We got in after a pretty good bus ride on Green Bus, where we watched 'The Rocker' dubbed in Thai, luckily i had watched it on the plane in English so i just translated important info to Jules. We wandered around the town and visited this massive golden clock tower looming over the center of town, got some pineapple at the local market, and played with the cute ass puppies at our guesthouse.
Rooster mania made sleep not soo awesome and the next day we got up early and toured around and saw the Karen Hilltribe sub sect called Paduang who are recent refugees from Burma and as a part of their culture for some reason all the women have massive brass rings around their necks elongating them, some to 30cm. And that brass is HEAVY. So we bought some beautiful vibrant scarves made by the ladies and went to the Monkey caves, and huffed and puffed to this creepy cave and saw some monkeys eating ice cream. Then onto the Golden Triangle, formerly famous for its Opium trafficking, but now a massive tourist spot. A beach forms a triangle at the intersection of Thailand, Burma, and Laos. And there is also an enormous Dragon boat housing an even bigger golden Buddha statue flanked by large elephant protectors that was really cool. After this crazy day we had just enough time to watch Obama and everyone in D.C. freeze their asses of at the inauguration, pack our bags and crash before getting up hella early to catch 2 buses, one tuk tuk, and three longboats to get into Laos and rock the slowboat!