Northern Lights

I took the night train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai and after 12 long hours I arrived in the capital of Northern Thailand. Although I didn't know much about Chiang Mai before, I definetely was attracted to this charming city and therefore extended my originally planned one-night stay into four nights. I stayed at a cool hostel, that felt more like a flat share than a backpacker accomodation. So I had from the very beginning people to go out with and found company for various activities.


I started my stay here with a walk around the city and visited a couple of temples and drank way too much mango smoothies. As I was told, Buddhism spread out from the countries in the North of Thailand and found it's way down to the South. Therefore, as the cpaital of the North, Chiang Mai is a center and very important city of Buddhism in Thailand, which explains the fact that you can find a temple - or Wat - on every corner. After I saw a couple of Wats I decided it was time to learn a bit about Buddhism myself and attended one of the monk chats. Those are informal talks with monks who are right now during their studies. Visitors get the chance to ask questions and they get the chance to practice their English. It was very interesting, especially the answer to the question how you can be able to not pretend and stay true to yourself - it's actually quite simple: stop caring about what others think.


I signed up for a cooking class - haha, yes I'm not joking - I really did, and I totally didn't do it because I think in any way that my skills in the kitchen do need any improvement - I mean, seriously, how much better than microwave food, take out or spaghetti and rice with sugo can it get :-). But rather because I figured it would be cool to be able to do some of the stuff I'm having all these days here by myself and since Chiang Mai is somehow the culinary capital of the North of Thailand, I thought this is the right place and time. The course was fun and to my surprise the teacher asked me if I cook a lot because I am obviously a talent - haha. I guess she was more impressed by my talent to remember the things she said before than my actual knowledge of what to do. Anyway, after a short tour of the local market I learned how to cook things like pad thai, green curry chicken and thai pancakes. So if you are lucky you might get a taste of this once I am back home. I got a receipe book, so I hope I can repeat the dishes. And I don't want to brag, but my banana - coconut thai pancakes are to die for ;-)


It seems that Chiang Mai is an excellent place to do many things and one of them is definetely shopping. You can get a lot of cheap stuff at the various markets and I liked it much more than shopping in Bangkok. Here you can buy things from local tribes and you also see more locals strolling around on the markets so you don't feel like in a tourist trap. I guess you can imagine what happened as my love for colorful accessoires like necklaces, bracelets and earings met the cheap prices and an enourmous selection at the Sunday night market - yes I definetely bought to much stuff but I truly think it's not my fault ... I was kind of forced to ;-)



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