More Food

Every evening we go out for supper, after doing our own simple breakfast and lunch in our room. Sunday and Monday evenings we crossed the road at Chang Mai Gate and headed into the Old City. One place we liked last year, Spoon de Best, was closed on Sunday, so we found a place farther on that we also tried last year. I forgot to note its name. Near the street they had a bar with blinking lights that displayed many bottles of liquor (I think they were empty).

They have rooms to rent, too. This signboard has the nightly rates -- 100 baht is about $2.75 or so, showing that you can stay pretty cheaply in Chiang Mai. I think the rubbed-out part says Private room with A/C, maybe 350 baht.

We started with spring rolls -- we haven't had bad ones anywhere yet!

I had shrimp and cashews with lots of vegetables, mainly peppers and onions (and some carrots).

Dan had Pad See Ew, which is usually served with broccoli in the US. Here is it a more kale-like vegetable (maybe broccoli rabe?). The rice noodles are always wide in this dish.

We did get back to Spoon de Best on Monday when it was open. My pad thai came with quite a presentation.

On our walk back we passed the Chiang Mai Gate Market. During the day, the inside tables are covered with all kinds of things. At night the inside is mostly empty, but there are vendors along the street selling all kinds of food. Below you could get your fresh seafood.

The majority of the food on offer at the stalls is cooked. This is salted grilled fish, which must have been popular -- I suspect the grill had been full earlier.

One shop had steamed fish with herbs. It looks good! We keep saying we will get a fish and bring it to our place to eat one of these times.

This morning my tai chi class was great. We only had four students (not so great for the teacher), which meant Rod had plenty of time to get around to help each individual. He complimented my form and said he thought I might finish learning the square form during this visit. We shall see. So far I've been mostly reviewing what I was supposed to have learned last year...

Flowers on the table outside the tai chi studio

I saw this bush on my way home along the street. Beautiful flower cluster!

Dominoes!

A good Sunday morning to you! We had a great day yesterday. Our grandkids came to our place in the afternoon and we had a full round of dominoes (all the way down to double zero), while noshing on snacks including mango and sticky rice, crunchy things, red bean paste patties sweet and salty, and red and white wine. When we were finished, we went to the Saturday Walking Street Market, which begins quite near to us. We walked through the entire market, ending up southwest of us. We walked a good way back to our place (two sides of the triangle created by the walking street). Some of us picked up something to eat at the market, pad thai or fried rice. I was happy just to have some fruit when we got back. What a nice and unusual way to spend a Saturday in Chiang Mai.

Scenes at the market:

Sugar toast -- not sure exactly what it was

Sandwiches with crab, dipped in batter and fried; strawberries have just come in

Tiny "egg birds" for sale

Various paintings of elephants

Frying dumplings and tiny mushrooms wrapped in pork strips

There is a new restaurant in our neighborhood called "Glass and Green" There is a nice small glass-enclosed building at the front. On the side there is a large and lovely courtyard with tables and nice decor. We decided to try it, even though there were only two other people there. No employees were in sight. Finally one of the other customers went back to the kitchen to tell them we were there. The food was OK, but almost no service. We probably won't go back. They have a large expensive property and we've never seen anyone else eating there. It might not make it for long...

We also went back to La Petite, the first restaurant we ate at a year ago. The proprietor, Stee, is Danish-Canadian and a friendly guy. It was nice to see him again and catch up. This photo is looking from our table to the street. There are six tables for four. The food is always good.

Chicken with peppers, rice on the side

Settling into a Routine

It's Thursday morning here now and we are enjoying the days. After an unusually busy weekend, we are settling into the rhythm of our life here.

We are on the sixth floor of Smith Suites and are very happy to have a separate bedroom and a large living room. (Last year we had a studio.) Again our windows mostly face south (one to the east) so we get a lot of sun. We mostly keep our curtains shut during the day. The temperatures are pleasant -- it gets down to 60°F overnight and about 90°F at midday. We have A/C and a fan we bought last year, but we've only used the fan a few times.

Sunrise from our balcony

Sunset from our balcony

We have our regular activities:  Dan plays pickle ball three mornings a week at the nearby park and takes Thai lessons about three days a week. He is studying a lot. He also takes frequent long walks in the afternoon. I go to tai chi class M-F and swim every afternoon (the pool water is colder than the pool I swim in at home, but I do it!). We both had our first massage on Tuesday and will go about twice a week. The greatest change from last year is that two of our grandchildren are staying in Chiang Mai. On Saturday they came to our place for a visit and we had dinner together. Wednesday we rode the scooter to their part of town and saw the condo Billy and Jasmine are staying in. Seth is in a different place and actually has two condos. One he rents out on Air B&B for some income. I hope we'll be able to get together about twice a week.

Seth, Jasmine and Billy at the restaurant

My Mussaman curry with sweet potato naan

Walking back to their apartment, we passed a roti vendor and couldn't resist having one. This is a thin layer of stretchy dough fried with egg and banana inside. It is folded and cut, then dribbled with chocolate syrup and a bit of sweetened condensed milk. We had two to share among the five of us and it was more than enough!

Roti maker

Restaurant where we ate

On Monday night we had our first dinner back at the Doo Dee, a nearby restaurant we liked a lot last year. The servers remembered us and it was good to be recognized.

They house-label their bottled water

My first pad thai of the season; I took half home for lunch the next day

Dan's caesar salad with chicken

Sunday Afternoon Outing

My last post finished as we were ready to leave Ming's home and head out. I took a few more photos in the garden before we left. I like the first -- hanging CDs in the tree to try to keep the birds away from the fruit.

Her father had a meeting, so just four of us took off in their 4-door pickup. First we headed northeast of the city to a farmers' market that specializes in organic food. They bought a variety of food, fruit and snacks. We enjoyed looking through the market, although we were pretty late (just after noon) and most were packing up.

This vendor had lots of basketry woven items.

The lone food vendor I got a picture of.

From there we headed out of town to the south and east. They wanted to show us a hot springs spa. There are quite a few in the area, and Ming's mother wanted to show us one that wasn't crowded.

The Sippa Spa was lovely. It had a large grounds. There were tent campers in one area and they offer small bungalows for people to stay in.

After a short walk, we arrived at the hot springs. Outside there are three pools in descending order of temperature. The one closest to us was far to hot to even consider -- it might have been 180°. The second was hot and the third was lukewarm (just right for me!).

First, we were taken into a private bathing area. There were four rooms in one hut, so we were all in there. You can't see from this quite how large it is, but I easily could lie back nearly full length. The taps were incredibly strong; it only took a short time to fill the tub. You could add hot or cold water to regulate the temperature. They gave us some mineral liquid soap that was wonderful, even on my sensitive skin. After lounging in the bath a while, we went into the outside pools. Dan and I didn't have suits with us, so they gave us two towels each, one to wrap and one to dry. It felt a bit odd getting into the water with a thick wet towel around me, but it worked!

When we were finished, we saw this lovely outdoor massage pavilion.

Some water to drink after the dip in the springs.

The next stop was a handicrafts area so Ming could pick up some gifts for people back in the States. It was right across from the umbrella factory, so Dan and I went there. Here we three are standing in front of the entrance.

There was a circuit outside the building where we could see the workers making the various parts of the umbrellas. These are made of paper that is treated so that it is thickened and waterproof. The insides are made of bamboo.

They are all sizes; here are some of the small ones.

Decorative painter working

The shop was huge, with all kinds of umbrellas, fans, and even strings of lights.

From the umbrella factory, we headed back to town. We broke into the snacks in the car and finished off a lot of them! I'm sorry I forgot to take photos, but I found these on the web.

The first are very thin and crispy, slightly sweet. Easy to eat a lot!

We had three types of Thai jelly sweets. Again, they aren't too sweet, slightly coconut flavored, and tasty. We ate the blue ones! In the photo, you can see the layers. Evidently they are fairly difficult to make and take a lot of time, each layer cooked on top of the previous one.

What a Weekend!

At the end of my last post, I said we were heading out to get SIM cards for our phones. There is a huge electronics super store within walking distance, so we went there. They had two companies for phone service, but neither of them had the size SIM we needed. On our way back, we stopped in at IDI and scheduled our first massages for Tuesday.

About 4:00, Dan headed out on the scooter to the Airport Plaza Mall, where there are many phone shops and a good likelihood of finding the right size SIM. I had my first swim and, soon after 5:00, I walked over to Chiang Mai Gate, where we were meeting up with our grandchildren, who have been staying in condos over on the northwest side of the old city. They showed up on the dot of 5:30 and we headed back to our apartment. I made some fresh lime sodas and we caught up on what they have been doing. Dan got back at 6:00 with the phones all set up and greeted everyone. We walked over to the Blues Bar, a small restaurant nearby and had dinner together. More visiting after supper and then they took off to catch a song tao (pickup truck taxi) back to their place. We are looking forward to getting together often!!

Last summer we had a young Thai woman, Ming, staying in our basement while she finished up her program at Merry Lea Environmental Center, an arm of Goshen College. She moved to Vermont for a job in food systems with Americorps in August. She was able to come home for the holidays, and we were invited to her parents' home for brunch on Sunday. (We first met them when they came to our house in the summer.) Her parents are very interesting. Her father is a political scientist, mostly retired professor. Her mother was a professor of city planning and is an avid environmentalist. She designed their home, in a quiet neighborhood near the university.

Built into the home are the fixtures from the mother's grandmother's tailoring shop. She was Chinese and had a very large and popular shop with a wide range of fabrics and tailoring services. I would have loved to see it! As we entered the living room, we saw this large standup desk that was used for accepting cash from customers. I don't know if you can see that there is a gap in the railing in the center where the customers could hand over their payment.

The carved wood decoration above the doors is also from the shop. In the background of this photo, you can see some of the fabric cupboards, now bookshelves, that are in the study. They are very tall, necessitating extra-high ceilings in the Thai-style house.

The living room also has an old howdah, or elephant saddle, that two people would ride on.

The dining room is also lined with the shelves. They have a lot of books! Here the family is at the table.

We had a wonderful meal. These dishes were already on the table. Clockwise from the top left are shredded dried pork, pickled cabbage, pickled duck and chicken eggs, special chickpea and peanut condiments and another crunchy topping. The cucumber and tomato dish is centered with Chinese-style fish sausage, very delicious.

This stir-fry dish has tofu, mushrooms, and several other ingredients.

My plate has a mix of rice (purple and two others) surrounded by some of the dishes shown above. We also had a noodle dish I forgot to photograph.

Three fruits -- starfruit, peeled guava, and green mango.

 We toured around the house after eating and I liked this shelf of (mostly) pottery in the kitchen.

Both parents used to paint a lot of watercolors and they are in many rooms of the house. In later years, Ming's grandmother took up watercolors, too, to help her with the loss of her husband.

After lunch we toured the garden. But this is getting long, so I won't put up all the pictures, just this pot of lotus blossoms.

We had a wonderful visit and so enjoyed spending time with Ming and her family. We thought that was it, but then Ming and her mother wanted to take us out for the afternoon. More about that tomorrow!