Tonight we are visiting the Sunday Night Market in Chiang Mai and right now we are at Thapea
Gate and this is where the market starts running one kilometer into the old city.
So we're going to be wandering around, sampling some food and showing you what it is like
over here on a Sunday.
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So you can buy a lot of handicrafts here at this market.
For example, silk, scarves, wood carvings.
You can get some paintings.
They have ceramics.
Silverware.
Lots of jewelry.
I mean you can browse here for hours on end.
And trinkets galore.
Mmmmm.
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When you get tired of walking around in the night market you can just head over here to
sit down and relax and get a nice Thai foot massage.
Thirty minutes for two dollars right?
Probably.
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Actually it's 80 Baht for the foot massage.
You can get a cheaper one at the Chiang Mai park.
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Sizzling noises.
Crowd noises.
One spring roll.
Yeah.
One tempura.
One of this.
One of this?
Ah, yeah one.
Well you sure loaded up with some tasty treats.
Okay, so this is my second dinner.
I have some deep fried tempura eggplant with a sweet and sour sauce on top and fresh spring
rolls with carrots and cilantro maybe and some noodles.
Okay, try one of them?
And that would be?
It tastes very healthy.
Hahaha!
Is it good?
Mmmm, it's not as flavorful as I would have hoped.
Here, have a look.
It's actually bean sprouts not noodles.
I was wrong.
Bean spouts and tofu and some carrots.
And what is this over here?
Well, I must have been a monkey in a past life because whenever I get a chance to try
a banana I'm always in there.
And this is the deep fried version.
So, it's already kind of smushed up here.
Awesome.
Does it have some kind of special sauce over top?
No, there is no special sauce it's just deep-fried and the banana is really mushy and moist in
the inside.
Okay, this is my tempura eggplant.
Mmmm.
Okay, that tastes a lot better.
It's almost like a french fry.
Can I say that?
Yep, it has a nice sweet and sour sauce over top and it's very oily.
Um, but that means it is very flavorful.
French fry on a stick.
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And that concludes our visit to the hectic Chiang Mai Sunday Night Market.
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Today we're taking a fun little day trip outside of Chiang Mai.
We are visiting the Elephant Nature Park, which is about sixty kilometers outside of
the city.
This is an elephant rescue and rehabilitation center, so we're going to be showing you around.
This center is also a refuge for a number of injured and abandoned animals such as dogs,
cats, water buffalo and others.
We have a bucket full of fresh fruit and on today's menu for the elephants are bananas
and watermelons.
Hi Baby!
There you go.
No bananas.
Nope!
That was my first time touching an elephant and there skin is surprisingly course and
hairy.
Right now the rescue center is home to thirty seven elephants.
Thirty two of them are female and five of them are male.
These are Asian elephants, which vary from the African elephant.
The African elephant is actually a lot larger than the Asian elephant and they also have
much bigger ears.
Most of the elephants on the site have been rescued from logging, tourism and begging
industries.
This is the happiest time of day!
The elephants are now being bathed.
Overall, the
experience at the Elephant Nature Park has been phenomenal.
We've really enjoyed having an opportunity to feed, bathe and interact with all of the
elephants.
It is a great alternative to doing the trekking where you are just sitting on top of the elephant
and they are working.
This way you get to spend time with the elephant in its natural environment feeding it and
just having a great time.
This morning we're venturing up to Doi Suthep and there is a temple atop the mountain overlooking
Chiang Mai, so we're going to be taking a red songthaew to get there and hopefully the
views of the city will be amazing.
Here is the songthaew crew!
Say hi!
Hi!
We're going to Doi Suthep.
Woo Hoo!
We just got out of the vehicle and this is our first vantage point.
Unfortunately, it is still a bit hazy outside, so we don't have a great view at the moment.
But the city is there somewhere.
The long climb begins.
I'm not entirely sure how many steps we have to go but I know it is going to be a long
way.
I think there is over three hundred.
Ideally you should be able to see the views of Chiang Mai from up here but today it is
just really hazy, so there is a cloud hanging over the city.
We can't really see much, which is unfortunate.
That concludes our visit to Doi Suthep.
It is definitely different than what I expected.
I was kind of expecting this quaint little temple on top of a hill and instead it is
an extremely popular tourist attraction.
It is really crowded over here.
I would say the exterior of Doi Suthep is quite similar to a lot of the other Wats we
have visited here in Chiang Mai.
However, the highlight for me was actually going inside the temple because there is a
courtyard with a golden stupa and you can walk around light candles and there is incense
burning, so that was a great experience.
You know we love to eat, so today we've signed up for a cooking course where we're going
to learn how to make some of our favorite Thai dishes.
Right now we're at the local market, so we're just going to be walking around picking out
some of the ingredients we'll need today for the class.
Let's have a look.
Judging from the amount of cooking videos we make you'd probably think that we're constantly
in the kitchen and that we always like to cook.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
Most of the time when we're on the road we eat out, so this is actually kind of an excuse
to get into the kitchen and cook and to actually try and make food because normally we don't
do that.
We have now arrived at the Thai Farm Cooking School.
We drove about seventeen kilometers outside of Chiang Mai and it is a completely different
world out here.
We're just surrounded by nature and an organic farm.
We're actually going to be picking a lot of vegetables from here.
We had a choice between doing the cooking course in the city or going out to the countryside
and I think we've made the right decision.
Now clean rice already.
Please come inside.
I would like you to pick by yourself the whole leaf basil.
I'm making my Yellow curry paste.
Pound, pound, pound!
Harder!
Faster!
Stronger!
So Sam is lagging a little behind right?
Come on.
Master Chef here - look at that.
Perfection.
No, I really am lagging behind, I better hustle up.
I'm making a yellow curry today.
This is mine.
This is what I created and Sam went for the green curry, so this is his.
And I'd like to point out I don't think he did a very good job.
Oh, that just fell in there.
What is this?
Whatever.
Total chunks.
You get an F!
Alright, oh!
It's boiling!
It is not supposed to boil.
We're making the Tom Yum soup.
Mine is going to have shrimp and I've got my coconut milk here, so I'm going to be adding
some ingredients - mushrooms, onions.
I'm ready to try fine creation.
This is my Tom Yum with shrimp.
Let's see.
I made mine really sweet.
I think maybe I put in to much sugar but it is kind of nice and creamy because I used
coconut as a base.
You need to add more salt or fish sauce then.
Mine does need more salt.
How is yours?
You look like a farmer drinking soup.
I'm keeping this hat I swear.
I'm quite happy with mine.
I put quite a bit of salt in it and I also put fish sauce.
I'm making my Yellow curry now.
I'm just stirring the coconut milk.
I put in the curry paste I made earlier.
There is also some pumpkin and potatoes and I accidentally added some leaves that I wasn't
supposed to but shhhh.....Cheater!
Not that we've chopped everything up we're going to be throwing this into the Wok and
making our stir fried rice.
I was wrong about this dish.
It is not a stir fried rice.
It is just a vegetable stir-fry.
It's really good.
I made one with chicken and string beans and mushrooms and here is my yellow curry with
potatoes and pumpkin.
Is it good?
Uh-huh.
At this point in the day I'm getting completely stuffed.
I actually wouldn't mind taking a siesta right now but we're going to be making two more
dishes.
I'm going to be making a Pad Thai and then a Mango Sticky Rice.
So I'm suffering from what my family calls bulbous plumptitude.
I'm making Pad Thai.
Your favorite.
Here is my Pad Thai which is probably one of the easier Thai dishes you can make.
We saved the very best for last.
Here we have our favorite Thai dessert - Mango Sticky Rice - and it has some deep fried Mung
Bean on top.
It is crispy.
This is going to be good.
Alright, let's check out that first bite.
It is nice and coconut-y and it is amazing.
So overall that was a really cool experience learning how to cook Thai food.
I made five different dishes.
I'm beyond full.
Like I feel like I'm ready to hibernate now.
So this was 1100 Baht.
It was like lunch and dinner and the thing I really liked about this particular school
was that it was out in the countryside where we were able to get outside of the city and
away from the pollution and whatnot and just have a really cool organic cooking experience.
So it is Saturday night in Chiang Mai and today we are heading to the Saturday Night
Market.
Well, we're still a few blocks away but I know we're close.
You know why?
Because I can smell the food.
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What do you got there?
So I got myself a twisted potato which is a lot like the tornado chips we used to have
in Korea.
It looks like it is all seasoned?
It's nice.
Barbecued flavored.
You're going to be sharing that?
You are wasting the chips.
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Yes, blueberry.
That looks good.
It's like blueberry cheesecake with ice cream.
It's going to be messy.
Snow ice cream with blueberry sauce drizzled over top.
How articulate.
Mmmmmmm.
Live music playing from the streets.
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So what did you get?
I've got some pan-fried dumplings that are very similar to the Korean gun mandu that
we often had when we were living as teachers in Korea.
So let's see if these are as good?
They look hot.
Yeah.
Pretty good.
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Someone found his favorites here.
So what started as just a little snack out here at the market has turned into a full
on feast.
I've got dim sum and fried spring rolls.
Looking good.
I got this - German sausage.
Very good.
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And in case we didn't quite have enough to eat - a sweet little dessert treat.
So that is a banana and egg roti with lots of chocolate and condensed milk drizzled over
top.
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We came to this night market.
We were supposed to go for a walk but guess what?
We ended up having a massive feast and so instead of exercise we were gorging the whole
time but it was worth it.
So today we are back at our favorite Thai restaurant but we're going to be having a
special meal.
We have ordered a set for two people that focuses on Northern Thai dishes, so we are
going to get a sampling of different curries that come along with sticky rice.
And this is what it might look like.
Our first dish has arrived and it is called Khao Soi and it is fried noodles on top of
a hearty curry.
That looks amazing.
It does.
Let's dig into that baby.
I'm going to try my first fried noodle.
I've never had anything like this.
It's kind of nice and the curry is kind of spicy.
How is that?
It's a very flavorful spicy curry.
I can tell it is made from coconut milk.
It's not a very thick curry.
It is more stew-like and soup-y but it is really nice on a warm day like this.
I'm enjoying it.
Sticky rice inside.
So a lot of the Northern Thai dishes have pork in them, so as you can see over here
we have a pork sausage.
We have something that looks like ground pork with nice green herbs and this might also
be pork if you ask me.
One of the characteristic elements of Northern Thai food is that you eat your side dishes
with sticky rice.
This is going to be tasty.
So I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be using my hands or not but because this is sticky
rice I am.
We're going to dip it over here and see how it tastes.
Spicy or sweet?
This one is surprisingly sweet.
So I'm going to try one of these little puffs in another kind of dipping sauce.
That looks like it could be spicy.
Yeah, it is spicy.
Burning your mouth?
We also have a nice pumpkin stew over here with tofu.
Spicy?
Not spicy.
It's just really hot.
Okay, what is next?
So next up in the dishes to try here would be the ground pork.
It looks like it has been marinated in a nice little sauce.
Very strong flavor with the sauce.
It looks like soy sauce but that is hard going down.
Very tasty though.
So it is only our first week in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand but we are quite quickly
discovering that this part of the country has a lot to offer in the cooking department.
Normally, when you think Thai food you think of Pad Thai, Green Curries but really there
is so much variety here.
Today we had dishes that we had never even heard of before and they were so tasty.
We still don't even know exactly what they are.
We don't know the n ames.
I'm sure we will learn them over the course of our time here but for now what we can tell
you is that Northern Thai food is really tasty.
So just when we thought the meal was finally over and we are so stuffed they bring dessert
out for us and it is amazing.
So here you can see bananas.
Those are just slices of bananas in a sweet, thick coconut cream and it is amazing really.
Oh yeah, you need to try it.
I want to see your face when you bite into that.
Wow!
It almost has a bit of a rum caramel type flavor which really accentuates the coconut
milk.
That was seriously the feast of feasts.
We paid 300 Baht in total for that which is roughly ten US dollars and it was worth every
penny or should I say every Baht.
It's a lovely day here in Chiang Mai and we're going to give you a tour of our neighborhood.
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So we live in a very residential neighborhood and in this area you're going to a see a lot
of traditional homes, as well as luxury mansions, so let's have a look.
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Hi, Puppy.
You're cute.
Do I smell nice?
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Hi puppies.
How are you?
Hello.
You're cute.
Look at you.
Barking.
Hello Puppy.
So we've encountered lots of friendly dogs this morning.
One of my favorite things about this neighborhood is that we live right by Chiang Mai Gate and
it is a great place to get lots of really tasty street food at night and the best part
is that it is so cheap.
So you can get mango shakes and mango sticky rice, noodle soups.
There is just so much good stuff to eat there.
And what is your favorite part about our neighborhood?
I like just how peaceful and quiet it is.
Chiang Mai can be a really hectic and chaotic city in certain sections but where we live
it's just tranquil.
And one of the perks of living in our neighborhood - we live right beside a Silver temple.
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So that is an example here of one of the moor traditional style Thai homes.
And right across from it you have a super modern mansion I'd say.
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So that concludes our tour of the neighborhood and we'll show you a different part of the
city next time.