Chiang Mai
As the second largest city in Thailand, Chiang Mai was actually quiet… compared to Bangkok, at least! It is apparently home to Thailand’s best cuisine, and a favourite place for foreigners to live as expats. It is where we chose to spend xmas and soak in as much food and beer as possible before our next destination, hehehe… (you will see why when you read on!)

A couple of weeks ago, my parents and grandma transferred us some xmas money (thank you!) which was spent wisely on a few things, including… a cooking class! So, on December 24^th, all I did was cook from morning to mid-afternoon. I learned how to make coconut soup with chicken, pad thai, papaya salad, green curry paste, coconut green curry with chicken and coconut sticky rice pudding with mango, all of them from scratch. We started the day by going to the market, and choosing ingredients for our meals. Our teacher explained the use and names of many veggies and spices. It was absolutely fascinating!

We then came back to the class, and started cooking! You all have no idea how much I am CRAVING to cook these days, I haven’t touched a kitchen or anything for months. It was absolutely blissful to start chopping up veggies and cooking ‘em up!

And at the end of the class, we each got a certificate as well as a recipe book. Kickass! I can’t wait to try these recipes at home, in Canada!

The next day (December 25^th), François offered me an afternoon at the spa, including some time in a herbal steam sauna and an aromatherapy oil massage. The place itself was very beautiful, and the treatments relaxing, but the massage was not THAT good compared to others I’ve tried. It was nice anyway.

For xmas dinner, we went to a French-Thai restaurant. We had a charcuterie plate as an appetizer, and for main meals, I had steak tartare and François, cheese fondue. It was quite decent, but the service was weird – the entree arrived with the fries and salad that were supposed to come with the steak tartare, and everything arrived so fast we were finished everything 30 minutes after entering the restaurant. Let’s just say I wasn’t too impressed. We decided to finish the evening in a really cool rock bar, which blasted AC/DC and Black Sabbath. There were a few bikers, which kindly invited us to their table, and bought our beer for the rest of the evening!!! The leader was a tattoo-ed up British who was vegetarian, involved in Buddhism and meditation. He showed me some amulets that protected him from the police and others from falling off his bike. I wish I had my camera, it was just too surreal of an evening!

A few days later, we decided to go to another restaurant called Huen Phen, which was much better than the French-Thai one. They specialize in northern cuisine and are one of the most popular (and affordable) restaurants in Chiang Mai. We had a Khantoke set menu for two, which is usually reserved for weddings and other special events. It was a great introduction to the local cuisine, and everything was tasty as hell. I mean, the food was so yummy that it kind of made our tastebuds explode, haha!

We also went to another quite famous restaurant called Aroon Rai, which apparently has some of the best curries of Thailand. I am not a huge expert in Thai curries, but I have to admit the ones they had were to die for! (Although my very own green curry was superior hahaha)

Since we were there for the weekend, we went to the Saturday market. It was really really busy and completely packed with people! Vendors and merchants were selling everything from slippers to sushi, sweets, bbq’ed skewers, etc…

The problem with these markets is that they are a few kilometres long, packed and equipped with very few toilets. Luckily, I found some but they were quite something!

Oh yeah, there was  bunch of hot Thai chicks dressed in Santa costumes, since it was Christmas day. I took this photo especially for the guys!

While walking, we saw quite a few random, interesting and funny things, which I wanted to share…

Anyway, we didn’t do too many touristic things in Chiang Mai, but it was a really nice week to relax before we spend a week up north in the town of Fang, more precisely at Wat Sri Boen-Ruang, a Buddhist monastery. We also spent about six hours rehearsing and writing in a local studio (3.50$ an hour, including instruments!). I snapped a photo of François, which I thought looked totally 70’s haha

Fang
From the Chiang Mai bus station, we took a local bus to Fang, which is located 3-4 hours away, and is only 20km or so from the Burmese border. Hill tribes live in the area, as well as the famous Giraffe ladies (the women with a million rings around their necks that fascinated all of us as kids). We didn’t visit any of these unfortunately, but perhaps we will next time! Anyway, when we got on the bus to Fang, we were a bit surprised; the seats that would normally be for two were for three! I thought it was made like this if there were families with small children, but no, people actually crammed themselves three per seat. But I guess people were shy around us and they take the third place on our seat, haha!

We showed the name of the monastery we were going at to the bus driver and so he dropped us in front of it. When we entered the gates, our initial reaction was that it looked very calm and kind of ghostly – there was hardly anybody on the grounds! Only two guys were sweeping, and luckily one of them spoke English and brought me to the hut of one of our monk/teachers, Phra Greg.

We came to stay in Wat Sri Boen-Ruang especially to learn about Theravada Buddhism (the “purest” branch of Buddhism – practiced mostly in Burma, Lao and Thailand) and to learn how to meditate.

Basically what we’ve learned is that Buddhism is the philosophy of following the Dhamma (the teachings of professor Buddha). Phra Fred taught us that Buddha was actually a prince who lived around 2600 years ago, and who was born in what is now known as Nepal. He intensely meditated and attained Nirvana (enlightment) under a tree, then lived the rest of his life teaching his findings (the Dhamma). What is enlightment? Essentially, it is total, pure, blissful joy by doing good (and getting the results of it), as well as stopping all internal suffering. It is a state that can only be attained by yourself.

In the monastery, we learned from Phra Greg about the Dhamma and how to meditate with mindfulness (visspassana meditation). By concentrating on ONLY one thing at the time during meditation (breathing, for example), you get to control much more what you are thinking, and therefore are able to stop any thoughts or actions that are getting in our way.

And how to stop all internal suffering? What I understand of it is being able to keeping a balance; not to be to be extremely sad/negative or be extremely happy/positive. It’s what is called “the middle path”. Talking about happiness; I actually get stressed when I talk about some dish that I like so much. I get huge skin rashes!! And a similar thing happens when I get really, really angry. By staying focused and not feeling about anything too strongly, I’d stay on the middle path. I’d suffer enormously if a fire wiped out my entire LP and CD collection… but if I wouldn’t get attached to my records too strongly, I’d say “Whatever! I can live without ‘em!” But obviously, I know that this would not happen as music is my very own religion hehe

In order to stay in this particularly monastery, we have to go through eight rules, or eight precepts:

1. No killing or harming living beings
2. No stealing
3. No sexual or romantic activity (not even if I’m married, snif! Can’t even sleep in the same room!)
4. No improper speech
5. No drugs or alcohol
6. No eating from noon to 6AM (very very hard for me!!)
7. No entertainment, singing and beautification (cosmetics) – and wearing white clothing only… this one is extremely difficult as I’m not allowed to listen to ANY music for a week! I will make it up afterwards, arghhh
8. No luxurious beds (it makes you want to sleep too much)

We thus went through the precept ceremony (atasilani). Conducted by Phra Greg, we took the temporary oath of keeping the eight precepts by reading them out loud in Pali, the ancient language spoken by Buddha himself. We also had to an offering of flowers, incense and candles.

And, here is our modest bed hehe:

And we bought dark chocolate (it doesn’t count as a food, according to our teacher, Phra Greg, as it melts in the mouth like a liquid) so we could survive. It actually helped alot!

Every morning (except for Buddha days), monks and novice monks leave the monastery at 6:15AM to collect food offerings from the locals. (Monks cannot buy, or prepare their own food to be able to fully concentrate on their practice. The community relies on the normal people for material needs, and in return, the monks provide spiritual guidance and moral support.) We, of course, had to follow them on their rounds. Sometimes the mornings were chilly and misty, and it was super awesome!

And here is a video of it. Sorry for the dog barking, it’s the only decent video my camera could take… you get the point though!

When we arrive, we can finally feast! I can say that we are totally starving at this point. And we are able to eat an extremely vast variety of northern Thai food!!!

The monastery is also home to about twenty dogs. People drop them there and others adopt some… they are absolutely adorable and each has a personality of their own:

Sometimes, in the evenings around 6PM, there would be chantings in pali. The whole monastery would group up and sing the teachings of Buddha. It’s hard because you have to sit on the floor the whole time, but when you get a good position, it gets very soothing and frankly, it sounds really cool!

So, we spent New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in the monastery… for New Year’s Eve, the abbot of the temple decided to organize evening chants and Dhamma talks that would lead the local devotees into the new year by doing good. It started around 7PM and lasted to probably around 1AM. There were also fireworks and firecrackers going off in the air!

For New Year’s Day, it happened to be a Buddha day (one of the 4 phases of the moon). Instead of the monks going on their alms round, the locals come to the temple and do offerings there directly. They lay out food on the table, and offer chunks of sticky rice to the novices, which they place directly in their bowl. A bit like in Luang Prabang.

We also experienced more events during our short stay – such as…

…an ordination into monkhood:

…and a funeral! Funerals here are seen as an important day, like births and weddings. It’s part of the cycle of rebirth. People must talk good about the deceased in order for him to reach a higher realm. Or something… thus, funerals here are not all about crying and mourning… although I did see a couple of people cry!

Once the ceremony is done, monks symbolically carry the funeral casket to the crematorium. It results in some sort of really cool funeral march. The first guy in front flies a ghost to scare away bad spirits, and the monks (and family of the deceased) pull on a rope.

I took yet another video so you guys can listen to the music and soak in the atmosphere. The music is supposed to be loud and “annoying” to, again, scare the bad spirits away, but I actually quite enjoyed it!

After all of this, we went through another ceremony to downgrade ourselves to the basic five precepts (or whatever we want to follow). We had to do another offering:

And that’s pretty much it for our temple stay! Our experience was absolute gold and we really enjoyed our time there. We discovered not only what Buddhism is about, but we learned about Thai culture, how to meditate and how to include it in our daily lives. We totally recommend and urge people to come and stay this monastery! You can learn more about the program HERE.

Anyway, the last evening, I celebrated by undergoing a traditional Thai massage, which was offered in the home of a small family near the temple. It cost US$ 4,50 for two hours and it was the best massage I’ve even gotten!!! I was the last client of the day, so the owner also massaged me for quite a while, which made it a four hand massage! It was absolutely mind-blowing. I came out of there feeling totally high and had trouble walking!

The next day, we got very lucky and a generous Thai man gave us a ride all the way to Chiang Mai, where we are taking the train to reach the south of Thailand. It was a tiny bit awkward because he knew maybe 10 English words, and us about 5 words of Thai, but we kept on laughing at our mediocrity the whole way hahaha!

Now we are on the train, riding for two days, going to the hot and tropical beaches of Thailand…

Koh Phi Phi
One car, two trains, 3 buses and two boat rides later… we arrived on Koh Phi Phi Island! Known as having some of the world’s best beaches, Koh Phi Phi was hugely stuck by the tsunami in 2004, killing something like 1000 people… but of course everything has been rebuilt since, and they did one hell of a good job!

We booked 5 nights in a bungalow on Long Beach, located about 45 minutes walk from the town. Since we were tired as hell from our traveling, and we had all our bags with us, we decided to take a taxi boat to reach our destination on the island. The color of the water really blew me away, it looked so clear and had beautiful emerald colors!

The beach itself was surprisingly quiet and really well organized. There were no sellers trying to sell you sunglasses, bracelets or fruits… and they had fresh fruit shakes for 1.25$! I bought a small bottle of rum, and made my own frozen margaritas hehe! (The real ones were going for 4.50$ a glass, screw that!)

What surprised me the most was when you enter the water, there are tons of multicoloured fishes that come and meet you! At one point, I think I had around 50 around me, it was kind of intimidating haha! Some were tickling my feet. It really felt like we were in an aquarium or something…

The highlight of Long Beach though, were three Maltese dog puppies that were owned by some lady working at our hotel. They are so cute, oh man, I couldn’t resist hugging them haha… I wish I could have held all three at the same time, but only two fit in my arms.

And so that is it for our trip to Thailand. I think I’m seriously going to miss this country and its people… but we must move on. Tomorrow we are entering our first Islamic country; MALAYSIA! See you soon!

 

I had no idea what to expect of the city of Bangkok except the facts that it is HUGE (population of 11 million), that is has a killer metal scene and… that its “real” name is unusually long (Krung thep mahanakhon amorn ratanakosin mahintharayutthaya mahadilok popnoparat ratchathani burirom udomratchanivetmahasathan amornpiman avatarnsathit sakkathattiyavisnukarmprasit) meaning “The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city of Ayutthaya of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn”!!!

So… anyway, the first thing we did arriving here was to travel to the embassy of India to get our visas – but we found out we were far away from any metro/sky train station (we were located near the Grand Palace and Khao San road)… therefore, we had to take a bus. So, the first thing I experienced in Bangkok was its massive rush hour traffic jam, and we had to take a bus in it… arghh! I admit it was a very chaotic and stressful experience, but starting with the worst only meant one thing: everything was going to be better!

Beside the visa run, we started with our favourite thing ever; record shopping!! We discovered two killer record shops; Triple Six records, and Record Hunter. Triple Six is quite varied, and has an amazing selection of underground CD’s/LP’s/tapes/patches and ‘zines from all over the world. I was surprised to find IRON DOGS’ demo there (Ottawa heavy metal) as well as our very own CD! Their prices were around $7-$15 per CD, $25-$35 per LP and $3 per tape. Pretty good! I bought the new IMPIETY, the TORMENTRESS (Singapore all-female thrash!) CD and the most recent Burning Churches fanzine.

Right beside Triple Six is a shop called “Record Hunter”, which specializes in second hand importation LP’s of all genres. Little did I know that the owner was a huge metal LP collector! He had a kickass selection with records that you’d normally see in European metal markets. I was tempted by a few LP’s but ended up buying the Darkside Records (Greece) “Beyond the Grave” compilation, which features obscure tracks from early 90’s death and black metal.

On Saturday night, I was taken for a visit of the city by Bangkok’s Thai metal inquisition. Actually, it was my friend Jerasak and his metal friends who took me around – and it was one hell of a ride!

We met together at a coffee shop, and there, a monk started staring at my friend Jerasak’s jacket. We all thought he was going to come and criticize us or something but from his monk bag he took out a metal magazine!!! He showed us that he was a big “Dimmu Borgir” fan! Then he kept on staring at us!!! My friends found that very unusual (it’s the first time they ever see this) and that he is perhaps breaking one of the Thai Buddhism rules by enjoying metal (which is entertainment). Anyway, it was quite a weird experience! I took a photo with the monk:

We then headed for the JJ market – a huge market that has everything from animals, to souvenirs, bags, food and vintage clothing. It was funny to shop with a big bunch of metal guys, but we had alot of fun! I bought a vintage 70’s Zeppelin shirt for François as well as some bootleg metal patches.

After the market, we went to a food court to have lunch. In Thai food courts, you have to put money into a card, and then use it to buy food. I had my first real green curry, as well as some pork ball skewers.

But the best was something Jerasak gave me… holy shit, I seriously had tears in my eyes when I ate it. They were crispy pancakes covered with thick meringue and a sweet grated coconut (?) topping. I need to find these again, they are so good!!

We hung out a little bit, and then headed for KTK – a “secret” metal meeting spot located in a local night market. Basically, it’s two friends that for 5 years have been setting up a table for selling records… but really, it’s just an excuse to meet up, drink beer, exchange metal information and swap albums. That night, tons of people came out and we had one hell of a party! I think we were around 20 in a small, black alley street of that night market. We seriously looked like a gang or something haha

One of the two guys selling records, Metalsavage, is the Thai equivalent to Neal Tanaka (a famous Japanese metal collector). He has thousands of LP’s, a gigantic VENOM collection and about 50 jackets with all original and hard to find patches that he has been collecting for the past 30 years! I was absolutely blown away to find an original 80’s VULCAIN patch on his jacket that night. WOW!

When the night market closed, 15 of us moved and invaded the local backpacker street Khaosan Road, where we consumed beer intensely until the wee hours of the morning. It must have been weird and unusual for tourists to see us!

On the street were many lady boys (some kind of third gender here in Thailand…) and one of them was dressed up horribly as “mother Christmas”. Ayayay! I absolutely HAD to take my picture with “it”!! Haha

As you could probably tell, the next day was a brutal hangover… But I slept it off and was fine after a while haha!

Now, about my other favourite thing ever… FOOD! Thai food is well known and popular everywhere, and for a reason! There are only two other countries that I have visited with such an amazing variety of food, and that is Mexico and Peru. Over here in Thailand, people have kickass food, and are PROUD of it. On top of that, you can eat amazing freshly cooked meals in the streets for REALLY cheap ($1 – $1.5, depending on how fancy you are).

For one of my first breakfasts, I had a very typical Thai breakfast – Congee with chicken. It’s actually a kind of thick rice porridge where they add chicken pieces, green onions and sesame oil… but it’s really good and starts well a day!

I also HAD to try the famous Pad Thai – which are fried rice noodles with sauce, veggies, egg, peanuts and lime juice. I ate plenty of ‘em in Montreal and Ottawa, but this one in particular was even better!

Like in Laos and Cambodia, Thailand have their own version of Green Papaya salad. I really hope to find green papayas when I come back to Canada because I am seriously becoming addicted to these things:

And finally… we had something that was absolutely unthinkable in Bangkok. …POUTINE! Yes! After finding poutine in Chile, we found some in Thailand! It is actually owned by the girlfriend of a famous Quebec author/comic/traveler called Bruno Blanchet. The poutine itself tasted exactly like in Canada, except for the cheese that was not squeaky and kind of melted into the sauce. It actually made me think of the poutine my high school used to serve:

Oh yeah, we also had a minor culinary escapade in Bangkok’s Chinatown with some friendly people we met. The street where they sold food was all illuminated and it looked really cool!

We did quite a lot of sightseeing as well. It would have been super awesome to stay in Bangkok longer than a week before there was so much to see, but we did manage to visit some amazing places like the Grand Palace, the Wat Phra Kaew, Wat Pho, Temple of Dawn and the Ayutthaya ancient city. We spent an entire morning at the Grand Palace grounds… it really held its name, as all the buildings there were absolutely huge and heavily decorated.

Beside the Grand Palace is the Wat Phra Kaew, a really big temple which houses the most sacred Buddha statue in all of Thailand: the emerald Buddha! This Buddha statue is actually made of jade, but is very old and quite a long history… it came from Chiang Mai (north of Thailand) and was in the hands of Laotian kings for more than 200 years, but has been taken back by the Thailand kings a few hundred years ago. Anyway, the temple itself was pompously decorated with glittering pieces of mirrors, and is a masterpiece just by itself:

Around the temple is a large enclosure that features extremely detailed paintings telling some ancient Thai legends and folklore (I think!) They were really impressive:

There was also a garden with a super cute frog… haha I couldn’t resist taking this picture:

We then went to visit Wat Pho – which is just an excuse to see the gigantic reclining Buddha – a statue measuring 53 meters long! It’s so big, I couldn’t get a picture of it. Only it’s head… sorry!

Outside the Central Palace group of buildings is a really cool amulet market. They sell rare Buddha figurines, phallus shaped amulets, bracelets made out of teeth, yant cloth, but the weirdest thing are these replicas of famous monks… they looked so real, it was the creepiest thing ever!

What is cool about Bangkok is its canals and rivers. If there is a traffic jam at rush hour, everything stops and it makes traveling around a pain in the ass if you’re not using the metro or the sky train. Luckily, there is an awesome “bus-boat” system that takes you to many places by water! It’s much more fun and only costs a little bit more than taking the bus. Our local “boat station” still had debris and remains of the floods that happened only a few weeks ago.

But yeah, Bangkok itself was absolutely dry and that is the only thing we saw that was left over from the floods. Anyway, back to the canals and rivers… we tried their bus-boat system, and it proved to be really cool! We used it to visit the Temple of the Dawn (Wat Arun), located on the other side of the main river.

We could climb on the top of the Stupa and see the city from it. The climb was ok – a bit steep, but not that much… but the resulting view was outstanding!

Ayutthaya, another site that we visited, is actually the ancient capital of Thailand. It was influenced by Sri Lankian, Indian and Cambodian architecture, but has been violently destroyed by the Burmese in the 1700’s (hence relocating to Bangkok). We took a tour for this one, as it included transportation, English guide, entrance to the sites and an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch (for 15$ each!)

The tour started weirdly though, as it stopped on the way to Ayutthaya to drop us off at a strange monastery under the name of Wat Niwetthammaprawat. What makes this monastery so strange? It was built under the orders of the eccentric King Rama V (we are now at Rama IX if it gives you an idea) to look like European buildings! It was unreal, we really didn’t feel like we were in Thailand.

But the weirdest was a church, which served as a Temple with buddhas and everything! So it was build exactly like a basilica but it served for Buddhism and had none of the “normal” Jesus statues and stuff.

Anyway, after this we went to Ayutthaya, for real. The first site we visited was called Wat Mahathat, and was in total ruins. The buildings were made with bricks and some of them are leaning dangerously towards the ground – as if they were falling (just like mini towers of Babel!)

The Burmese destroyed all the Buddha statues and stole their heads and arms:

But I think some heads were too big or too heavy, so they just left them laying around… one of them was left beside a tree, which has slowly taking it over with its roots! It looks really really cool – check it out:

This area of Ayutthaya was cruelly flooded for 5 months… (usually the floods lasts a week or two?) and you could see the trace that the water left on the ruins:

The next site we went to visit was Wat Phukhao Thong (Golden Temple), which was built in 1387. You can also climb the Stupa of this one, and see a nice view of Ayutthaya:

After this, we went to another ancient site, whos particularities featured many bell-shaped Stupas. They apparently contained some relics like the king’s ashes and the ashes of his many, many wives. There was also a palace I think, but the Burmese once again destroyed it!

Right next to this site is a temple called Thanon Si Sanphet, which houses a very famous and revered bronze Buddha. It survived all the Burmese attacks!

And finally, we visited YET another ancient ruined temple (Wat Lokayasutha) which had almost nothing left except for this other big reclining Buddha. Apparently, it represents the moment at which a giant was unwilling to pay respect to the Buddha because he was proud of his huge body. The Buddha desired the giant to be less arrogant, so he turned himself as much larger than the giant!

It’s now midnight and I’m on a shaky night bus to Chiang Mai. It’s Thailand’s biggest city and apparently home to its best food… I’m very excited to try some of it, it’s going to be KILLER!

OH! It will be Christmas in a few days. Hope you guys your food and gifts and party time! Cheers and have a drink for me!!!!!