Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is a bustling little place which we got to by travelling North on the train for 13 hours from Bangkok. It is crawling with bars, restaurants, shops and is easily explored on foot. It has big day and night markets and offers a variety of classes (cooking, massage, meditation...) and excursions (adventure, elephant parks, trekking in hilltribes...). There is no shortage of reasonable accommodation making it a kind of backpacking hound. The temperature here is also a bit more bearable which is quite a relief after the heat of Cambodia and the South of Bangkok.

Today, I took a cooking course in the oldest cooking school in Chiang Mai. It was really interesting. We started with a quick tour of the market and then the day went something like this:

Cooking demonstration of chicken in coconut cream soup

We cook at our own little station

We eat it

Cooking demo of noodle stirfry with vegetables

We cook at our own little station
We eat it

Cooking demo of red curry with fish

We cook at our own little station

We eat it

Cooking demo of mushroom stir-fry

We cook at our own little station

We eat it

Cooking demo of papaya salad

We cook at our own little station
We eat it

Cooking demo of steamed banana cake

We cook at our own little station

We eat it

We roll home

I think I might have a small dinner tonight and watch Chris eat most of the time!

In the meantime, Chris was organising our imminent departure into the mountainous area west of Chiang Mai. We have booked a Suzuki Vitara (exciting!) for 3 days and will go on a 600km loop which goes through a large national park and some hilltribe villages. It is meant to be quite beautiful and we are hoping to do a bit of camping along the way. Freedom!

Ko Samet

On our way back from Cambodia and seizing our last chance to spend some time with our "stubborn masochistic" friends Marcin and Rose, we made a small detour via the island of Ko Samet, a few hours from Bangkok.

Aware that the island is a favourite destination for Bangkokians needing a holiday, we were slightly surprised (and amused) by the abundance of Russians sprawling the island in all manner of undress, flaunting their less than toned bodies in ways reminiscent of a cross between sports illustrated and an issue of National Geographic dedicated to beached whales. "I'm beached as, bro"

Luckily, our luxuriously spacious bungalows were on a very calm section of the island, devoid of almost anyone except from us and a few lady-boy waiters/waitresses.

Chris and I only spent a full day there but it was lovely. We swam, we ate and drank and above all, we enjoyed having friends, a luxury which we will be missing for the next few months.

The next morning, it was time to part (litteraly) as we boarded the Malibu 5 en route to Bangkok and Marcin & Rose stayed behind making the most of a well-deserved holiday they have dreamt of for the last 10 000km (congrats) and will remember for the next 10 000km to Poland!

Travel map

Don't forget to check out our latest feature in the links section, right of the screen to know where we have been so far.

Battambang to Phnom Penh to Koh Kong

From Battambang, we headed to Phnom Penh where we only stayed a little over a day. It's fair to say that we didn't fully engage with the place and had a pretty lazy demeanour throughout. We were not totally hopeless since we did visit the Genocide museum (predictably depressing) and the Russian Markets (pretty similar to the other markets). We did a little walking around but, really, our main activities were to find food (easy but sometimes unpredictable as Chris ordered noodle soup which came with chicken claws and congealed blood...) , stay out of the heat (basically impossible), watch TV (awesome but the color never seems to work) and sleep (also pretty hard in the heat).
We are now in Koh Kong, in Cambodia but on the border with Thailand. We will cross over tomorrow to meet Marcin and Rose in Ko Samet, a popular beach destination for Bangkok residents.