Toilet Is That Way, Follow Your Feelings!

Chiang Mai, Thailand
7pm

We've settled into a place called Gap's Guesthouse here in Chiang Mai, and it's an awesome little place. Its like a tranquil hideaway in the sea of crazyness that is Chiang Mai. And it's only 750baht a night for a palatial room!

We visited a temple called Wot U Mong (hahah...geddit? So did we, thats why we went!), which was great. Nice and peaceful, the kinda place you could set up camp happily for a day just to read a book and chillout. Monks chanting and everything. We spent most of the afternoon trying to find a nonexistent place called Bike N Bite. Lonely Planet lied to us! We had the grand idea of renting pushbikes and riding out to Wot U Mong, but since we couldn't find the bike rental we bribed a tuktuk driver to take us there instead. Superlative idea, since we would have died a quarter of the way into the ride. 3kms out of town my ass! Lonely Planet failed us TWICE in the same afternoon! For those interested, Wot U Mong literally means Temple Tunnel (U Mong is tunnel). That's cos there's lots of tunnels there. And yeah, we walked through em. Shoes off, religious style.

Had a 1 hour full body oil massage too, which was ok. I had an inexperienced chick who didn't understand the meaning of consistency. Jono had a full body oil massage too, but he had an awesome chick. Drew got a Thai massage. When we walked by he still had his clothes on, so we assume he wasn't allowed to wear his birthday suit like us. (that shouldn't have stopped him though, pretend you're a nudist!)

Today we had free breakfasts at Gap's Guesthouse (awesome room, free food, friendly people...highly recommended!), then shuffled off with two other travellers to do Gap's Culinary School, or as I like to call it, cooking class. We are now officially qualified to burn people's insides. Cooked like 8 different dishes, ate them, savoured them, learned to love it. Picked up a kickass recipe book as part of the course too. Thai food uses a base of 5 different 'tastes': sweet (sugar), salty (fish/oyster/mushroom sauce), sour (tamarind paste/lemon/lime), spicy (chilli et al), and crunchy (fresh veges, peanuts). It's mainly a balance between sweet and salty in a large portion of the dishes. So easy to cook too! One pot cooking? Screw that, one WOK cooking!

Gonna be out of contact for the weekend; we're off doing a three day trek around the mountains up north. Riding elephants, bamboo rafting, jumping off waterfalls, treking up hills, snuggling with hot backpackers on cold nights, visiting 'hidden' villages...its gonna be awesome. Can't wait!