Thailand : Chiang Mai : Wats, Cooking, Umbrellas

Arrival at Blue Diamond Guest House was such a relief. We spent the previous night at lying cheating Lanna Guest House, who pushed us through the door and tried to push us onto a trek.
Blue Diamond had childrens drawings on the walls and a huge menu of just breakfast :) The proprietor would come and take your order with her baby on her arm. As food people, Liv and I were in heaven. They had a whole page of shakes including avocado (which I tried) and celery (which I didn't).
We spent the next couple of days looking around Chiang Mai.
Wat Chiang Man was bright with blue and gold mirror mosaics, Wat Pan Tao was dark and wooded. We saw monks worshipping there - chanting to a recorded voice. I thought this sounded extremely boring, but Liv pointed out that most things make no sense in a foreign language.
Wat Chedi Luang was vast, old and intricate, but overrun with stray dogs.
Wat U Mong was a break from the usual - a dank underground monastery in a small forest. It also won the best temple name competition. Every tree was scrawled with something profound/obtuse in Thai, punctuated with odd monk art words. I expected the Blair Witch.
The tribal museum was quaint - a pagoda in the middle of a lake. It was really friendly, like walking through a school project. The highlight was a genius photo of a tribeswoman, amazed to see her own face in a car wing mirror. We had a beer in some low huts by the beautiful lakeside afterwards.
Bo Sang was a mission to get to - 12km of obscure sawngtheaw. We were expecting beautiful craftwork, but the umbrellas sucked. Some wouldn't even open, and all sported cheesy designs. Liv loved the colours, especially opening all the umbrellas in a shop to mix and match them...but we agreed they sucked. The pertinent question - "who actually buys these things" was answered by an Essex couple who wandered in. "Ooh, look at this one Wayne, ain't it bootiful...?"
On the way home, we stumbled across MONK SUPPLY - selling everything for the practising buddhist. These shops seemed endemic to Chiang Mai - this was the first we saw of many. The bright yellow shopfront popped out with YELLOW - huge candles and Buddha images, robes, shrines, incense and monk offering kits.
We found this great little cooking course. Keng ran it for the FOOD LOVIN', and as an aside to manning the front desk of her guest house. We chose four dishes (she later told us we chose the four most complicated dishes in the book - "Why not just Pad Thai, Spring Rolls and a Red Curry?") and headed to the market. She was invaluable, pointing out such delicacies as snake-headed fish, chicked blood nuggets and shrimp paste. We bought some pretty weird stuff too - sweet pickled bamboo, fish sauce and one of the snake headed fish.
We then cooked, our half day course slowly becoming a very full day. A lot of time was spent preparing the curry paste - around 40 cloves of garlic for four servings! Toiling with a pestle and mortar was not fun, but she kept us amused with the fantastic CHANG (elephant) song, complete with rap-stylee actions.

The CHANG Song.
in Romanised Thai with English translation underneath

Chang chang chang chang chang
Elephant Elephant Elephant Elephant Elephant

Nong kheui hin chang ru bao
Have you ever seen an elephant before?

Chang man dua dto mai bao
Elephants are quite big.

Djamuk yao yao rhiagua nguang
They have a long nose called 'nguang'

Mi Khiao tai nguang rhiagua ngah
Under the long nose ('nguang') they have long teeth called 'ngah' (tusks)

Mi hu, mi dta
It's got ears, and eyes...

Hang yao
and a long tail.

We made an Indonesian Fried Rice dish that Liv was particularily excited about - in Sukhothai she ordered this same dish every night.
We also made a jack-in-the-box noodle dish - you throw intricately fine glass noodles into smokingly hot oil and they explode outward into thick white snakes.
We ate until we nearly popped.

Thailand : Sukhothai : Ruins

I spent the entire next day writing the last week+! It took 8 hours to get to Sukhothai and we were glad of a SWIM. Thailand's climate does strange things - the water in the outdoor pool was actually WARM. It still confuses me how it is warm outside and cold inside (with fab air-con).
There was a swirly slide which we monopolised and used to splash attack the other pool users.
Splashes were rated using the following system:
1: Piddle
2: Greater Piddle
3: Splosh
4: Great Splosh
5: WHALE!
Our hostel was also lovely, our own cosy bungalow and extra tasty mango shakes. I had an interesting and singular encounter with a squat toilet.
Thailand buzzes with life. Our bathroom was shared with millipedes, our bedroom with lizards. Dangerously large crawling things get everywhere - in Khao Yai Job saw a beetle the size of a fist drone past with the speed and sound of a small car. You get used to it.
Sukhothai looked gorgeous in the pouring rain. The light and the spray almost made it glow. The entire old city, complete with huge geometric lotus ponds, was set aside from the new town in a manicured park - which did it's best to extract all atmosphere from the ancient place, but was great for cycling.
Cycling in Thailand is a bit of a nightmare - no organisation at junctions and arbitrary lane changes right in front of you. People sometimes accelerate behind you then angrily honk you off the road for not accelerating as well.
We also cycled out to some outlying woodland temples with much funner settings.
Wat Chang Rop was supported on a base of 36 smiling elephants and was Liv's favourite.
Mine was Wat Mahathat, a mass of jutting brick spires and columns, infested with hidden Buddhas.
We had a swim, then played pingpong by the pool until we were kicked out. Liv won "decisively".
She fell asleep murmuring "I'm so content I'm tingling..." and "I want to purr like a cat..."
The train to Chaing Mai was railway luxury as Britain has never known, with full lunch, snacks, drinks and waitress included.
We rolled through steep jungle with nature going all out on special effects. The banana leaves shone in a spectacular sunset through a thin mist. Top heavy trees penetrated the canopy. We emerged onto terraces of paddy fields, flat and shiny with few protruding rice plants (like a bald man's head!)