Three days in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand weren't enough, but 30 days wouldn't have been enough either.
There's a lot to explore in a city with a long history and 300 temples, surrounded by some of the most luxuriant countryside imaginable.
Chiang Mai is the take-off point for elephant camps, where you can watch shows and enroll in mahout-training classes, and for shopping, because it's a center of such crafts as painted umbrellas, pale green Thai celadon, silks, silver and gems.
For food lovers, its greatest attraction may be the opportunity to taste on home ground northern dishes that have become top hits abroad, like the spicy green papaya salad som tam.
Usually som tam is raw, but the photo shows an interesting variation, fried som tam. (Check my previous post on Thailand's nationwide som tam competition and the winners who are making their prize versions in Los Angeles.)
Other specialties not to miss are kao soi, or soft and crunchy noodles in coconut-flavored curry; hung lay curry, with its overtones of sweet spices; satay, local sausages and spicy dips such as nam prik noom, made with green chiles, and nam prik ong, which combines pork and tomatoes.
You don't eat the dips with chips but with another regional specialty, steamed sticky rice. With one hand, you take a little rice from a straw container, form it into a ball and then scoop up a savory mouthful with it as gracefully as you can.
Unlike clogged, hectic Bangkok, Chiang Mai is smaller and manageable. You can actually get in a cab or tuk-tuk and go directly to your destination. My time there may have been limited, but every day was crammed with wonderful sights and tastes. Here are a dozen highlights.
1. Most Thai moment: Making merit by offering food to the monks who line up at Warorot market early in the morning. A vendor there sells packages made up for this purpose. The 60-cent meal includes a vegetable curry, rice, water and sweets. After placing this in a monk's bowl, you kneel and receive a chanted blessing.
2. Favorite dish: Hung lay curry. This Burmese influenced pork curry is a Chiang Mai specialty that requires powdered spices and a spice paste that are available only there. I have the spices, and I swear I will learn to make it.
3. Oddest dish: A plate of grilled German style sausages with mashed potatoes and sauerkarut at Palaad Tawanron, an open-air restaurant high on a jungly hill where you can watch the sunset over Chiang Mai.
The mashed potatoes are sweet, and the sauerkraut is more like stir-fried cabbage. The dish is worth ordering just for the novelty, but there's plenty of Thai food on the menu.
Palad Tawanron, top of Suthep Road behind Chiang Mai University. Entrance via rear gate to Chiang Mai zoo. Tel: 053--216-039.
4. Best food buy: A big sack of fragrant tea composed of dried jasmine and chrysanthemum flowers, dried pandan leaves and tea leaves.
I found this at Warorot market, a fabulous place to shop for spices, curry pastes and other Thai cooking essentials. It was so interesting I could have spent the three days there.
5. Best non-food buy: An original painting by Chiang Mai artist Punpetch. I loved his bold geometric design in strong primary colors.
Punpetch works at Maesa Elephant Camp. And, yes, he is an elephant. He and his colleagues bring their paints and brushes into the arena and produce art works in a variety of styles--flowers, landscapes, imaginative designs, elephant portraits.
The paintings go from the easels to a gallery. Buy one and you get the artist's photo.
Maesa Elephant Camp: Town office, 119/9 Tapae Road, Muang District, Chiang Mai. Tel: (66 53) 20 6247.
6. Most beautiful lunch place: The terrace of Pongyang Angdoi resort, where you look out on hills thick with palms, bamboo and teak trees, orchids and frangipani. And a waterfall too.
Good dishes include fried salty pork strips, smoky tasting local mushrooms, wild boar with fresh green peppercorns, galangal and Thai eggplants and, for dessert, ice cream frozen in a tiny pineapple.
Pongyang Angdoi Resort, 49/3 Moo 2 Tambol Pongyang, Amphur Mea-Rim, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tel: (66 53) 879151-3.
7. Most beautiful cooking school: It's at the super posh Four Seasons Resort, a large open air classroom where you look out at the gardens as you stir-fry.
If I had mega bucks--rooms cost hundreds of dollars a night--I would study there. I did get to watch chef instructor Pitak Srichan prepare one dish--a salad of white turmeric, young ginger, sawtooth herb, galangal and other exotics wrapped with grilled chicken in an egg net, then rolled and sliced like sushi.
Four Seasons Resort, Mae Rim-Samoeng Old Road, Mae Rim, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tel: (66 53) 298-181.
8. Best breakfast: Fresh green guava juice, dragon fruit chunks, green tea croissants and rice topped with spicy stir-fried morning glory vine and wood ears at the Shangri-La Hotel.
Shangri-La Hotel, 89/8 Chang Klan Road, Muang, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tel: (66 53) 253-888.
9. Most touristy experience: What tango shows are to Buenos Aires, khantoke dinners are to northern Thailand. I can't imagine they get much better than that at Khum Khantoke.
This huge restaurant packs in hundreds of diners and puts on a grand show of regional dances. Meanwhile, you sample local dishes from blue and white Thai bowls that are constantly refilled. I liked the hung lay curry here best of any I tasted.
Tradition is to sit on the floor, but your feet are in a well, so no discomfort. Afterwards you go into the gardens to watch tall balloons ignited, then sent aloft to float away like giant fireflies.
Khum Khantoke, 139 Moo 4, Nong Pakrung, A.Muang, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tel: (66 53) 304-121.
10. Most startling drink: Napa wine, not from Napa Valley in California but from Mae Chan Winery in Chiang Rai.
Current releases include Napa Mieng Shiraz-Black Beauty, Napa Mieng Shiraz Reserve, Shiraz Premium Vintage 2004 and Dornfelder Tempranillo 2008.
At the tasting I attended, the prices were high, around $40 a bottle. But you don't get Napa wine for nothing, certainly not in Thailand.
Mae Chan Winery, 23 Moo 9, Ban Pamieng, Tambon Patueng, Amphoe, Mae Chan, Chiang Rai, Thailand. Tel: 66 (0) 5391 8440.
11. Greatest regret: That I didn't have time to explore the foodstalls lining a busy street near a university. There must have been hundreds of them. I'm still hungry thinking about the wonderful food that I missed.
12. Best Chiang Mai cookbook: The only one I came across in Chiang Mai was written in Thai (I bought it anyway). But at Asia Books in Bangkok, I found "A Passion for Thai Cooking" by Sompon and Elizabeth Nabnian of the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School. Beautifully illustrated, it has recipes for all the top northern dishes.
Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School, 47/2 Moon Muang Road, Opposite Tha Phae Gate, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Tel: (66 53) 206-388.
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