We spent only two weeks in Thailand. Perhaps that’s shortshrifting the country, but we wanted more time in less-visited places like Laos and Myanmar. Plus, a flight to Bangkok is much easier than, say, a flight to Yangon, Myanmar.
The bulk of our Thai time went to the islands — best idea ever — so we wound up with 2.5 days in Chiang Mai. It’s a charming city with a huge expat population, but we didn’t spend enough time there for me to say much else about it other than: the Sunday market is fantastic and visiting Tiger Kingdom is a must.
We’ve been to a lot of markets in Asia, but Chiang Mai’s Sunday shopping extravanganza is worth a visit for sheer variety. No stall was the same and each was interesting. Even better, the street food — particular to the market — was unbelievable. (It just got a mention on Newsweek‘s list of 101 best places to eat around the world!) I ate a delicious dinner with dessert and a drink for $2.50.
Afterward, we got 30-minute foot massages for $2. (I imagine it was cheaper than massage parlors because we didn’t have to pay their rent; it was just a row of reclining leather chairs within the market.) Hello, Thailand!
Mochi ice cream that was, dare I say, better than Bubbie’s in Honolulu.
Love me some neon tanks.
Beautiful wats within the market walk.
Found a really cool hipster store that sold leather pouches and wallets, retro tees, and wayfarers. Eaman got a cool T-shirt for $3 and a spiffy new watch for $10.
Food stall area.
Kudos to the Thai for such a superb recycling process.
This woman made the best latte.
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Much like riding elephants, playing with tigers has been at the top of my travel goal list. We chose Chiang Mai’s Tiger Kingdom because it’s apparently a more reputable organization than Tiger Palace in Kanchanaburi near Bangkok. Hundreds of tourists visit Chiang Mai’s well-oiled tiger machine everyday, but we arrived just as it opened, so we didn’t feel like herded cattle. (Biggest travel takeaway: Go early, anywhere and always.) It’s a lovely place — once you get past the animals-in-cages part — that’s set up like a small, spacious zoo. The tigers seemed to have ample room, relatively speaking, and the handlers never used brute force when we were there.
You can choose from smallest, small, medium and big tigers. We went for the two extremes. The cubs were great because they were playful and the big guys were great because, well, when else can you lay down on a giant carnivorous animal? We got about 10 minutes with each — maybe even a tad more because there wasn’t a line of people behind us. It was definitely one of the coolest things we’ve ever done. I think the pictures speak for themselves.
(Sorry if you think the pictures are excessive/repetitive, but after this visit, I realized just how beautiful these animals are, so I kept snapping.)
Newborn tiger cubs (so cute) who aren’t yet ready for visitors. They’re not meant to be on display; we just walked by at the right time when the doors were left open.
Sole lion in a sea of stripes.
After Tiger Kingdom, our driver recommended we stop and see a snake show on our way back. Well, why the hell not? So at the Mae Sa Snake Farm, we saw cobras and pythons and all sorts of slithery things — the handlers are rather fearless when it comes to taunting cobras for our viewing pleasure — and then watched a show where two men played around with the creatures. They kissed them, jumped in a dark pool with them and let the snakes slither into the audience (a little). And they were absolutely still venomous. They had the snake bite into a plastic-covered glass so we could see the venom drip inside.
The whole operation was a little ghetto — the place looked like a rundown shack and the show narrator loved his sexual inneundos — but that was part of the charm I guess.
And to make sure we got our money’s worth, once other tourists left, we asked if we could hold the snakes. That was awesome. Less awesome was when the handler took advantage of my obvious fear and drew the open-mouthed, fanged snake closer to my face.
In Argentina, we (mostly Eaman) were excited for the steak. In Asia, we (again, mostly Eaman) were excited for the street food. Besides being mostly vegetarian, I generally err on the safe/boring side thanks to a sensitive stomach, but there was no better way to build immunity for the remainder of Asia than with street food stalls. And it was a good thing because in Vietnam, it was the cheapeast, tastiest and most authentic introduction to the country.
We looked for high turnover to make sure food was fresh and dishes that were hot, hot, hot, avoiding anything uncooked that might’ve been washed with tap water. Other than that, we picked up chopsticks, settled into the child-size plastic furniture — that’s how all the seating works there — and chowed down.
And as a note, we had pho, but only at our hotel, which was good, but not the best we had. (That honor goes to our guesthouse in Champasak, Laos.) In any case, the idea of drinking hot soup in steamy Hanoi sounded miserable.
1. For pure taste, my favorite was the bun bao at Bun Bo Nam Bo at 47 Hang Dieu. (Most street food stalls are nameless and go only by address or meal offering.) It’s a noodle based dish with beef, crushed peanuts and herbs for $2.50. That’s all they serve, so you just tell them how many and wait for Vietnam’s best street food offering. We knew we did good when our Mai
Chau tour guide told us he eats there, too.
2. For pure experience, nothing beats the DIY meal at Xuan Xuan on 47 Ma May Street. You get a plate of veggies, strips of raw beef, a bowl of salt, pepper, and sliced lime, a squeeze bottle of oil, and a stove to grill it all yourself. I stuck to veggies because the raw meat freaked me out, but Eaman was in grill heaven. The one caveat is that you will most likely get splashed with oil. Eaman was used to to it after working in his parents’ restaurant as a kid, but I…I was not. It hurt like a mother, and I was constantly cowering in a corner avoiding the oil. That said, I still full-heartedly recommend this meal.
3. For a vegetarian change of pace, some of the best food I’ve had in all our travels was at Com Chay Nang Tam, a meat-free establishment run by Buddhists and located in the French Quarter, tucked away in an alley within an alley. I loved the $2.50 set lunch menu, which included tomato sauce tofu, cinnamon-dusted tofu, water spinach, soy nuggets, steamed rice and a killer soup. Seriously, this soup was unreal. There was pineapple and lemongrass and spice. Ooh. So good. Also amazing? The banana flower-star fruit-noodle salad.
Honorable mention for Fresh Garden (47 Ly Thuong Kiet Street) a lovely, albeit sterile bakery we found after some $6 75-minute massages. We got all this for $3.
