We've got Jungle Fever! (Jungle trekking fever that is)

Did you notice that Dave wrote that post there?? Big round of applause, it took 2 minutes of guilting and one bottle of water to get that to happen. Congratulations for bringing your namesake to this outfit.

After another early morning pick-up, we were off on another completely different Chaing Mai adventure. Today we were going to trekking camp. First thing we did when we got there was ride an elephant! We loved riding the elephant, and i think that the elephant liked it a lot too, because we fed it somewhere around 17,000 bananas. Dave even got to get down on the elephants neck and steer the elephant.

After elephant riding, we got to go to the Karen village, which was literally around 5 families who all lived within one acre of each other, on the steepest hill ever (think: cortona). It was interesting to see how these people lived but you got a feeling that a lot of this was for the tourists as we got to go through a market which might as well have been a gift shop on the way out.

After Karen we took a half hour to an hour long hike through the woods. Luckily for us we had gotten some magical bracelets that seemed to keep all the mosquitos away even though we forgot bug spary. We now wish, as we sit in the internet cafe being eaten alive, that we had those bracelets now, but as we talked about in an earlier post, time traveling has the same repercussions as teleportation, and it is still not a risk we are willing to take. We also made the wise choice before we left to get some great Dr. Scholls, so as we were gellin like magellan up and down the Thai Jungle, our feet were as comfy as could be.

Our destination of the hike was at a wonderful waterfall, where after climbing down what must have been 10 flights of the scariest stairs that were often composed of sloping mud, we reached the bottom of the falls. After hopping in the water, we played over at the mouth of the fall for quite some time before i got swept away by the waves. Dave being the hero that he is saved my life, after which, I prompltly hopped back in the water and floated away again. Needless to say we are both pretty scratched up STILL!

After drying off, and another hour long hike, we wound up a river, which we got to float down on a bamboo raft. While a Thai guy steered in the front and Dave helped in the back, I got to sit and enjoy the nice cool water that kept splashing onto my tush! After the ride started, I found it necessary to share my good fortune with Dave, so I took the opportunity to splash some water his way. He in turn retaliated by splashing me with the big bamboo oar, BIG MISTAKE! A water war has been started which will continue on far into the future. All I can tell you is, I am winning so far.

We rode down the increasingly complicated river and saw water buffalo, elephant, small riverside stilt villages and many children playing in the river. Two were so playful they jumped right on our raft and we we thought they were going to overturn it. After the raft ride, we and the others in our group literally poured ourselves in the van and rode back to the hotel, more stories to come soon!

Who knew that Thai food was so delicious?

Our second Chiang Mai adventure was at the Chiang Mai Thai Farm Cooking School. Here, we would learn to cook a variety of Thai dishes, shop at a Thai market, and visit their on-location organic farm.

After an early morning pick-up, we met our fellow chefs: an Australian who worked in e-commerce (read: sells baby products on eBay) visiting with his mum, and a French woman on holiday with her teenage daughter. The daughter had just graduated from Flight Attendant U. (located near its sister schools Hamburger U. and Harvard).

After arriving at the local market, we learned about the various ingredients that go into Thai cooking, including pink easter eggs and pigs' heads. In all seriousness, the Thai market was pretty interesting, not at all like an American supermarket. It was more like a Thai farmer's market, there was even an video store farm. While we toured the market, the assistant purchased the goods we would need.

After a short trip through the Thai countryside, we arrived at the farm. We took a short tour around the farm seeing which site-grown ingredients would go into our dishes.

We got to make six courses, choosing from among three options for each. We made some delicious Thai dishes, including Chicken with Basil and Chicken with Cashew Nuts. We also made Pad See Eiw, though it tasted slightly better than our pre-trip dinner (we didn't have fish sauce), it was still not quite restaurant quality. For dessert, Molly made bananas in coconut milk (she describes it as the "best dessert ever"), and I made mangos with sticky rice.

We found it to be a very interesting experience, and look forward to cooking some of these dishes at home. Molly is especially excited to make a Green Chili curry with sticky rice and the bananas. Dave looks forward to an improved Pad See Eiw and Chicken with Cashews.

Long-time no blog...

Sorry about our absence of blogging, as any of you who know me from high school might recall, I was totally going to do it tomorrow. Anyways, first and foremost, check out our flickr, which we have totally updated, so you should be able to see all of our pictures up to today. We are at an internet cafe right now typing away at record speeds trying to get some good blog updates for you. Well I am feverishly typing a blog and Dave is reading some other blogs. He is trying to figure out who McCains VP is going to be, while our reliable sources (read: the internet) say Sarah Palin, he is still hoping it is going to be some sort of Hillary Clinton/Joe Lieberman hybrid. Hybrids are always good for the economy, right?

So lets talk about Chiang Mai, right after we last left you, we took an overnight train to Chaing Mai, which is much better than a 12 hour flight, but much worse than teleportation. However, the drawback to that is that in order for teleportation to occur, the old Molly and Dave would have been destroyed in order to recreate a new Molly and Dave in Chiang Mai, but we don't know if they would have been able to get around, so obviously that solution was out. When we arrived in the morning, we hopped in a cab, and a new friendship was formed between Molly-Lee (Thats our celebrity couple name) and Jack the Cabbie. Jack Dropped us at our hotel, and told us he would come back in an hour, so that he could take us to Doi Suithep (a temple on the top of a mountain). Dave had read in some terrible book that we would be able to climb the 14 km mountain to the the top on some footpath, and along the way see some cool forgotten Buddhist monistaries.

When Jack came to pick us up, we told him that we wanted to go to the base of the mountain so that we could make the climb. First Jack laughed, never a good sign. Then Jack got angry and kicked us out of his cab, because he never would have come back to pick us up if he had known that we didnt need a ride to the top. This ended our short friendship with Jack the cabbie, as drove away, he told us he was going to spend his day sitting at the base of the mountain just waiting for us to come down. And again I doubted Dave/Fodder's plan, yet still I followed him to the mountain. After talking to everyone at the base of the mountain it became clear that this magical footpath did not exist, and we were going to have to take the main road, which had no shade, with two small bottles of water up to the top. After a small fight, I decided to mope my way up the mountain just to prove Dave wrong. Just as I was starting to get into the climb; we had even taken several side trips to some near by sights and waterfalls-we ran out of water. We made it up an impressive seven kilometers not including our side trips, so either way we did pretty well.

Then we saw a temple, the end. See you next time on the Molly and Dave show.