Gate and this is where the market starts running one kilometer into the old city. So we're

going to be wandering around, sampling some food and showing you what it is like over

here on a Sunday. Background music playing.

So you can buy a lot of handicrafts here at this market. For example, silk, scarves, wood

carvings. You can get some paintings. They have ceramics. Silverware. Lots of jewelry.

I mean you can browse here for hours on end. And trinkets galore. Mmmmm.

Background music playing. When you get tired of walking around in the

night market you can just head over here to sit down and relax and get a nice Thai foot

massage. Thirty minutes for two dollars right? Probably.

Background music playing. Actually it's 80 Baht for the foot massage.

You can get a cheaper one at the Chiang Mai park.

background music playing. Sizzling noises.

Crowd noises. One spring roll. Yeah. One tempura. One of

this. One of this? Ah, yeah one. Well you sure loaded up with some tasty treats.

Okay, so this is my second dinner. I have some deep fried tempura eggplant with a sweet

and sour sauce on top and fresh spring rolls with carrots and cilantro maybe and some noodles.

Okay, try one of them? And that would be? It tastes very healthy. Hahaha! Is it good?

Mmmm, it's not as flavorful as I would have hoped. Here, have a look. It's actually bean

sprouts not noodles. I was wrong. Bean spouts and tofu and some carrots. And what is this

over here? Well, I must have been a monkey in a past life because whenever I get a chance

to try a banana I'm always in there. And this is the deep fried version. So, it's already

kind of smushed up here. Awesome. Does it have some kind of special sauce over top?

No, there is no special sauce it's just deep-fried and the banana is really mushy and moist in

the inside. Okay, this is my tempura eggplant. Mmmm. Okay,

that tastes a lot better. It's almost like a french fry. Can I say that? Yep, it has

a nice sweet and sour sauce over top and it's very oily. Um, but that means it is very flavorful.

French fry on a stick. Background music playing.

And that concludes our visit to the hectic Chiang Mai Sunday Night Market.

Background music playing.

Today we're taking a fun little day trip outside of Chiang Mai. We are visiting the Elephant

Nature Park, which is about sixty kilometers outside of the city. This is an elephant rescue

and rehabilitation center, so we're going to be showing you around.

This center is also a refuge for a number of injured and abandoned animals such as dogs,

cats, water buffalo and others.

We have a bucket full of fresh fruit and on today's menu for the elephants are bananas

and watermelons.

Hi Baby! There you go.

No bananas. Nope!

That was my first time touching an elephant and there skin is surprisingly course and

hairy.

Right now the rescue center is home to thirty seven elephants. Thirty two of them are female

and five of them are male. These are Asian elephants, which vary from the African elephant.

The African elephant is actually a lot larger than the Asian elephant and they also have

much bigger ears.

Most of the elephants on the site have been rescued from logging, tourism and begging

industries.

This is the happiest time of day! The elephants are now being bathed.

Overall, the

experience at the Elephant Nature Park has been phenomenal. We've really enjoyed having

an opportunity to feed, bathe and interact with all of the elephants. It is a great alternative

to doing the trekking where you are just sitting on top of the elephant and they are working.

This way you get to spend time with the elephant in its natural environment feeding it and

just having a great time.

This morning we're venturing up to Doi Suthep and there is a temple atop the mountain overlooking

Chiang Mai, so we're going to be taking a red songthaew to get there and hopefully the

views of the city will be amazing.

Here is the songthaew crew! Say hi! Hi! We're going to Doi Suthep. Woo Hoo!

We just got out of the vehicle and this is our first vantage point. Unfortunately, it

is still a bit hazy outside, so we don't have a great view at the moment. But the city is

there somewhere.

The long climb begins. I'm not entirely sure how many steps we have to go but I know it

is going to be a long way. I think there is over three hundred.

Ideally you should be able to see the views of Chiang Mai from up here but today it is

just really hazy, so there is a cloud hanging over the city. We can't really see much, which

is unfortunate.

That concludes our visit to Doi Suthep. It is definitely different than what I expected.

I was kind of expecting this quaint little temple on top of a hill and instead it is

an extremely popular tourist attraction. It is really crowded over here.

I would say the exterior of Doi Suthep is quite similar to a lot of the other Wats we

have visited here in Chiang Mai. However, the highlight for me was actually going inside

the temple because there is a courtyard with a golden stupa and you can walk around light

candles and there is incense burning, so that was a great experience.

You know we love to eat, so today we've signed up for a cooking course where we're going

to learn how to make some of our favorite Thai dishes. Right now we're at the local

market, so we're just going to be walking around picking out some of the ingredients

we'll need today for the class. Let's have a look.

Judging from the amount of cooking videos we make you'd probably think that we're constantly

in the kitchen and that we always like to cook. That couldn't be further from the truth.

Most of the time when we're on the road we eat out, so this is actually kind of an excuse

to get into the kitchen and cook and to actually try and make food because normally we don't

do that.

We have now arrived at the Thai Farm Cooking School. We drove about seventeen kilometers

outside of Chiang Mai and it is a completely different world out here. We're just surrounded

by nature and an organic farm. We're actually going to be picking a lot of vegetables from

here.

We had a choice between doing the cooking course in the city or going out to the countryside

and I think we've made the right decision.

Now clean rice already.

Please come inside. I would like you to pick by yourself the whole leaf basil.

I'm making my Yellow curry paste. Pound, pound, pound! Harder! Faster! Stronger!

So Sam is lagging a little behind right? Come on. Master Chef here - look at that. Perfection.

No, I really am lagging behind, I better hustle up.

I'm making a yellow curry today. This is mine. This is what I created and Sam went for the

green curry, so this is his. And I'd like to point out I don't think he did a very good

job. Oh, that just fell in there. What is this? Whatever. Total chunks. You get an F!

Alright, oh! It's boiling! It is not supposed to boil.

We're making the Tom Yum soup. Mine is going to have shrimp and I've got my coconut milk

here, so I'm going to be adding some ingredients - mushrooms, onions.

I'm ready to try fine creation. This is my Tom Yum with shrimp. Let's see. I made mine

really sweet. I think maybe I put in to much sugar but it is kind of nice and creamy because

I used coconut as a base. You need to add more salt or fish sauce then. Mine does need

more salt. How is yours?

You look like a farmer drinking soup. I'm keeping this hat I swear. I'm quite happy

with mine. I put quite a bit of salt in it and I also put fish sauce.

I'm making my Yellow curry now. I'm just stirring the coconut milk. I put in the curry paste

I made earlier. There is also some pumpkin and potatoes and I accidentally added some

leaves that I wasn't supposed to but shhhh.....Cheater!

Not that we've chopped everything up we're going to be throwing this into the Wok and

making our stir fried rice.

I was wrong about this dish. It is not a stir fried rice. It is just a vegetable stir-fry.

It's really good. I made one with chicken and string beans and mushrooms and here is

my yellow curry with potatoes and pumpkin. Is it good? Uh-huh.

At this point in the day I'm getting completely stuffed. I actually wouldn't mind taking a

siesta right now but we're going to be making two more dishes. I'm going to be making a

Pad Thai and then a Mango Sticky Rice. So I'm suffering from what my family calls bulbous

plumptitude.

I'm making Pad Thai. Your favorite. Here is my Pad Thai which is probably one of the easier

Thai dishes you can make.

We saved the very best for last. Here we have our favorite Thai dessert - Mango Sticky Rice

- and it has some deep fried Mung Bean on top. It is crispy. This is going to be good.

Alright, let's check out that first bite. It is nice and coconut-y and it is amazing.

So overall that was a really cool experience learning how to cook Thai food. I made five

different dishes. I'm beyond full. Like I feel like I'm ready to hibernate now.

So this was 1100 Baht. It was like lunch and dinner and the thing I really liked about

this particular school was that it was out in the countryside where we were able to get

outside of the city and away from the pollution and whatnot and just have a really cool organic

cooking experience.

So it is Saturday night in Chiang Mai and today we are heading to the Saturday Night

Market.

Well, we're still a few blocks away but I know we're close. You know why? Because I

can smell the food.

Background music playing.

What do you got there? So I got myself a twisted potato which is a lot like the tornado chips

we used to have in Korea. It looks like it is all seasoned? It's nice. Barbecued flavored.

You're going to be sharing that?

You are wasting the chips.

Background music playing.

Yes, blueberry. That looks good. It's like blueberry cheesecake with ice cream. It's

going to be messy.

Snow ice cream with blueberry sauce drizzled over top. How articulate. Mmmmmmm.

Live music playing from the streets.

Background music playing.

So what did you get? I've got some pan-fried dumplings that are very similar to the Korean

gun mandu that we often had when we were living as teachers in Korea. So let's see if these

are as good? They look hot. Yeah. Pretty good.

Background music playing.

Someone found his favorites here. So what started as just a little snack out here at

the market has turned into a full on feast. I've got dim sum and fried spring rolls. Looking

good. I got this - German sausage. Very good.

Background music playing.

And in case we didn't quite have enough to eat - a sweet little dessert treat. So that

is a banana and egg roti with lots of chocolate and condensed milk drizzled over top.

Background music playing.

We came to this night market. We were supposed to go for a walk but guess what? We ended

up having a massive feast and so instead of exercise we were gorging the whole time but

it was worth it.

So today we are back at our favorite Thai restaurant but we're going to be having a

special meal. We have ordered a set for two people that focuses on Northern Thai dishes,

so we are going to get a sampling of different curries that come along with sticky rice.

And this is what it might look like.

Our first dish has arrived and it is called Khao Soi and it is fried noodles on top of

a hearty curry. That looks amazing. It does. Let's dig into that baby.

I'm going to try my first fried noodle. I've never had anything like this. It's kind of

nice and the curry is kind of spicy.

How is that? It's a very flavorful spicy curry. I can tell it is made from coconut milk.

It's not a very thick curry. It is more stew-like and soup-y but it is really nice on a warm

day like this. I'm enjoying it.

Sticky rice inside.

So a lot of the Northern Thai dishes have pork in them, so as you can see over here

we have a pork sausage. We have something that looks like ground pork with nice green

herbs and this might also be pork if you ask me.

One of the characteristic elements of Northern Thai food is that you eat your side dishes

with sticky rice. This is going to be tasty.

So I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be using my hands or not but because this is sticky

rice I am. We're going to dip it over here and see how it tastes. Spicy or sweet? This

one is surprisingly sweet.

So I'm going to try one of these little puffs in another kind of dipping sauce. That looks

like it could be spicy. Yeah, it is spicy. Burning your mouth?

We also have a nice pumpkin stew over here with tofu. Spicy? Not spicy. It's just really

hot.

Okay, what is next? So next up in the dishes to try here would be the ground pork. It looks

like it has been marinated in a nice little sauce. Very strong flavor with the sauce.

It looks like soy sauce but that is hard going down. Very tasty though.

So it is only our first week in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand but we are quite quickly

discovering that this part of the country has a lot to offer in the cooking department.