Adventures in Chiang Mai
a charming jungle community
We arrived at a perfect little hotel called BED in the Nimman district of Chiang Mai. The hotel is ideal for people traveling without kids as it is an adults-only boutique hotel. It’s simple and tranquil, and it is a great place to work in the morning and adventure in the afternoon and evening.
After we got settled, we used the GRAB App (like Uber in the US) to catch a ride to the Sunday Market in Chiang Mai to grab some local street food and take in the sights and sounds. The market was packed! We noticed a lot of Chinese people both in Bangkok and in Chiang Mai, and then I realized that it was Chinese New Year (Year of the Dragon). This is a time for celebration for the Chinese; many of them were off exploring Thailand for the 8 days they get off for the holiday. The decor around Thailand was decorated so beautifully for the lunar new year. I was excited because I got to practice my dwindling Mandarin speaking skills a few times. At the market, we tasted some dumplings, satay, and one of our favorite Thai dishes, Khao Soi. We took in the live music, viewed some temples, and looked at the local artisans’ work. We were pretty tired, so we called it an early night and found a foot massage place before returning to the hotel. There is something so relaxing about having your weathered feet washed and massaged at the end of the day; between air travel, living in flip-flops, and drinking beer, our feet were pretty puffy. Although it is not illegal to show your feet in Thailand, Thai culture deems it extremely rude and taboo to use your feet to gesture, like pointing. Thai people consider the head the most sacred part of the body and the feet the lowest and filthiest. For this reason, Thai people consider it rude to:
Show the soles of your feet to anyone
Raise your feet higher than someone’s head
Step over a person
Put your feet on a desk or chair
Step on the threshold of a home or temple
Thai people traditionally sit on the floor or on cushions on the floor to eat, relax, and entertain, and you must remove your shoes before entering these spaces.
Sometimes, when you go for a massage, you or someone else will wash your feet before entering this space. In addition to keeping things more sanitary and feeling good, the traditional belief is that washing your feet before entering leaves bad luck at the door.
The next day, we worked and then went on a long walk around the Nimman district and a local neighborhood. This neighborhood was a much better reflection of how the locals live. We enjoyed some of their food and I bought a few pairs of shoes. The prices of the shoes $4 & $6 a pair reminded me just how much stuff in the US is marked up. As the temperature approached 95 degrees, and after walking 6 miles we headed back to the hotel, took a dip, and got ready to head to our cooking class we had planned for the evening.
We planned the cooking class before we came to Thailand because we knew that Khao Soi originated in Chang Mai and learning how to cook it properly (not from a Pinterest recipe that we have attempted), would be more successful. Our teacher picked us up at our hotel, and then we picked up the other two groups of people and headed off to a local market to get the freshest ingredients possible. Our teacher, “Mam,” showed us a variety of herbs and vegetables and gave us tips and tricks on what to look for at our markets at home. After getting all the necessary ingredients, we headed to her home, where she had a beautiful outdoor kitchen and an assistant to help with the food preparation and cleaning. We spent some time getting to know each other, and the first group we met was from Colorado. Coincidentally, one of the girls named “Annie” is from my hometown of Coeur d’Alene and also went to North Idaho College, and we share a mutual friend. They were two fun Colorado girls, soon-to-be sisters-in-law traveling together through Thailand for a few weeks. The other family was from Taiwan. I was excited to get to practice my Mandarin with them. By the night's end, I could put together a few sentences again and understand more than I could speak. They were traveling with their daughter, who is studying abroad in Denmark. We got started learning about the meals after we all got to know each other, and the food was ready to be cooked. Each of us got to select a soup, an appetizer, a main dish, and a dessert from the menu that we wanted to make. Rob and I made the most of this by making different dishes so we could share them. Rob made panang curry with chicken, pork noodle soup, fried egg salad, and bananas cooked in coconut milk. I made khao soi, tom kai kai soup spicy papaya salad, and mango sticky rice. We all made homemade curry paste from scratch - this served as the base for many of our dishes. The experience was unforgettable. The dinner and laughs we shared that night had us in awe of the moral beauty found in common humanity and sharing in experiences with strangers that end up feeling like family by the end of an evening.
Another reason we wanted to go to Chang Mia was the Elephant Nature Park Sanctuary. This is something that I have always wanted to experience, and Rob was down for the adventure. We knew we wanted to see elephants not being ridden or abused - while they are docile creatures, wild elephants must be broken (by lots of torture and abuse) to permit humans to control them (for entertainment or hauling timber). We did some high-level research (YouTube) on elephant sanctuaries, and this one had great reviews and a great story about a woman who established it over 20 years ago. We signed up for a full-day experience to get to know the stories of each of the elephants. Most were hurt through the ownership and breaking process, resulting in being maimed, blinded, crippled, and worse. A few of them had injured legs due to stepping on landmines along the Mynamar-Thailand border (while working for loggers). Several “grandmas” were on the property ranging from 70-90 years of age. No grandpas? Actually no. Interestingly, the sanctuary mainly houses females because the males must live in solitary due to their aggressive nature. Also, once coming of age, male elephants leave their herd to live alone.
This day deserves its own blog (coming) because there is so much we can learn from these magnificent creatures. If you want to learn more about the elephants' stories of rescue, birthdate, and more, click here.
After a long hot day in the sun and dirt, we returned to the hotel, dipped in the pool, and went next door to a rooftop bar across the street called Yayee for great cocktails and flatbread pizzas. After our stomachs settled a bit, we walked around the Nimman area of Chang Mai went for a couples massage, and then called it a night.
On our last day in Chang Mai, we visited the old city, walked around temples and local vendors' shops, and took in the culture. We had booked a half-day honeymoon spa treatment (better late than never) together at Fah Lanna Spa “Easy to Find, Hard to Forget.” As you can see from the price list, half-day treatments (4 hours for each of us) would only get us a 2-hour treatment in the US. We reminisced about not getting a honeymoon because we opened up an indoor cycling studio that required us to be in town and used up our savings (which we later had to close due to COVID). In hindsight, we are glad we created that business because of the fantastic tribe we created and continue to have in our lives. And because of COVID, our consulting business took off, and now we aren’t tied to any physical location. It feels great to reflect on things that might seem bad at the time, but in hindsight, they take you on an entirely different path that is even better than what you had planned. One of my favorite quotes is, “If you want to hear the sound of God’s laughter, tell HIM your plans!” One of the things we have been practicing for the last few years is to SURRENDER. I have learned if you wish to have more peace and freedom in your life, surrender to life as it is, not as you wish it to be. To me, this is the accurate measure of success in our lives. We surrendered to the flow of the forces because, as we know, the river will flow where it wants and water always wins. Since we are not salmon, we’ve decided to stop swimming upstream against all life’s forces. Speaking of surrendering, our dinner recommendation (from our hotel manager) was an example of this…
We went to Paak Dang, not knowing what to expect except great Asian cuisine on the waterfront. That was enough for us. As soon as we arrived, we were blown away by the beautiful location, the Michelin awards, and more importantly K-Lin & J-Jin’s (the owners) story.
The menu highlighted their story just like this:
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Maimonides
“After going through the grind and gruel hustling and bustling, we made a big and bold decision to leave everything behind in Singapore to start a new life in Chang Mai - with a mission to give back to society. We started Paak Dang in 2015 because it was labor intensive and we could provide employment to the less privileged and at-risk youths from the neighboring villages and hill tribes.
Paak Dang was started with a humble team of 4 staff and at its peak we grew exponentially to more than 30 staff catering to a 120-seat restaurant. The big feather in our cap was when we were awarded the Michelin Plate 2 years simultaneously before Covid hit us. Unfortunately, during the height of the pandemic, we had to blithe the bullet and decided to close our Red Doors in 2020.
In October of 2022, we were blessed to find a home for a BIGGER, BETTER, & BOULDER Paak Dang and can now commit to “changing even more lives” by equipping our staff with many important life skills such as business management, accounting, financial planning & proficiency in various languages.
It is our mission and vision that our staff will all eventually be able to extract themselves from the poverty trump that many are caught in. Aiming for the “ripple effect,” we hope that these benefits will trickle down to their extended families back home.”
After reading this “serendipitous synchronicity” that we were both feeling was a sign that we were in the right place at the right time for that moment. A few moments later, one of the owners came over to our table and told us that she had a journalist from Singapore writing an article about their story and their business and was wondering if we would be willing to be photographed and interviewed about how we ended up at Paak Dang that night. Of course, we obliged, and soon the journalist named (Sam) came over and asked us a few questions, and he got some photos of us visiting with the staff’s new trainee.
We told him he was welcome to take our picture, as long as he gave us his must-try restaurant recommendations for Singapore…seemed like a fair exchange. If we make it to the final article we will share it.
All of this is because the owners said “yes" to following their dreams and leaving behind the only world that they knew. They are definitely creating a ripple and creating a legacy. We feel blessed to have had this opportunity and been led here on our “soulbattical”.