Cooking in Chiang Mai

Arriving in Chiang Mai yesterday afternoon was a bit like coming back to civilisation. The hotel is amazingly plush and all the streets are clean, the market stalls sell things you might actually want to buy and the stall holders aren't too pushy. And there are international restaurants and bars everywhere - it's strange to remember that a few days ago I was listening to Belinda explain to her Cambodian friend what McDonalds was because not only do they not have any there, she had never heard of it before. So the golden arches aren't as iconic and all-pervasive as the big M thinks.

Today was the first day of our cooking school and we made six dishes: tom yum koong, pad thai, GCC, fish cakes, chicken salad and water chestnuts in coconut milk (a dessert). It was a bit hectic - I had imagined we would cook up a few things and then eat them all at once but it turned out to be watch a demonstration, cook a dish, eat it, repeat as necessary. Three of the people in our class were chefs and we were always falling behind! Still, it was all very tasty, apart from the chicken salad which was kind of gritty because it had ground sticky rice in it.

When we came in from the airport, the girl who was picking us up asked if we wanted to go to the elephant park on our spare day. I hadn't thought of this but actually it sounds quite fun - the elephants play football and also paint pictures.

I read about the elephant painting in Chiang Mai in the inflight magazine and there was a photo of several elephants painting an impressionist painting of a field of sunflowers. Apparently they have natural artistic ability and some of them paint both landscapes and abstracts. But what I wanted to know was: how do they decide what to paint? "Well," said Jules, "they get together and one of them says 'I'm thinking of a field of sunflowers, sort of impressionist style, with the sunlight catching the gold in the flowers...'"

You can buy the elephants' paintings but they're not cheap. I'd be quite keen to visit the elephant park but Jules is talking about temples, so we may have to do both on our last day. How many temples does a boy need to see, anyway?

The balloon trip over Angkor Wat was a washout because of a lightning storm, unfortunately.