A surprising elephant ride

A Long Boat ride to visit an elephant camp

The elephant that took me for one wild ride!  That is sugar cane and bananas I was feeding him.  I have great video of my ride but I haven't been able to successfully upload it.  Bummer. 

My long boat driver patiently waiting for me

My view from my seat in my very own long boat.  It was another great day.

A trip by boat to visit a Buddha cave complete with Buddha kitties

A very sweet cat that lives inside of the Buddha Cave Temple

Three of the four cats that live at the Buddha Cave being taken care of by the monks.  I found a very large bag of cat food inside the cave.  Believe it or not I was the only one visiting the cave at the time.  

One of the Buddha alters

Some ritual stuff to the right of the Buddha alter.  I wish I knew what all of it was.  It seemed like it was inviting you to do something with the stuff I just didn't know what to do.

The Buddha Cat hanging out among their stuff.  The tea pot was hot and ready to serve.  The monks sandals were left at the cave for their visits

More market food and one wild ride

This is me in the back of a tuk-tuk getting one wild ride back to my hotel

This is the flourish of the seafood-"sciver" \cooked in a cast iron pan with little scoop shapes in it.  I discussed this at length below and this is the cook very amused that I was so interested.  I tried to move the photo so it was in the correct order but it is just not going to happen....

These fish look like they are singing or laughing and they have been cooked  as a chorus!

A squid on a very hot fire

The driver of the tuk-tuk I was having the very wild ride in and this sort of loses it's impact not in the correct order.  Tsk.

These are deep fried bugs.  REALLY BIG bugs.  I guess if you can't beat 'em, eat 'em.  They had A LOT of bugs to choose from.  As hard as I tried to accept the idea I had a really hard time.  these were the only ones I photographed.  They even had a huge pit of live crickets that they were grabbing and frying to order.  I know, they are a great source of protein.

I hope you can see this- it is this awesome mussel omelet frying in this amazing cooking contraption.  You can see that as they take them out they stuff them with bean sprouts

Here they are, those mussel omelets ready to buy!

This is a similar cooking contraption but this time it has a cast iron pan on top that is filled with an egg and rice batter, loaded with all sorts of seafood and cooked.  I took a few pictures of this operation because she was amazing to watch...

Stage 2 as the it is all cooking, well, frying together...

Then she lifts it all in one piece off the griddle

Saturday night in Chiang Rai on the Walking street - more street food!

Shredded Pumpkin, coconut and marshmallow fluff spread over crispy cookie batter on a hot grill.  The man is getting ready to lift them off and very quickly shape them before they harden

Here is the finished cookie, sold by the bagful for 20bht, less than a dollar

This is a pot of hot oil filled with hot dogs and fish dogs.  They stay in there frying in oil until someone wants a bagful then they dip in their scoop, toss them around to get the really hot ones from the bottom.

I hope you can tell these are fish shaped cakes.  I was too "chicken" to try one but my guess is they taste like fish.  Aren't they cute?

Lots and lots of little tiny pork balls.  Whatever they are.

This is a delicacy of sticky rice cooked inside of bamboo.  the rice is raw when it is put into the tube and steamed over hot coals.  you see children walking around peeling their tubes of sticky rice, some with red beans, some with coconut.  It looks like a lot of work!

A close up of a lit up lantern tree to decorate the walking street.

The tree of bright lanterns

Two young hill tribe girls getting ready to perform on the stage

An old man performs on the street playing a whatever that is.

ok, This is THE WEIRDEST temple I have ever seen...

See the brand new, beautiful all white Wat

Creepy monsters on the lawn at the Wat

Scary heads in the trees growing plants out of their necks...

Hands reaching from hell on the bridge to the inside of the temple

On both sides of the bridge the hands reach up from hell begging to go to heaven.  Creepy.  I understand there is an all black temple I am going to see tomorrow...

On the road trip to Chiang Rai

Hard boiling fresh eggs in a natural hot springs bubbling up from the ground.  for real!  

Huh?

After they boil the eggs they sell them by the basket-chicken eggs or quail eggs

I bought the quail eggs and the give them to you in a little plastic bag with a little bag of soy sauce to put on them after you peel them.  They were very fresh and lovely to eat.  They cover their faces to protect themselves from the fumes from the road.

Entering the Golden Triangle

Dale and I parted ways today. She went back to Chaing Mai and I went on to Chaing Rai with Tooy, my guide. The Golden Triangle is where 3 countries come together:  Thailand, Laos and Burma (Myanmar).

Tooy is not a professional guide she is a friend of Carl and Keiko Samuals who are TEC friends who now live in CM.  I just met them last week and learned that they moved here from Seal Beach.  We have so many friends in common (from TEC) and Tooy (pronounced "Toy") has been kind enough to take a few days away from her life to show us and now me around.  We drove the 180 KM to Chaing Rai today and I am staying at Le Meridian right on the Meakong river that I can see from my balcony.  I can watch boats of all kinds running trips up and down the river.  I am very close to the Hill Tribe people and I will take a "long boat" up the river to meet them in a couple of days.  In the meantime Tooy has a big schedule for me with Wats (Temples) to visit, the Opium Museum, new markets to see and I can't remember what all.  I already bought old opium weights that are made of brass, shaped like different animals and so beautiful.  I am sure after I go to the museum I will feel bad about buying them.  Heifer is working hard to provide new work for opium farmers up here and it is a difficult battle because the money is so good and they are expert growers.  Their are so many clever ways to conceal the drugs like putting packages of opium into baby heads of cabbage as they grow and letting the leaves grow around it until you have big heads of cabbage hiding the drugs inside.  We have been stopped often on the roads by the police to check us to see if we might be carrying drugs.  They put up road blocks all along the road and you have to stop to give them a look.  I have posted some new photos of random stuff for you to see.....Love, Lori

Beautiful cupcakes...copying Western style..as I figured out though they are not edible ones they are designed out of felt and to be used with your favorite room fragrance.  clever.

Quail eggs wrapped in wonton skins and fried, served hot in a cellophane bag with sweet hot chili sauce or Maggi sauce (?) poured over the top.  Delicious.

All right, you can't always get the spelling right but they try real hard to set up a lovely food stand.

Piles of Shui Mai

This is a very popular appetizer that you make yourself with a beetlenut leaf and then you spread a sweet sauce made with tamarind and peanuts then put a couple of pieces of lime, fresh shallots, ginger, chili, toasted coconut, dried shrimp, peanuts, wrap it up and eat it in one bite.  I forget how to spell the dish correctly so I won't try.  I love this creation!  

I know they look like Sugar Daddy's but they are "Porntips"

Four kinds of sticky rice.

This is a pile of shallots

Pretty Mangosteens displayed on banana leaves in the market

This guy is making pandan crepes from this gooey batter that he schmears onto the hot top, makes a quick crepe and then does all sorts of things from there like roll them up and bake them into these cigar like cookies that are outstanding.  Dale and I ate many of them.  They were surprised we were so interested in their operation.