Chiang Mai and Luang Prabang

Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand is a cute town with a dangerously large and busy night market ... What little space I had in my backpack has quickly disappeared! On top of good shopping, the market hosts a blues bar with the best Thai blues band known to man.  Seriously!:

We signed up for a Thai cooking class where we were given a tour of the local market and all it's exotic goods and made curry pastes, papaya salads, spring rolls, noodle soups and banana in coconut milk to finish it all off. Tres fun and tres tasty! The key to Thai food is just to add in tons of flavour with thousands of spices that I'll probably never find in Europe! But I'll damn well try. Thai dinner party at my place come September!

Curry paste ingredients:

Spring rolls:

Noodle soup:

So not only did we get to spend a really fun afternoon learning about food and meeting new people, but then we got to eat it all. What's not to love?!

From Chiang Mai we opted to take a two day journey across the Thai/Laos border and up to Luang Prabang. Day one was spent squished in a mini van getting thrown about windy roads but thankfully  we met a great group of people that made the journey much more enjoyable. Once we crossed the border we got put in little huts in the middle of nowhere for the night. The setting was stunning but the accommodation was a little wanting even for my relatively low standards. It wasn't so much the collection of spider webs or the cracks in the wall that bothered me as the bloody Asian style toilet ... Now I haven't brought this up before because I've successfully managed to avoid using these things but in Laos it is a different story... Asia. Please read this carefully. Why, oh WHY do you insist on making excusing oneself a balancing act worthy of Cirque du Soleil?! What on Earth is wrong with a nice clean toilet seat and a good old roll of loo paper?! The insistence of cleaning up with a hose afterwards makes the whole bathroom a little pond which becomes totally unsuitable for flip flop wearers. Ive lost my shame after the ping pong post so here go Kate's Asian toilet tips: 

Chest out and shoulders back for some pre-toilet confidence, make sure to roll up your trousers before venturing in.

Ascertain whether the puddle you are about to walk into is deeper than your flip flops are thick - if it is, abort the mission immediately. If it is not, then begin to tiptoe in carefully trying not to splash yourself or slide into the splits right into the mess... Walking like a duck seems to help.

Step up on to the slippery porcelain (who you trying to kid Asia? Those corrugated edges do nothing!), carefully position your feet across the designated hole making sure you've got some strong balance so your foot doesn't end up in the bog. 

Now comes the tricky part... Pulling down your trousers past your knees whilst holding up the bottom of them so that they don't end up in the blinking piss puddle is quite the art-form I assure you.

Once your trousers are down and hopefully still dry, assume optimum squatting position - you'll soon learn the hard way what angles you are supposed to be in once you've got your feet wet a couple of times... Nothing quite worse than peeing on yourself.

The final step is to always have toilet paper on you because even if you do resort to the hose option (which I've thankfully managed to avoid so far) - how Asia, please tell me, HOW do you dry yourselves?!?! I just don't understand...

If you really want to test out your new found toilet skills try the above steps in a dodgy Laos nightclub after a few beers and cocktails. After passing this test I believe I am deserving of an Asian Toilet Bachelor of Arts. Next stop, blow darts...

The second day of our Laos journey was spent travelling up the beautiful Mekong river before finally arriving at Luang Prabang which we loved. Hard to sum this one up really as we squeezed quite a lot in - weaving village visits, bathing with elephants, swimming in waterfalls, dinners with new friends, late night bowling alleys and more shopping, naturally. I'd go into it all in detail but its easier and more effective to post some photos!

Mekong:

Waterfalls:

Pure awesomeness:

Rice fields:

Hand woven goods at the night market:

Lao barbecue:

 The only place open past 11pm... Obviously?!:

So far we are absolutely loving Laos, the people here are so unbelievably lovely, the scenery is breathtaking, the food is delicious and all for the cheapest prices in Asia so far. 

Key info:

Cooking classes: We Cook, Chiang Mai. Run by the lovely Miw on a beautiful property just outside the city. 

LaoLao Garden, Luang Prabang for the most fun you'll have during a meal.

Bangkok

The first time I came to Bangkok I was not particularly enamoured of the city. We arrived in the midst of a torrential tropical downpour and within the first 5 minutes that I stepped out of my hotel the biggest frikking cockroach this side of the equator attempted to scurry into my knickers via my left leg... The bloody thing managed to get as far as my knee before I noticed and screamed the whole of the Khao San Road down in complete hysterics... You must understand; This was no normal cockroach. This was the mother of all cockroaches: Roachzilla,  a living, breathing roachasaurus about the size of an enormous lobster. I shit you not! Well, OK, maybe I shit you a bit - but the thing was still the biggest bloody land crustacean that I've ever had the misfortune to come across and our moment of undesired intimacy really set my Bangkok experience off to a bad start! 

My first impressions of the city, and more specifically, Khao San were that it was a seedy, overly touristic place with nothing but a bunch of pissheads on their gap yaars (not a typo) practising excessive consumption in prep for some appalling Full Moon Party... I was completely right of course, but the mistake I made the first time round was to not embrace it all. I tried to do cultural things, like visit temples and palaces (which were actually quite impressive) or go to museums, but it was not a mistake that I would make again. 

I've had a bloody awesome time in Bangkok this time! Drinking out of buckets, eating deep fried insects, buying tie dye dresses, getting pushed, pulled, squeezed, twisted and cracked at massage parlours, whizzing around in tuk tuks and even watching women shoot ping pong balls out of their vajayjays.

Now, if I'm honest, every last bit of moral fibre in my body was screaming at me not to go to a ping pong show. The minuscule and often ignored angel on my shoulder was having a panic attack 'Don't do it Kate, it's degrading to women. These girls are being exploited. It's going to put you off sex forever. It'll make you feel that your private parts are not fulfilling their potential' ... All these and a million other reasons not to go... Each of them as valid and as true as the next... And yet, next thing I know we were following a man who had presented a 'menu' of visual delights such as 'P*ssy opens Coke bottle' ... No... We aren't talking about cats here. P*ssy does WHAT?!?! Off we went in a tuk tuk to lose what remained of our innocence. We walked straight in to a live sex show. No, not a sex show in the sense that a strip dance is technically a sex show. An actual intercourse show! Pretty sure I didn't read that on the bloody 'menu'! Holy crap where the hell are we?! Once the lovely chap and his leading lady were finished showing off their acrobatic skills the actual ping pong bit started - but ping pong was only the warm up in Bangkok's vaginal olympics - coke bottle opening, candle blowing, cigarette smoking and of course my particular favourite - a lovely lady with fantastic grip, balancing and coordination skills writing 'Welcome to Thailand' without the use of her hands. I won't describe it any more than I already have... Just... If you are ever in Bangkok... And that little angel is screaming at you... Pay attention for goodness sake! Now my life won't be complete until I can burst a balloon by blowing a dart out of my hoo-ha and god knows it's not something I ever actually want to try! 

Can't believe I just released all that into the public domain. Thank god my grandmother doesn't own a computer...

Spicy grasshopper anyone? Surprisingly tasty:

How can anythig go wrong when you start your day with this? :

Happy tuk-tuk times:

The local food market for when you just fancy snakes, turtles or frogs for dinner: