One of the most awesome things about my location in Chiang Mai is that the hostel is located between two of the "hippest roads in Chiang Mai!" It's so easy to take a quick trip out of the hostel and grab breakfast instead of eating what the hostel has. (In all fairness, the hostel has a great restaurant, but I'm not a huge fan of fried rice or shrimp soup for breakfast.) This morning I caught up with a few people on the morning mecca to the coffee truck and bought some fresh pineapple on the way!
(EDIT: I was going to A) post this earlier and B) attach a video, but the wifi at the hostel isn't so great, so I'll have to upload the video later)
After my breakfast, I audited the first of the Thai language classes. Lee, on the the professors here, was kind enough to let some of the students take the class for free as we had nothing else planned that morning. I figured it would be good to know a few phrases in Thai and Lee was kind enough to let me (and a few others) sit in on the lesson! Thai has a 44 letter alphabet with 32 vowels and 5 different tones. For example, 'swaye' (the phonetic spelling) can either mean beautiful or bad luck depending on how you say it!
Courtesy of my Thai lesson, here's how to count to 10 in Thai:
1 nung
2 song
3 saam
4 sii
5 haa
6 hok
7 jet
8 pbet
9 gk-ow
10 seep
After the lesson, we hung around and got lunch at CMU's cafeteria! The cafeteria has all of the thai staples: noodles, bags of fruit, spicy curries, rice dishes, and lots of cucumber (to cool your mouth down!)
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| spiced carrots, rice, chicken, and grilled cucumber (not pictured) |
By the time we got back to the hostel it was about 3 and we had a two hour break before heading off to the night market! Sundays are the biggest days for the night bazaar (or also called "Walking Street." I spent a lot of my time looking and comparing prices, knowing that I would probably be returning the next week. I paired off with Jillian, which was awesome because we both moved along at a fast clip and wanted to see, do, and buy the same things. I stopped back in on the little temple next to the Thai Cultural center and ran into the previous day's tour guide- funny how small the world is! I had a great time playing around in the bazaar and eating great street food there (I didn't really have much time to take pics- didn't want to wave my camera around too much for fear of being pick pocketed.)
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| looks like a bear on the outside- has veggies on the inside! |
Ended the night with some adventurous eating (courtesy of Tou) and riding on the back of the taxi!
love,
Haley
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