Settling Down in Thailand

We spent October and half of November living in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We had visited Chiang Mai during our backpacking trip (you might remember the elephant photos), but knew that we had barely scratched the surface of what it had to offer. We quickly fell into a routine of working 4 days a week, exploring 3 days a week, and eating street food on all 7! Here are some of our favorite memories from the first few weeks in Chiang Mai...

Fish Pedicures.... WHAT? It’s exactly what you think. Imagine sticking your bare feet in a fish tank, and having at least 50-100 small fish start nibbling on your feet. Tatum could hardly stand the tickling between her toes, while Corbin handled it like a pro. We had a blast giggling while we simultaneously received our “pedicures”. **Corbin really wanted to add a foot fetish joke, but Tatum said “No... your foot fetish jokes ‘suck’”**

Chiang Mai sits in a valley surrounded by jungle covered mountains. We spent our first day off hiking to Wat Pha Lat. After about a 45 minute hike on ‘monks trail’ though the jungle, we arrived to the peaceful Buddhist temple. The wat had a creek running though the center and it looked down onto the city below. Exploring temples is always fun, but Wat Pha Lat quickly became our favorite due to the beautiful surroundings and lack of people.

Although everything mentioned above was a hoot, our favorites were attending a local soccer game and taking a Thai cooking class. When we heard that Chiang Mai had a soccer club, we jumped at the chance to attend the last game of the season. The stadium was filled with rowdy locals and erupted when the home team scored. We were the only non-Thai’s in attendance which made it even more special. The game ended in a tie (one of the reasons Tatum disliked soccer at first) but actually was a nail-biter. Chiang Mai (in last place) was able to ruin the away teams championship hopes... the crowd couldn’t have been more excited.

Throughout this blog we have raved about Thai food. Having eaten as much as we could get our hands on, we decided it was time to learn how to cook like a local. We began the afternoon by having a tour of a local market where Dew, our energetic host, explained the different spices and herbs. He said that all the different types of ginger were “Same Same, but different” haha. After the market... we headed to the kitchen where we proceeded to cook pad thai, papaya salad, larb, 2 curries, mango sticky rice, basil chili stir fry, coconut chicken soup, tom yum soup, and fried bananas to go with coconut ice cream.

The best part was making curry from scratch! Corbin made a spicy green curry while Tatum made a peanuty parang curry. Our host told jokes, danced, and told us about learning to cook from his grandma. The cooking was a blast and the end result tasted amazing. We ended the night with a couple cook books... when we get home we will have everyone over for a Thai dinner party.

Wowza, it was a busy first few weeks. We jumped head first into our final weeks in Thailand... What trouble did we get into? You’ll have to check the next post to find out...

With Love,

Boots Abroad

Corbin’s

Highs: Soccer game, my food tasting better than Tatum's, and Wat Pha Lat.

Lows: Working in the poop box.

Tatum’s

Highs: Cooking class, soccer game, so much papaya salad

Lows: Apartment hunting again, very HOT sweaty days