Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand, but the vibe couldn’t be more different than downtown Bangkok.  It has few to no skyscrapers, no subway system, and the vibe is just generally more laid back.

We stayed near the east gate in the old city wall, and began our explorations in that direction.

Chiang Mai definitely has a bit of a hipster vibe to it, as evidenced by the fact that there’s a coffee shop every other storefront.  Of course, coming from the Pacific Northwest, we felt right at home.

One thing the PNW doesn’t have, however, is locally grown coffee.  I had a phenomenal light roast that was closer to fruit juice than the motor oil they serve at Tim Hortons.  Even Leigh admitted she didn’t mind it, which is saying something.

We headed east on a mission to see what we could see, and possibly investigate a few more jewelry stores.

One thing we saw was a Buddhist temple with Donald Duck eating Pad Thai.  Yes, really.

Now, what we would come to discover is that Chiang Mai has a LOT of temples.  Like, a LOT a lot.  Almost as many as coffee shops, that’s how many.

But this was still our first day here, so we hadn’t been overwhelmed by the omnipresent maximalism yet.  I mean, just look at the building behind ol’ Donald there.

Or the one literally across the street.

Or this one.

This is all just stuff we saw on the first morning within a one block radius of each other.

The amount of sheer unabashed ornamentation per square block in Chiang Mai is absolutely unreal. I expect as one gets farther from the old quarter it settles down a bit, but I’m not certain of that fact.

But all this opulence had helped us work up and appetite, and we discovered that one of the restaurants that we had tagged in advance was handy, and just opening up for lunch.

That would be Maadae Slow Fish Kitchen, which we can toss on the pile of “absurdly cheap Michelin recommended restaurants” we encountered this trip.  We had a spicy pomelo and fish salad, and mussels.

Both were amazing, but Leigh puts the mussels in her top three dishes for the trip, which, for this trip, is really saying something.

Continuing our random stroll eastward, we came unexpectedly upon “The Museum of Broken Relationships.”  I am not making this up.

This was a two story museum housing a few dozen relatively ordinary objects.  A doll.  A pair of shoes.  A watch.

But the card on the wall next to each one, rather than being any information about the object itself, was a personal story from the owner of the object.  And the stories were universally about relationships that had been broken, either due to infidelity, growing apart, death, illness, or other causes.  Some of the stories were funny, some were touching, and all of them were intensely personal.

It was a lot.

How about a donut shaped like a frog?

Whew.  That’s better.  Except that this angle makes me look like I have six chins.  Well, after the amount we ate, that’s not outside the realm of possibility.

Oh, and the donut came with a delicious pandan custard to dip it in.

We spent the rest of the afternoon bonking around markets, jewelry shops, a chocolate shop, and a few more temples. Also whatever the hell this was.

But –  we had to get back to our hotel, because we were being picked up for our second cooking class of the trip.  (And the first one we actually planned in advance.)

Unlike the cooking class in Ao Nang, which was a last minute schedule improvisation, this one we carefully researched in advance.  It would be a private cooking class – just us and the chef (and as it turns out, several members of her family) – and it would be focused primarily on northern Thai food.

We were contacted ahead of time to select the four dishes we wanted to try, and apparently our selections made an impression on our host, as she said she was pleasantly surprised to see that we didn’t have a pad Thai or a basil stir fry on the list. (Not that there’s anything WRONG with those dishes, but we wanted something a bit more specific to the region.)

We were picked up at our hotel by a nice woman driving a songthaew who turned out to be the sister of the chef.  She drove us to a market well south of downtown.  This was already a nice change – unlike the group classes being herded around the touristy markets, Benny (our host) met us and took just the two of us around a market clearly only populated by locals.

After a few tasty, tasty samples, we made our way back to Benny’s mom’s house to start cooking.  We had chosen four dishes with some overlap in their base curry pastes.

But some differences, too.  The first one includes an ingredient I don’t know if I’ll be able to find, even in Vancouver – Thai prickly ash, or Makhwaen. The third one has compressed, fermented, soybean.  There were some other differences too.  But we pounded them all to a pulp anyway.

By the way, this is Benny.

As soon as we started ingredient prep we hit one sure sign this was a much more serious cooking class than the one in Ao Nang:

The knives were sharp.

The entire experience was delightful.  Benny kept up a running conversation about the food we were making, the background, how it related to her own family, and how it was different from central and southern Thai food.  Benny’s partner and sisters were on hand to help out and also make conversation as well.

And here was our final spread.

The dishes were a spicy northern style Laab, a pounded jackfruit salad (Tam Kanoon), a tomato, pork, and chili dip (Nam Prik Ong), and an herbal pork curry soup (Gaeng Om). Also pictured – spicy pork rinds.  Benny would have at that point left us to enjoy our meal, but where’s the fun in that?  We asked her to join us, and a fine time was had by all.

Oh, and Benny’s partner also made us cocktails, including a “Benny Tango” and a “Sexy Benny.”

In a trip filled with memorable experiences, this was flat out one of the best.  We cannot recommend Benny’s cooking classes enough if you happen to be in Chiang Mai.

We would even recommend going to Chiang Mai expressly for the experience.

Here’s the link: Benny’s Home Cooking Chiang Mai