The last three days we’ve been taking it easy around Chiang Mai, mostly (you guessed it) eating and getting massages, seeing more live music, checking out some museums about the Lanna ethnic group in the area, and taking walks around the Ping River on the west side of town. The meditation class with the monk really made an impact on Rose, and she’s also been practicing with her meditation beads every morning. Rose took a massage class and learned how to give a head, neck, and shoulders massage, while I did a yoga class across town.

One food highlight was a Michelin-starred joint serving khao kriab pak moh, which I can only describe as a Thai ravioli made with rice paper, stuffed with pork and topped with a coconut cream sauce, and sakoo sai moo, which are little pork- and tapioca-stuffed rice dough balls. They were both really yummy, and I haven’t had anything like them before.

We also got a couple of slices of cake at a café. The cake was good, but they were filming some TV show or something, so all eyes turned on us when we walked in, like they weren’t sure if they should include the gringos in the shot or something. We ate our cake fast and got out of there ASAP, hah.

At a market near another music venue, we got two types of sausage from northern Thailand, one from Chiang Mai that is spicy and herbaceous, with lots of lemongrass flavor. The other is a fermented sausage from the Isan region, which had a very slight sour flavor and a really crispy skin—sort of like a bratwurst with the sauerkraut built in. Both were AWESOME! For dessert, we had these little slices of bread with a pandan dipping sauce, which sort of had a vanilla taste to it, and homemade coconut ice cream that was bomb.

Besides eating our way through the city, we headed out west to the monk’s trail last night to hike up to a really unique, semi-abandoned temple complex with spectacular views of the city below. It was, uh, sweaty hiking through the jungle, but nice to get some exercise and see another side of the area.

This morning we say goodbye to our hotel’s resident cat and leave Chiang Mai to head further north to Chiang Rai, near the border with Laos. We returned the bike, grabbed some fried chicken at a stall nearby, then got a lift to the bus station for our five-hour trip through the mountains.