Escape to Chiang Mai

Food, food glorious food. This song couldn’t be more apt for Thailand. There are no regular times to eat in Thailand, you eat when you’re hungry and for Thais that is very often. I was dreaming of Thai food since we booked our flights, what I’d have and which restaurant.

There are hundreds of street stalls with sushi at around 10p a piece and lots of stalls selling barbecued pork, prawns, chicken and meats I have no idea what they are! There’s fried chicken and lots of veggie options on sticks, duck soup all cheap and plentiful. We’ve never had any problems eating off the street food stalls.

We have tried this Korean dish called Jeyuk Kimbab, similar in style to Japanese sushi but the rice is slightly different and filled with spicy pork and veggies. A hearty bargain for 2 for £4.

The classic Thai dishes of Pad Thai, pad krepow, fried rice are on every eateries menu and cost as little as £1 it’s all good. Noodle soups are a lunchtime must have, spicy noodle loveliness.

The classic green, red and Penang curries you can get but are more a southern Thai dish. If you get really fed up with rice and noodles there are plenty of upmarket western restaurants to choose from, which is not very often for us.

Are you hungry yet, I am just writing this.

You can also feast on these, all the rage for sustainable eating. No, no no maybe not so hungry now..big bag 50p yummy

We are leaving for a long bike trip to Mae Hong Son near the border with Myanmar. It’s about 200 miles so we will stop in the party central hippy paradise of Pai for one night only. We plan to stay in MHS for 3 nights. The last time we went we flew but the flights are no longer, so on the bike it is. It’s part of the Mae Hong Son loop the classic motorbike trail which has more twists and turns than a skip full of corkscrews. Scary but fun, aargh.

We hope to see our favourite elephant Vissa on the way back, hope she’s there.