Chiang Mai, Thailand

We took the night train from Sapa back to Hanoi Airport where we caught a flight to Bangkok and then jumped on another plane to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. In Chiang Mai we found ourselves anxious to learn the intricacies of the how to cook the fine Thai cuisine which we had come to know and love. Chiang Mai is known for excellent cooking schools and we found just the right one, The Master Thai Chef Cookery Course run by Permpoon and Suriyan Nabnian and signed up for a two-day course. Each day we were picked up outside our hotel and driven to the local market where we bought all the food which we would use for ccookign that day including thai chiles, cococunt milk, vegetables, rice, fish, chicken, etc.. We became excellent cooks over two days mastering "the adventure" or what I liked to call burning your eyelashes by cooking with large flames! We made our own green, red, massaman, paneang curry meals from scratch (mortar and pestol style) and they were delicious. We made tom-yam goong 9hot and sour prawn soup) and tom kha gai (chicken in coconut milk soup), and phad thai (stir fried noodles), and many other noodles dishes. We really enjoyed the "master thai chef spring rolls" along with the sweet sticky rice with mango. All in all it was two great days of spicy, delicious meals and plenty of recipes to bring home (compliments of the menu book they provide you woth the course).


The rest of our time in Chiang Mai was spent enjoying the night market and shopping for friends and family. Matt met a great guy from Bahrain who after a short chat outside the hotel decided to bring his entire family by our hotel room the next day to introduce us to them. He even brought Matt an Iranian volleyball team jersey (Iran won a major championship earlier that year).


Then came the news that decided how the next four weeks would play out for us. We had already known that Jaci was starting graduate school mid August but Matt's graduate program status was still up in the air. Until, today. when Matt got on the phone (1am Thai time) with Angie, the admissions rep for the Professional MBA program at Georgia State University, and found out he got into the two year program! This was really exciting, however it meant we would have to return four weeks earlier so that he could begin preparing for the three required online pre-requisite exams. Each of the 34 students in the PMBA program had to score 80 or better on the exams in order to maintain their place in the program. What this meant for us is that we had to get ourselves back to Albuquerque in the next week and then back to Atlanta two weeks later. It was very exciting news but all the same we were really starting to get into a good travel groove at this point. We had to adjust our itinerary and start thinking about getting ourselves back home....oh no!