Going Domestic

second city

Departing from our usual habit of exploring Thailand's beach communities, last weekend, we flew to Chiang Mai. Chris and I have wanted to visit Chiang Mai for ages. Well, maybe not ages, but at least ever since we arrived here in BKK eight months ago. Frankly, I hadn't heard of the place before! Anyway, we wanted to see elephants in conservation parks, the large zoo, the famous night market that we imagined full of wonderful crafts from the north of this country. And we wanted to eat lots of khao soi. Chris had been told that Chiang Mai is the place to go for good khao soi.

The khao soi was, indeed, very yummy. It's my new favourite dish in Thai cuisine, though I am sure that the amount of coconut cream in it contains my weekly allotment of fat. The night market didn't live up to our expectations at all. I'm not sure why we expected it to be different than the other markets that we see, hawking t-shirts, counterfeit handbags, and assorted tacky souvenirs. Very busy, but without the huge handicraft section that makes the Chatuchak weekend market here a wee bit appealing. The zoo wasn't the magical place that I had imagined taking our kiddo to. It clearly needed a winfall of new funding for upgrades, and frankly, after seeing that the penguins weren't enjoying an Antarctic climate but a balmy 21 degrees C (the sad birds were literally standing in front of their air conditioner), our party headed for the exit.

There were several thing about our trip that exceeded my expectations. Our hotel was a lovely new place in the city that had a pool as nice, if not nicer than some of the beach resorts we've visited. A good pool is apparently the key to having a happy holiday with my three year-old. At breakfast one morning, Chris noticed that the pretty dishes that our hotel used were from a local celadon factory, so we planned a stop there ourselves, admired much, and made tentative plans to upgrade our current dinnerware.  My parents came to Chiang Mai with us, and it was really swell to hang out with them (I swear I haven't been on a holiday with my parents in about eighteen years), and it was awesome to have so many grown-ups around to keep an eye on M that I could take as many photographs as I wanted to, really, with my new fancy 16-105 mm lens (though apparently, it vignettes at certain distances).

We were in Chiang Mai for three days, and really, we felt that two days would have been enough for us.  On the third day, we really had no idea what to do. The five of us hung around our hotel under check-out time, trying to figure out a plan. It was kind of baffling - we'd heard that spending at least a week in Chiang Mai was the thing to do. I think that some of the usual attactions of Chiang Mai -  massage lessons, cooking classes, hill-tribe trekking, and meditation school - just weren't the right fit for us.  Meditation? Trekking? Not with our kiddo!

don't know what colour the kitchen was, and there was no beef wellington

My dear husband Chris often tells me, after an interesting day out, "it was fun doing X today - why don't you blog about it?" Sometimes, I get around to it, but most of the time I end up doing something else, something more urgent, with my time. I'm going to try to be a little better about that this year - it bothers me to neglect my blogs!

Anyway, I think there were two things that Chris really wanted to do on our winter holiday in London. The first was see a Premiership match. For awhile it looked like the Dec 22 Sunderland vs. Reading match was the best prospect, but Chris managed to get a ticket from some grandfatherly-sort of ticket scalper to see a Arsenal play Tottenham at home (Arsenal's home, if that wasn't clear). The other thing that Chris really wanted to do was eat at one of either Gordon Ramsey's or Jamie Oliver's restaurants.

Getting a table at a celebrity-chef restaurant during the holiday season wasn't the easiest thing, the concierge at our hotel warned, but we did end up having an early Sunday dinner at the Boxwood Cafe, opened by Gordon Ramsey.

Us adults ordered the roast beef dinner from the set menu, and Madeline had a grilled chicken breast from the children's menu. Gosh, I was impressed that there was a children's menu. The food was all very nicely prepared. Our yorkshire puddings were topped by some very delicious cream with horseradish. Madeline spent most of the meal playing with the stickers and crayons in the activity pack that the hostess gave her.  Her dessert was strawberry sorbet in a homemade waffle cone, and it looked really good.

I'm kind of cynical about the whole celebrity chef thing, but my roast beef dinner at the Boxwood was the best meal that I had on our trip. I liked that it was simple. Two slices of roast beef, yorkshire pudding, and green beans on the side. Still, the thing that impresses me the most is that Gordon Ramsey actually operates a restaurant that has a children's menu and stickers :)

Nice to meet you, 2007!

I'm happy to be spending the first day of the new year at our temporary home here in St. John's. The three of us got to experience the ups of last-minute holiday travel (seeing everyone) as we took a last-minute trip back to Edmonton over Christmas. We also experienced the downside, namely that our bill for airfare, car rental, and crib rental was roughly the cost of our trip to Australia a couple of years ago. We didn't win the lottery this past Saturday, but there is always next Saturday to hope for ...

I knit a lot while we were out of town, and once we were back home I went out to purchase two more balls of each of the yarns for my scarf, which I decided needed to be longer. I am a little surprised at how much yarn costs (and thus, how much my scarf cost to make). I guess that's the price of being able to choose my fibres and colours.

I've spent the last two evenings fervently putting together a blog book via Blurb - they had a promotion for Typepad users awhile back, and Dec 31st was the last day to use my coupon.  I'm kind of grumpy because the book-assembling software kept crashing when I tried to access Page 18 of my blog book, and then when I tried to place my order, it told me that my coupon has already expired. Argh! I sent a note promptly to technical support, so hopefully this story will have a positive ending instead of leading to a rant.