Day 8: Diving into New Experiences

Bonding with my given and chosen family

9:15am

The closest vegan restaurant offering breakfast is Nourish, right across from the Three King’s Monument, an expansive open plaza in an otherwise tightly-packed city. The restaurant is serene, but in hindsight, I am realizing that maybe it’s just not that popular. I order the pancakes with banana and strawberry, drizzled with chocolate and sesame. The pancake is rather dense and tasteless and unlike the light fluffy pancakes I expected. To be more adventurous, I get the iced latte made with soy milk and konjac bubbles. The latte tastes a bit off, and the konjac tastes like …nothing. ฿204

9:45am onward

As if the morning is meant to be one of unmet expectations, my parents, brother, and I head to the Grand Canyon Water Park. It is a rather long drive and at our first stopping point, the driver attempts to drop us off at a water park knockoff. Noting the difference in name and pricing, I insist that he continues to drive us along the road. In turn, he says that it is “same same” — the first time I actually hear the phrase! I’m miffed but firm, and so we reach our destination only a few minutes later.

Once a limestone quarry, the water park is huge albeit empty. My brother, dad, and I embark on the obstacle course with me leading the way. We gleefully attempt to stay afloat, but the whole point of the course — through slippery surfaces and shaky grounds— is to ensure your fall into the water. My dad takes a fairly bad fall (he can’t swim), and so a personal lifeguard gets assigned to us, and the rest of the time is us cautiously trying to navigate our way through the course. While fun with my brother, it is a bit of a let-down: the scalding hot and old floats, some with cobwebs, and insects of all kind lurking above the water’s surface. I do some kayaking, but rather do it in the open water, am told to try to avoid the water skiing action. To make the most out of this experience, we do ziplining which is my brother’s first time and fairly fun — although it is jerry-rigged and a man needs to climb onto the ropes to get you onto the platform.

This is all to say that the morning had its disappointing moments, but we made the best out of the situation, and all I had was a fig bar to eat on the ride back.

1:47pm

Feeling a need for an afternoon pick-me-up, my brother and I grab coffee once we return to Old Chiang Mai. We go to Graph Cafe, a chic cafe that seems to attract a certain type of population: stylish, young, camera-prone, Chinese. And rightly so, the cafe is in a tiny space devoted to an elevated coffee experience and high-end design. My drink of choice is “Graph №18” (aka nitro cold brew with orange and lime juices). The presentation is immaculate and Insta-worthy, and the taste is so complementary that I wonder why I’ve never thought about mixing these flavors together. ฿130

The alley that led us to Graph Cafe is quiet and shaded, a respite from the busier streets of Chiang Mai. We walk further along to find All You Eat is Love, where we get a quick snack: their signature dish with three types of quesadilla fillings and pickled veggies. The guac and cheesy tomato fillings are just fine, but the spicy vegan chicken one is made from unripe jackfruit and perhaps one of the best when it comes to use of jackfruit as a meat substitute. It is flavorfully marinated with a bit of sweetness. ฿150

3:45pm

The day has been busy and I am thankful for a calm afternoon with bæ. We take a cooking class at May Kaidee, which is the same restaurant that we really liked in Bangkok. Though just two hours, we make a bunch of dishes and eat them along the way. The first is a chili paste that we use for tom yum, one of my favorite dishes. All of the ingredients are prepared for us at our cooking station, and it is really a simple exercise in assembling and cooking the ingredients together.

The chili paste we’ve created is absolutely delicious and rich, giving the tom yum soup so much flavor. Afterward, we make massaman curry and I am amazed that I’ve created this masterpiece with a few simple vegetables. It is, by far, the best. The pad thai falls short of that, unfortunately, not quite tasting like pad thai and sticking too much to the wok despite my attempts to salvage.

Last is the sticky rice with mango, which I thought would take all of two minutes, but we beautify this dish by dying our rice with butterfly pea and red dragonfruit for a pop of color. The dessert is also an exercise in presentation. It was a well-deserved early dinner and though the portions are small, we’ve had three dishes and I am full for the rest of the evening. I also leave, more excited than when I arrived, eager to try out these new recipes again. ฿965

฿1449