Going Away Party for Mr. 9 (Fahim)

After some quick research, I found some great activities for the 10 of us in our Thai class to do, as a going away party for Fahim, whose Thai name is the number 9 :)

Activities included chilling by the lake, ATV off-road tour, go-karts, and probably best of all, the monthly all you can eat buffet at Billy's Italian, our favorite restaurant.

Fortunately our Thai teacher was able to join us for dinner!  This was such an awesome day, especially all the driving!  I've never driven an ATV before, or a go-kart this fast, so it was a blast. In the pictures below you can see all the lap times for the 4 of us who drove, 2 different rounds.

I won the first one, by a lot, but my fellow ex-pizza driver Torri, won the second round!  Torri also did an amazing job driving an ATV for the first time! Mr. 9 crashed the second round, but he did not get hurt, and I don't think I've ever seen him that happy; it wasn't until the last round that he "got it" (how to operate the go-kart effectively) I only care that we all had fun, it was never a "race" :)

Northern Thai Cooking Field Trip

Our awesome Thai teacher organized a field trip to a local village where we cooked a lot of great local Thai food, and also learned a bit on weaving and fabric work.  This local village in Chiang Mai province are entirely Chinese descent, they immigrated from Yunnan, China, around 700 years ago.  So by now, they actually look more Thai than Chinese, and they speak just the local dialect, no Chinese as far as I know.

This trip was planned ahead of schedule to accommodate my best buddy Fahim, who will be leaving our program early to snag a PhD in Translation in New Zealand this July! Will definitely miss you bro!

The food was delicious, like all Thai food, but this local style had some strange additions --- like jack fruit that's used well before its ripe, I cut it myself, its extremely astringent and full of sap and very gross, but after a hard boil, and added to a curry, it sure is yummy!

We also learned the typical Thai way to know if a woman is ready to be a good wife, it's so simple, you just look at how she uses a mortar and pestle to make Som Tam! (spicy papaya salad)  A truly Thaier than Thai woman will have a bigger bicep than the average Asian man! (I've seen this in person, you can check out "Cooking with Poo" on YouTube)