chiang mai project

Immersethrough.com

engaging with the world

the chiang mai project

THE IDEA -

After years of making trips to Asia, I've ended up with an airy apartment (well, two apartments really) in Chiang Mai, a medium-sized city in Northern Thailand.

It's the major city of the north, an ancient capital, with an old walled town and temples and markets all over, a wonderful place. There are three universities, perhaps not surprising given the city's reputation for openness and its beautiful setting in a valley surrounded by steep hills/mountains. Many NGO's work out of here, especially those focussed on helping the people along the Thai-Burma border who are refugees from Burma.

Friends and acquaintances, and the possibility of learning and expanding my horizons, are what make a place special, and Chiang Mai continues to be wonderful that way.

The Chiang Mai immersethroughfood project is designed to enable people we know in Chiang Mai to engage (and share their good humor and spirited approach to life and food) with people from North America who are intensely interested in food, people happy to IMMERSE THROUGH FOOD.

And so welcome to this combo cooking-food shopping-eating immersion course. The details are set out in "THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE PLAN" to the right.

The first session in late January 2009 was just great, and so was the second, in January 2010. We went for total immersion: shopping, cooking smelling, tasting, language, laughing, and fun. it was great.

The next sessions are planned for early in 2011, running from Sunday evening until the following Saturday morning, essentially six nights and five days. We want to do the first one from January 23rd to 29th, and a second from January 30th until February 4th.

Each participant will have a cell phone to use while in Chiang Mai, and a great map. While in town we'll be walking a lot and also catching the occasional ride in a rot daeng (the converted pick-up trucks that take people around town). We will also travel north to spend two days cooking and exploring markets and foodways in the mountains near the town of Fang.

The idea of this tour is to pay the people here in Thailand who are helping with the tour a wage substantially higher than is usually paid by foreigners to Thais.

Any money left over will go into a fund to be donated to helping childen in the refugee camps along the Burma border.

The goal is to bring together the western world and the Thai world, to be of benefit to people in Thailand, and to celebrate life through food.

Thank-you in advance for participating.

- naomi

fruit for sale by Gat Luang

photo: NAOMI DUGUID

street vendor by Gat Luang, Chiang Mai

photo: NAOMI DUGUID

THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE PLAN - NEXT SESSIONS ARE IN WINTER 2011:

JAN 23 - JAN 29 and JAN 30 - FEB 4

The first immersethrough sessions (in 2009 and 2010) were just great. Everything went as well as, and often far better than, we had hoped or imagined. If every group is as energetic and enthusiastic as our first two groups this whole project will feel like flying!

Next winter, in early 2011, there will be two sessions of Immersethrough. We liked having a smaller group this year, so we've cut back on enrollment: each session will have a maximum of seven participants. The first will run from Sunday January 23 until the morning of Saturday January 29, 2011; the second starts on Sunday January 30 and goes until Saturday February 4, 2011.

Please let me know if you are interested in joining us next January. As with the first two sessions we will be based in Chiang Mai and will use food as our entry point to northern Thai culture.

Immersethrough is less like a tour and more like an intensive cooking school and eating experience rolled into one, with a lot of laughter thrown in for spice...

[There's a lovely article about the first session in the July 10 2009 Wall Street Journal, by Robyn Eckhardt, with photos by her partner David Hagerman. You should be able to link to it here. And since we've had a little trouble with the link, here is the url: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124710546612716067.html ]

In all this Fern, my friend and partner-in-immersethrough, is invaluable, really the lynchpin. She does the cross-cultural go-between work from the Thai side, as I do it from the non-Thai side, and together we find ourselves enjoying the process of problem-solving from morning to night.

The first four days of the tour are the most intensive, a kind of diving in at the deep end.

Participants (we've reduced the maximum number from ten people to seven) will shop at Gat Luang, the old market, and at Muang Mai, the even huger central market, in the morning. We'll help you shop for the list of ingredients that we will be using in our cooking session that day.

Walking to the markets and shopping are strenuous and engaging, because there is so much to see, so much to learn.

The first two days, of northern Thai food, are taught by Koon Mae, who is a fabulous home-cook who lives in the country north of here. She is Fern's mother, and a natural teacher. Those days we'll be in Chiang Mai.

Each day, after shopping, everyone will chop and pound in a mortar and peel and fry and steam and shape food under the direction of the teacher, and then when it's all done, we'll sit down together to eat what we've made.

Cooking is over traditional charcoal braziers, and chopping and grinding are done the traditional way, using a variety of knives on a tamarind cutting board, and several different kinds of mortar and pestle. The results are traditional and incomparable.

Rather than pre-written recipes, participants receive a list of ingredients, with quantities marked, and then once we've cooked and eaten, we review the method and the ingredients so everyone can make notes and ask questions. This is the way food knowledge is best transmitted, I believe, by hands-on experience, rather than by a pre-set printed list of instructions.

By the time we have done cooking and eating, it's usually close to 2.30 in the afternoon, so some people feel that a nap or a massage is all they have energy for. Others will want to head out to explore Chiang Mai on their own in the afternoon. We'll meet again in the evening for drinks and supper, another chance to talk about what we've done in the day, to compare notes, and to reinforce what we've all learned.

The next two days, which will take place at Fern's beautiful farm about three hours' drive north of Chiang Mai, will be focussed on Shan (Tai Yai) food. They will be taught by Koon Jam, a Shan woman who came to Thailand from Burma about ten years ago. Her food is amazing, and since Shan food has not been much written about, her classes of hands-on teaching are a rare chance to engage with a not- well-known and very rich culinary tradition.

On the fifth day (Friday), cooking is back in Chiang Mai. There's the wonderful Haw Market, that takes place Fridays only, to explore, and then in the late afternoon we'll assemble for our last cooking session to make grills and Thai salads of many kinds, the foods often known as "gap glaem" or Thai drinking foods. They are intensely flavored and often very simple to make, so they translate easily to a North American kitchen (and grill). Of course you can't have grilled meat without dipping sauces, so those too are part of the session.

So, to recap the shape of the week:

ITINERARY IN DETAIL:

Sunday: meet for drinks at 6 and then walk to the market to eat kanom jiin (noodles with curry sauce) and a first taste of street food.

Monday: market shop and then first hands-on cooking class of northern Thai dishes. Supper at a northern Thai resturant.

Tuesday: as Monday for shopping and cooking, and a meal out in the evening.

Wednesday: We make a very early start this morning. After a two-plus hour drive (including a short stop at a rural market) we'll reach Fang, in the north Thai hills not far from the Burma border. We'll spend a coupls of hours at the huge weekly market in Fang, to which people of various ethnicities come bringing vegetables and other food products they've produced for sale. The market is one of the great sights of the region. We drive from there about ten minutes to Fern's lychee farm, where we have a hands-on Shan food cooking session with Jam, in the open air.

Thursday: A leisurely morning departure, after checking out of the hotel, and then another cooking lesson at the farm, hands-on, with Jam. We leave mid-afternoon to drive back to Chiang Mai. Supper in the city at a local restaurant.

Friday: This is foraging day, free for market shopping. We'll start at the extraordinary one-a-week Haw market in central Chiang Mai, and then head out to see rice noodle-making, and other local food-related production. We will cook from 4 o'clock on, making Thai salads and grills. After cooking comes eating, and then Friday is a good night to go dancing, to hear live music, to go to the night market, or even all of the above.

Saturday: Departure day.

Accommodations in Chiang Mai, and on the excursion to Fang, are comfortable and also distinctively Thai. We've found a wonderful hotel in Chiang Mai, the Banthai Village. It opened just a year ago, is beautiful and calm, located on a lane behind a temple (Wat Bupparam) and only a five minute walk from the apartments.

All accommodation will be singles, unless we receive a request from two people who wish to share a double. The food we prepare together will be authentic, not adapted for foreign tastes or preferences.

The next sessions are planned for January-February 2011, from Sunday January 23 to Saturday January 29, 2010; and from Sunday January 30 until Saturday February 4, 2011. Please write to me or get in touch with Deb (see below) if you want to pin the dates down early.

The price, which includes a total of six nights hotel and meals and drinks in Chiang Mai and environs, five days of cooking classes and marketing, and the two day excursion out of town, is US$2700.

Not included are transportation to and from Chiang Mai, departure taxes, travel documents, or travel insurance, nor items of a personal nature such as laundry, gratuities, special diets.

To sign up, please contact travel agent Deb Olson, my partner in Immerse Through LLC. You can reach her by email at deb@laramietravel.com or call her at 307-745-7191.

Deb is a long-time friend and is also a very experienced travel agent. She is widely travelled and very practical and thorough, so I recommend that you consider asking her to make your other travel arrangements too, including booking for any travel you may want to do in the region before the tour starts or after it is over. I recommend that you also ask her about travel insurance.

Before committing to the trip, please read very carefully the terms and conditions that Deb will send you if you are interested in participating. You'll need to fax to her a signed copy of the terms to indicate that you have read and understood them, and agreed to them; that, along with a deposit of US$1000, will reserve you a place, if available. The balance of the cost is payable not later than 60 days before the start of the session you are booking.

preliminary advice: Please make sure that you have a valid passport, the term of which is longer than six months after the date on which you plan to return home. Once you have booked, Deb will provide you with some more travel advice, for example about what to bring with you, and what to leave at home. The weather is warm in late January in the day, but with cool nights, so plan on layers of light cottons, with a sweater or jacket for the evenings and for air-conditioned places, and comfortable shoes or sandals. I also recommend that you bring earplugs; the tropics can be a noisy place to sleep for light sleepers.