It's always a good night if it ends in a Journey singalong

Shaun and I decided to try out the nightlife in Chiang Mai last night. It was great. We grabbed our new friends, Joanna and Fiona, our Welsh pals from our trek and headed out to Music St, which is close to our guest house. It's basically 8 different bars set up in a parking lot with a communal beer garden. Lots of music, especially live music.

Step 1: Play 7-11-Doubles with a live reggae band in the background. Drink some Changs. Check.

Step 2: Migrate to a karaoke bar and sing Michael Jackson. Check.

Step 3: Relocate to the beer garden and hang out with a 6 year old Thai kid trying to sell us flowers. Get hustled by said 6 year old. Haha when I say hustled I mean we played with him for a long time, I gave him 5 baht and he didn't sell me a flower. Check.

Step 4: Make friends with the Thai DJ who doesn't speak much English. Meet his American girlfriend, who owns the bar. Somehow manage to make my own playlist on his DJ equipment. Check.

Step 5: Sing Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" at the top of our lungs while Thais and other foreigners look on. Check.

Step 6: Wake up this morning only to take an all day cooking class. We're spending all day shopping for food, cooking, and eating said food. I've already made hot and sour prawn soup, Chiang Mai curry, and Pad Thai. Our teacher is hilarious. He's like a hyped up anime character. He talks a million miles a minute and often sounds like he's singing because he emphasizes his words in a really weird way. His energy level could only be matched by Ping. This guy is the Thai version of Ping. He cracks me up. We also learned how to make coconut milk and cream by hand. It involves soaking coconut in warm water and "massaging and squeezing". Mr. Visutt must have repeated that phrase 15 times to make sure we didn't forget.

So all in all, Chiang Mai is awesome. We're going to Pai tomorrow to chill by the river and then sometime in the next 2 weeks, we'll make it over to Laos for Christmas, New Years, and Shaun's birthday. No plans and no hurry though.