CHIANG MAI, THAILAND • THAI ORCHID COOKERY SCHOOL

Last month, my parents planned a surprise visit to Chiang Mai! It was quite last minute, but they hopped on a plane mid-March and were here for almost a full week. Planning for my parents was easy: the laid-back fun stuff, only. Per the recommendation of my roommate, Katie, I booked a day cooking class through Thai Orchid Cookery School.

The class is run by Aey and her husband, who live in the old city in Thailand. You basically cook in the courtyard of their home! It's a cute setup, and each person has their own work station. Aey has a large selection of dishes to choose from, and you get to pick one from each category: spring rolls, soup, curry, stir-fry, dessert. I chose fried spring rolls, tom kha gai, panang curry, cashew chicken, and a banana cake.

After the first two courses are explained, prepared and enjoyed, Aey took us to a nearby market (which happens to be one of my favorite markets in the city. It's so colorful and organized!), where she explained all of the fruits that are different from what we Americans are used to. Our class that day consisted of entirely Americans, and we had a blast joking and enjoying each other's company while we cooked and tried new dishes.

Aey walked us through each dish regardless of what we chose, so we were able to see everything made the correct way. It was always pretty fun to walk back out to our work stations are see that our places had miraculously cleaned themselves and all of the ingredients for our next dish had appeared magically. If only all cooking happened this way.

While waiting on our desserts, we sampled some Thai fruits together: pomelo, a rose apple, and durian. If you don't know much about durian, here are the facts: it smells pretty bad, so hotels don't let people bring it inside. It's the most expensive fruit in Thailand. It's creamy (yes you read that correctly), and I probably won't ever eat it of my own accord again.

I didn't really tell my parents we were doing this until after they'd already arrived. They were both a little skeptical, but ended up enjoying themselves more than they thought. This is quite literally one of the most fun things I've done while living here, and it was such a blast to be able to share it with my family. If you live in Apex, NC, look out for my mom's new Thai restaurant.

KRABI, THAILAND

My parents are island people. They love white beaches, blue blue water, and everything about tropical paradises. I had never been to a place like that until last month. Krabi is a dream, and while I heard from locals and expats about it's greatness, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Rest assured, Krabi is amazing. People had told us that two days wasn't really enough, and though we experienced an amazing time here, there is no denying that leaving was the last thing we wanted to do.

Alex, Mary Austin and I arrived in the evening, taking a cheap bus from the airport to our guest house in Aonang. We stayed at MiniHouse Aonang, a modern and adorable little hotel about ten minutes walk from the beach, and to my knowledge we were the only westerners there. The night we arrived we ate at a restaurant a few blocks down called Jenna's Bistro, where we ordered delicious fried things like spring rolls and aubergine bites.

In the morning we were picked up by some folks from SeaKayak Krabi, a kayak tour I had booked about a week prior to our travels. Again, not quite sure what to expect. Even though the reviews had been raving, you never know what can happen in Thailand. Talk about an overwhelming and surprising success. We had a little team of five to our group, led by an amazing Krabi local, Aey. Aey had been a fisherman in Krabi for about 15 years before starting as a kayak guide. He explained all about each island, how the string of high cliff landmasses was linked under the water, and told us about his experience with the Tsunami in 2004.

Along with our new friends Ellen and Irv, we headed out to Koh Hong, an island named for the lagoon (or, "room") that lies in the middle. Mary Austin wasn't feeling the best, so when it came time to pick our duos, she chose to go with Aey, who dubbed himself her "motor." Alex and I teamed up and traded off rowing so we could both take the whole experience in via camera. The pictures below don't do this place justice. The water was crystal clear and bright blue all at once, and each turn of the tour brought a new majestic cliff sticking straight from the water, my mind blown everywhere I looked.

In the middle of our day, we stopped to eat a homemade lunch in the shade on the shore, Thai cuisine of course. We put our cameras down and sat in the water for a while while neon green striped fish swam around us and the piles of broken coral on the sandy floor. Aey took us to a few more islands to wander and frolic before we headed back to our starting point. Each place we stopped was like something out of National Geographic, or really just Google. 

When we had showered and freshened up at our hotel, we headed out to Ao Nang for dinner, deciding on Indian food at Moti Mahal, where the chana masala and the chai were incredible. We splurged on banana nutella roti and called it a night, 'cause we're grandmas. Kayaking-around-islands grandmas, but still grandmas.

In the morning we lazed around at the beach soaking in some more sun and watching the boats come in and out. Our lunch was gai yang (grilled chicken) and somtam (papaya salad) with sticky rice and ice tea at the White Elephant, and we practically ran back to our hotel to make our 1pm checkout time.

We took a songthaew to Krabi Town, but we were too early for there to be much going on, the weekend market wasn't yet going on. We had plans to go up to the top of Wat Tham Sua, or Tiger Temple, named so because of the "tiger paw prints" in a rock near the base of the mountain. We proceeded to climb the 1,267 steps to the top, plagued by monkeys and lack of water (stolen by the monkeys near step 245). We finally made it to the top, thankful that the beautiful view was totally worth the effort. Those monkeys, though, I've never been so scared for my life in such a real way.

Our flight out was only about an hour or two after our descent from this lovely temple, and our songthaew driver made sure we were there exactly in time, or, we sat in our seats two minutes before take off.

Thanks, Krabi. I wish I wish with all my heart to make it back to you before I leave Thailand, but I don't know if that is possible. I do know, however, that Mary Austin, Alex and I have already planned a reunion trip of their time in Thailand that will probably put us there in the next three or four years, you can bet.

BAN HOUAYXAY, LAOS

As usually happens when I return from a trip, I find myself itching to go somewhere new, fast. I'd been contemplating a little border run to Laos, so Emily told me to keep her in the loop on it. Before long, I was booking our room at a guesthouse and looking up bus timetables to the border.

We bought tickets the morning of our departure (risky) and left for Chiang Khong, the Thai-side border town, in the early afternoon. We traveled via Greenbus, and arrived at the town bus station at 8pm. We took a songtaew/tuk-tuk hybrid to Baan Fai Guesthouse, the place I'd booked a few days before. Turns out, there wasn't room, but the owner had a room for us at a neighboring hotel. Less than ideal, but we got free breakfast out of the mix up. Part of me wants to travel to Chiang Khong again just to stay at Baan Fai, the buildings and rooms look idyllic, the place doubles as a textiles shop, and the breakfast wasn't bad.

At immigration we had some fun documenting Emily's first out-of-country trip since arriving in Thailand, mounted a bus that drove us across the river-border, and planted our feet down in Laos. The entry process took a little longer than 45 minutes, and soon we were marching up to a songtaew driver to drive us into Houayxay.

We immediately noticed the spread out feel of the land. It seemed much less cramped than Thailand, and the colors seemed more muted and a little dustier. Every now and then we would find a sunshiny yellow wall or a bright blue building, but for the most part, the overcast sky complemented the colors of the town. We paid our songtaew driver in Lao kip, but he would have taken baht too.

It was a sight to be able to look back across the river and know that the other banks were the edge of another country. We loved being by the water, the breeze picked up pretty quickly, though, sending us back up the road to a gaggle of Golden Retrievers, only the best welcoming committee possible.

Lunch by the river at an adorable little unassuming place included selfies with girls who never see westerners, fried rice and mixed veggies. We also ordered the Lao version of khao soi, this time rather than a spicy curry soup we got a soup made with rice noodles, chopped pork, tomatoes and fermented soy beans. It was amazing, but a little more bland than the type we were used to.

I grabbed a cheapo cardigan on our way to Wat Chom Khao Manilat since the weather was so cold and windy. The snake-lined steps up to the temple barred homes on either side from the traffic of wat-goers, but offered easy perches for dogs to sit and watch said wat-goers.

With only a couple hours left until our bus left for Chiang Mai, we hurried back across the border. This time around we hopped on a "chicken bus," or one of the Thai buses with no AC (It was freezing, so all we needed was an open window, anyway) and a lot of rattling. We landed in Chiang Rai that night before finding out the bus home was full. Thankfully some college students had two extra tickets to sell us. Would ya look at that! Here's to traveling like the Thais do.