Three years ago we bought an apartment in Chiang Mai, a medium-sized city in Northern Thailand. We'd been visiting Chiang Mai somewhat regularly over the last thirty years, and had always said to each other that if we ever had a base in Asia, that's where we'd choose to be. 

Still, when it happened, buying the apartment was a spur of the moment decision. One night on the internet we came across an apartment for sale right in the middle of our favorite neighborhood in Chiang Mai, just minutes away from the fabulous old central market known as Gat Luang. It was a corner apartment with lots of light; the place looked perfect (and affordable).  

So Jeffrey jumped on a plane, arrived in Chiang Mai, and bought it. We didn't have a plan; it just seemed like the right thing to do (and two years later we were able to buy the neighboring apartment, also an airy corner space).

We've made many trips back and forth in these last few years and each trip is somehow always different and always intense in the best sort of way. 

In mid-2008 we came home from a trip to Chiang Mai determined to figure out a way to help some of the great cooks we've met make a better living.  At the same time we wanted to make it possible for them to share their skills (and unfailing good humor and spirit) with people from North America who are intensely interested in food, people happy to IMMERSE THROUGH FOOD.

And so here we are embarked on a kind of combo cooking-food shopping-eating immersion course. The details are set out in "THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE PLAN" to the right.

The goal of each day and of every evening is immersion: shopping, cooking smelling, tasting, language, laughing, and fun.

Each participant will have a cell phone to use while in Chiang Mai, and a great map.  We'll be walking a lot and also riding in rot daeng (converted pick-up trucks), not busses or vans, though we will travel north in two large comfortable vans for three hours to spend two days in the mountains near the town of Fang.

Long ago we stayed in an inexpensive guesthouse in Chiang Khan, a peaceful village on the Mekong River in northeast Thailand.  In our room (as there was in every room) was a handwritten booklet about local sights, eateries, etc that the owners recommended.  At the end of the book was a paragraph about the "philosophy" of the guesthouse.  It asked that everyone, while in Chiang Khan, try to spend as much money "as low" as possible, eating in markets, taking rickshaws, etc.

Our "philosophy" in setting up 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.  We want to put whatever is left into a fund that will remain in Chiang Mai, that we could use to help create a local NGO or a co-op restaurant or an organic garden.  

We have now had our first immersethrough session, and it was 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, this whole project will feel like flying!

We had assumed that we'd have a session this November (2009), but now there's an Asia conference at Greystone, the Culinary Institute's Napa campus, and in any event we think the winter months work better.  Consequently the next session of immersethrough will be in Chiang Mai from Sunday January 24 until Monday February 1, 2010.  

Please let us know if you might be interested in joining us next January for eight days.  As with the first session we will be based in Chiang Mai and will use food as our entry point to northern Thai culture.   

The first four days were the most intensive, a kind of diving in at the deep end, and we will follow the same plan in our next sessions. Participants (a maximum of ten people) will shop at Gat Luang, the old market, or at Muang Mai, the even huger central market, in the morning, with one of us as guide, purchasing the shopping 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 also our friend Fern's mother, and a natural teacher.  Those days we'll be in Chiang Mai.

The next two days, which will take place at a beautiful farm about three hours' drive north of Chiang Mai, will be 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.

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, we believe, by hands-on experience, rather than by a pre-set printed list of instructions.  

The fifth day of cooking is a foraging day.  We'll be back in Chiang Mai from the north, and it's up to participants to find prepared foods and also ingredients in the markets, bring them back, and cook with them to make a kind of potluck meal.  On our first session, this foraging idea took off, with great results.  The kitchen was alive with purpose, as everyone engaged and created. 

The sixth day is our last cooking day: As with the first session, we'll 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. 

We had imagined that afternoons on the first four days would be free for exploring. In fact by the time we have done cooking and eating, it's usually close to 2.30 or even later in the afternoon, so some people feel that a nap or a massage is all they have energy for!  We 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. 

On the fifth and sixth days (Friday and Saturday), cooking is back in Chiang Mai.  On Friday we'll start in the late morning, on Saturday we'll start around 4.30 in the afternoon, so the day is free for excursions or sightseeing.  This time some participants went to the elephant camp in Lamphang on Friday and came back to tell the rest of us that we'd missed a wonderful excursion. We imagine that instead we might go looking for rice paddies or some other agricultural or food-production-related activities/sights.

So, to recap the shape of the week:

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, then depart in two comfortable vans heading to the hills. After a three-plus hour drive we'll reach Thaton, where we'll spend two nights (at the Riverview Hotel beside the Kok River). 

Wednesday: An early stop 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. We drive from there about ten minutes to Fern's lychee farm, where we have a hands-on cooking session with Jam, in the open air.

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

Friday: This is foraging day, free for market shopping, but there's also time to make an excursion, so we'll discuss with participants and go from there.  Cooking is hands-on.  We will cook from 11 until 1, so that peoplehave time to forage in the morning and also have most of the afternoon free for excursioning or whatever. After we cook we eat together at the apartments.  Friday is a good night to go dancing, to hear live music, or go to the night market, or even all of the above.  

Saturday:  Open day until four, for shopping, excursions, massage... and then we'll prepare Thai salads and grills and eat and drink together into the evening.  Options later are as fun and wide-open as those for Friday night.

Sunday is clear until the late afternoon, when we'll meet at a wat (temple) by the Sunday Market, for a last feast together.

Accommodations in Chiang Mai, and on the excursion to Thaton, 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. 

Our next session is planned for late January 2010, from Sunday January 24 to Monday February 1. 2010.  Please write to us if you want to pin the dates down early.  

The price, which includes eight nights hotel and meals in Chiang Mai and environs, cooking classes and marketing, and the two nights and days excursion out of town, is US$3400.  

Not included are transportation to and from Chiang Mai, departure taxes, optional excursions, 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, our partner in Immerse Through LLC.  You can reach her by email  at deb@laramietravel.com or call her at 307-745-7191. 

Deb is our long-time friend and is also a very experienced travel agent. She is widely travelled and very practical and thorough, so we 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. We 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 February in the day, but with cool nights, so plan on layers of light cottons, with maybe a sweater for the evenings and for very air-conditioned places, and comfortable shoes or sandals.  We also recommend that you bring earplugs; the tropics can be a noisy place to sleep for light sleepers.