The cooking school came to the GH to pick me up this morning, yes I know it’s not far away but if that’s what they do it gives me an extra few minutes in bed.
So at 9.30 they come to pick me up on a moped. Flashing through my mind is the possibility that this could just be me on my own again and I’m just not up for that again this morning. I don’t mind all too much the whole doing it on your own thing but there are some things that are just so much more fun with others. So I was very pleased when we arrived at the school to see two vans full of people getting dropped off and in the end there were actually a lot of us at the school. It was really well done as well, we were split into three ‘eating’ groups of about 8 or 9 people and as the day progressed each course had three choices so you then split off and joined people from the other groups who had made the same choice as you then back to your original group to eat what you had just cooked, I thought it was a great way of working it.
In my ‘eating’ group there’s a couple from San Francisco and then five others all on a tour with Intrepid - two Canadians, another American, Ren, and two Italians. There were supposed to be doing a ‘big’ tour of Thailand but due to the floods most of it had had to be cancelled and I overheard the two Canadians updating one of the others about the fact that she had contacted her lawyer about compensation for the trip. A little extreme perhaps? I don’t know!
At the start of the day we were given aprons and head scarfs, introduced to the school and asked to make our food choices before heading off to the local market to buy the food that we would need.
Our local market
The market was right near my GH and I’d seen it a couple of times before but it was great to have someone there explaining what all the different vegetables were and what kind of dishes they were used with. They had Thai aubergines, which is the only thing I can’t ever seem to get at home, I would love to bring a whole sack home with me but just not sure my luggage allowance will stretch to it.
The group from Intrepid were staying out of town and hadn’t made it as far as the old city yet and so hadn’t seen the lovely market. I know I’ve said it before but there’s just no way I could ever do one of those organised tours. Way too much organisation for my liking.
While we were at the market I got talking to Ren who said he had been travelling for a few months in SE Asia and how he always did these organised tours just so he didn’t have to worry about anything (!) he also then went on to say that he had only ever met two other English people (!!) one who didn’t own a pair of trainers and the other who didn’t own a pair of trousers and then asked me if this was normal for English people. It’s the people you met along your travels that have the most impact I think! ;-))
The rest of the day was an amazing cooking and eating extravaganza! Such a huge amount of food and in the end we were only able to manage a taster of each course rather than eat the whole thing. During the day I made fried noodles Thai style, spring rolls, green curry, sticky rice and mango, chicken soup and also learnt how to make curry paste rather than buy it from the local Thai store.
My first dish
What I never knew though was how you got coconut milk, now that was interesting. It’s the inside of the coconut, grated and with water added it is soaked and squeezed. I’m not sure that really explains the cost of it in a can back home but hey!
My green curry
The day was really great fun and Brendan, our host was hilarious, he really was a lot of fun and along with the rest of the staff at the school made the day really good.
Now I really do need to make onward plans.
I fancy trying a yoga class as well while I’m here which rules out leaving in the morning I guess and as well there’s a national park nearby that I kinda fancied visiting. That would be on an organized tour though and seems to include the obligatory elephant and water rafting. Amanda and Erin did one of these tours when they were in town and said the elephants were in chains and were beaten with hooks by their handlers so in actual fact that’s definitely a no no for me.
Although I did manage to find a trip which would just visit the park and hike about for 4 hours but they still visited waterfalls for swimming and villages for photos and in the end the whole thing just didn’t look like my kind of day. If I was here longer or if I were to come back then I think the best thing would be to hire a car and visit these places on your own, oh well maybe next time.
In the end, very late at night, and on sound advice from my best friend, I decided on a bit of a nothing day, well strictly that’s not true, the nothing part. I’ve decided I’m going to head on to Sukhothai on Sunday so need to get to the train station to get the ticket and I also want to do this yoga class. So in fact those are plans….right??
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