John and Joanna at the Cooking School

Day 4: Experience Thailand

After getting up early and switching to the Sheraton hotel, we headed of to a day of Thai cooking school. The Thai Cookery School was fantastic. After picking us up at the hotel and bringing us to the office, they gave each person something to purchase at the local market. I had to purchase potatoes and Joanna had to purchase mint. Once we had our ingredients we headed out to the secluded and beautiful school, in a gated community that included an equestrian club. We had class inside and cooked outside. Which was nice, because as I’ve mentioned, it’s hot in Thailand. So, we would learn how to cook a dish, and then we would go outside and cook our individual dishes. There was some pressure not to mess it up, because you were cooking for yourself. We cooked a fried noodle with chicken dish, chicken curry, minced fish in banana leaf, peanut chicken, a chili shrimp salad and banana in coconut milk (we may have cooked more). I couldn’t believe how easy it was to cook everything and we’re excited to try out our new cooking back home (especially the curry).

Cooking was exhausting and filling, but we fortunately made it out to the Antique House for dinner. We ate outside, serenaded by a thai singing western tunes. The Antique House is frequented by tourists, but it was a fun place with great cheap meals. We ate food out of a coconut and drank the “Antique Special” out of a pineapple (I think it was just a mai tai in a pineapple).

We headed over to the night bizarre again where we picked up a few things.

While in Chiang Mai, we haven’t encountered many Americans. We’ve definitely run into our fair share of Westerners and Aussies. But, there really haven’t been many Americans here. I think that is because many other countries have longer vacations than we have here. A four week trip is nothing for them.