Trip of a Lifetime: Day 19 - Learning to Cook Thai

Based purely on TripAdvisor reviews we booked a half day cooking course at Siam Rice Cooking School. They picked a bunch of us up and drove for about 20 minutes to the market, where our instructor, Pot, showed us all the ingredients we would be using.

Gorgeous

Nom Nom!

Here is the huge bag of crunchy, dried bugs!!

So Cheap! 10 baht is approx 30 cents USD

After another 20 minute drive we pulled up to what looked like a guesthouse. We were ushered inside (good thing because the mosquitos were just awful) and sat around the large dining room table to introduce ourselves and make our selections for what we wanted to learn to cook. One of the British guys on our tour had obviously ran into some trouble; he had stitches all over his face, holding his eyebrow, lip and cheek together. One of us finally asked him and he explained they had gone on the Zipline adventure tour and he had been hit in the face by a tree branch! He said he went to the hospital immediately (and no the tour didn't refund his money but he got a free T-shirt) and had to get about 200 stitches, each one costing a ridiculous amount. He said it didn't really hurt that much just looked awful and he was still up for learning how to cook Thai.

I chose to make Chicken Coconut Soup (Tom Ka Gai), Fried Big Noodles, Fried Holy Basil with Chicken, and a Massaman curry from my own paste.

It quickly became obvious I was terrified of chopping up my fingers along with the ingredients so Pot helped me out with the skill of a precision chef (think Master Chef style of chopping and dicing with a super sharp, huge knife).

Making Tom Ka Gai Soup...my absolute FAV

Fighting off mosquitos but enjoying ourselves

Woks at the ready

Noodles at the ready

Big Noodles (meh) and Coconut Soup (delish)!

Ty made Pad Thai and Coconut soup

Getting ready for our curries!

Huge Knife and my Mortar and Pestle

Cinnamon...nom nom nom

Currying it up!

Massaman curry was great, didn't enjoy Holy Basil

Ty made a spicy Red Curry and Cashew Chicken

After our class the driver was able to drop us off at the night market so we joined the others and were quickly overwhelmed by the number of stalls, tourists, trinkets and music! There were at least three different groups of blind guys sitting on the ground singing and playing instruments...sad! After a few hours of this (Yes Ty survived) we were on our way back to our hotel when we heard rather than saw...

Hoots, hollering and loud music coming from down an alley...intrigued we continued on, past the rows and rows of small bars with ladyboys cat-calling us...towards a small boxing ring in the middle of the alley!