* Our rest day, which meant not setting the alarm (yes, I know, a thousand small violins are all starting to play for us from our friends reading this at their desks at work), getting a Thai massage (hey, when in Rome, err, Thailand), and then doing a cooking class to learn how to make Thai food
* The cooking class was with Siam Rice Thai Cookery school, a great outfit – they pick you up at your hotel, take you to a local market and explain what’s going on, then guide you through preparing your own dishes (which you select from a “menu”); the chef who worked with us spoke great English and helped us make some amazing Thai food (if I do say so myself!)
* The cooking class was with Siam Rice Thai Cookery school, a great outfit – they pick you up at your hotel, take you to a local market and explain what’s going on, then guide you through preparing your own dishes (which you select from a “menu”); the chef who worked with us spoke great English and helped us make some amazing Thai food (if I do say so myself!)
The Good:
* The cooking class, the “thing to do” while in Chiang Mai, was a lot of fun
* The cooking class, the “thing to do” while in Chiang Mai, was a lot of fun
The Bad:
* Still not a fan of massages
Today was our rest day, which meant not setting our alarm (yeah yeah, people groaning as they view this blog with their bosses yelling at them), and heading out for a traditional Thai massage. Shops for this are ubiquitous in Chiang Mai, but we settled on this one:
“Deep Relax”. I can confirm there was nothing “deep” nor “relaxing” about my experience. This is not the scene of the crime, rather a chair in the lobby. Obviously we couldn’t take pictures of the event. It had ben roughly five years since my last (and only) Thai massage, so this experience was able to confirm a few things for me: a) there are some mean old Thai woman out there, and they all seem to be Thai masseuses; there’s something not right with them, they like putting people in pain (like dentists), b) if you get a Thai massage you are basically paying someone to beat the living daylights out of you, and somehow this is supposed to be enjoyable and therefore the basis for a very large and lucrative industry, c) my body does not twist or bend in a lot of directions that it is apparently supposed to, as my Thai crazy lady masseuse repeatedly (and audibly) chuckled to herself when I couldn’t do something she wanted me to, and d) I still don’t like to be touched by strangers; Carrie says this makes me like Bob from that Bill Murray movie “What About Bob?” So be it.
Night time was way more fun. We hooked up with Siam Rice Thai Cookery School for an evening class that included four dishes: a soup of our choosing, a noodle dish of our choosing, a curry of our choosing, and a stir fry of our choosing. First, we started with a trip to a Thai market:
At the school, they set you up with a cutting board, a huge knife (careful!), and an apron with an elephant on it.
Then, you get to work chopping and then cooking your first two dishes. I made a Chicken Coconut soup (which was amazing if I do say so myself, my favorite of the whole night) and Pad Thai.
Just kidding. After eating our first two dishes, we set out making our own curry paste, which involves a mortar pestle to grind all of these ingredients into a fine paste:
And those are all the pictures I have because in my food coma I forgot to take some of our last two dishes. Woops. But here’s our group, which included two nice people from Sweden and one girl from Switzerland. Thai dinner at my place when I get back to the States for whoever wants it!
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