Thai Farm Cooking School, February 3

We spent today learning how to cook Thai food. We took a day long cooking class. We were picked up at our hotel in the morning and headed out to cooking school.

Our first stop was a market where we saw examples of the types of food and spices that are used in Thai cooking.

Oyster sauce, soya sauce, and fish sauce.

Palm Sugar

Chili Paste

The above five items are the base for all Thai cooking.

Our teacher, explaining the different herbs and fruits that are grown at the farm. This is an organic farm and this is where the cooking school is located.

Each student had their own cooking space with all the equipment needed for the cooking experience.

The first thing we learned to make was Thai chili paste. We had to grind the peppers and spices into a paste.

More pounding needed to make this into a paste.

Next dish was making a chicken curry dish. After this dish was made we added the curry paste to the chicken dish, took a break and ate the food.

Back to the kitchen.

Jane made a Thai vegetable soup and Charlie made a Tom Yam with shrimp. 

We then made the main dish.  I made chicken with cashew nuts and Charlie made chicken with basil.

Chef Charles touring the garden during our lunch break. We ate the stir fried chicken dishes that we made along with the soup.

Pumpkin and coconut milk dessert was made after lunch, and was eaten after we finished cooking it.

We were pretty full after all this eating but we still had one more dish to make. Charlie made Pad Thai and I made spring rolls. These we put into plastic bags to bring home to eat later that evening.

All the foods needed for the students was prepared by a staff of workers. They washed all the dishes and set up each work station with the foods needed for the next dish being cooked. 

This was an all day experience and around 4:00 we were taken back to our hotels with full stomachs, a fun experience and Pad Thai and spring rolls for supper.

Chiang Mai, February 2

Chiang Mai is a large city with lots of things to do, places to visit and things to buy. We had planned to stay here only four days but have ended up here seven days.

We hired a songtow driver for the day to take us to the handicraft shops. It cost 140 Baht, $4.20 US, for the day.

Our Songtow driver's car. He was a great man. He didn't speak much English but he got us where we wanted to go. 

Visited an umbrella making factory.

One of the umbrella painters painted a design on my pants.

I had my iPhone and back pack painted, 50 bhat each.

A lacquer wear factory. The items are made of bamboo and then painted and laquered.

Charlie and our driver trying to figure out where we needed to go.

We passed on the fried silk worms, grasshoppers, and crickets for lunch.

Off to Thailand January 30

We left Phnom Penh on a morning flight on Thai Airways to Chiang Rai, Thailand. We had reservations for a hotel in the mountains that was in the middle of a group of hill tribes.

This was the one time on all our travels that we felt like we might not make it home alive. This pickup truck carried 13 people, all their gear and about 300 pounds of rice up the mountain to the mud cabins we were staying in. The road was incredible steep and the truck in need of an upgrade. As the driver kept down shifting to get up the hills we were concerned that he would stall the truck and the brakes would never hold. One side of the road was a steep drop off. After a harrowing 1 hour ride we made it to the top.

The group of us who rode up the hill together celebrating that the driver had arrived safely to the top.

Looking down at one of the hill tribe villages.

A walk in the jungle to a waterfall.

View from our deck.

We stayed here (Akha House) for two nights. We took the morning truck ride back down the mountain to Chiang Rai village.

In the afternoon we caught the local bus to the White Temple. This is a new temple, about 10 years old, which is being built by a wealthy man. 

All the buildings on the groups are white.

There were many interesting sculptures around the temple.

We returned to town by catching the local bus on the hightway. 

That night we went to the Saturday night market in town. A number of streets are closed and the vendors set up their stalls to sell their goods.

We had our portraits drawn by a local artist. Each picture was completed in 15 minutes. Do we look young or what!!

In the morning we took the bus to Chaing Mai.