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Chaing Mai - cooking course and markets.
So the day after my adventure with the elephants me and Kara had signed up for a full day of cooking which started bright and early with an introduction to the garden where I learned all about the ingredients they use in Thailand and how they grow - I also found out what ingredients I could use in England as a good alternative.Then we headed to the market to buy some things such as noodles and palm sugar, me and Kara annoyed everyone when we disappeared and came back with fresh fruit juice, everyone had to wait for us to come back before they could learn some additional info on how palm sugar is made - you would think we had legged it whilst mother Teresa was attempting to talk to us or something judging on the way they reacted.All was quickly forgotten when we headed back to cooking school to begin making our 7 dishes.The cooking course was good fun but I couldn't eat all of it which was a shame, I made a curry, a noodle dish, a desert, a starter, a main course, some spring rolls and something else but I can't remember what it actually was?! I reckon I will be a cooking pro by the time I get home and I will definitely be using the complimentary cook book that I was given to make some dishes when I get back.One of the highlights of the day was watching Kara attempt to make curry paste, with sheer determination in her mind and a slightly insane angry look on her face she pummeled the ingredients into the smoothest curry paste ever - it was kind of surprising on one hand and extremely impressive on the other.
Cooking knackered me out! And so that evening we decided just to head to a local market for a quick wonder round which included eating waffles, drinking strawberry juice and attempting to battle our way through the plague of moths which had descended when the sun went down - apparently its not common and slightly like a freak of nature type situation which in the end was really annoying as they landed on our faces, crawled in our ears and up our noses and generally made me want to kill them all by spraying deodorant around like a madman.
The next day - our final one in Chiang Mai was spent with Milly (A friend Kara had met on the islands) and Kara at a local pool where we sun bathed and attempted to give our mouths a rest from chatting by reading our books, that didn't last long.After Skype dates with boyfriends, mothers and sisters we decided to brave the market idea again but this time hit the Sunday market.Sunday market or walking street in Chiang Mai is huge, it takes over a whole section of the city and is attended by hundreds of stalls and thousands of customers.There is no souvenir you can't buy at this market and so us three girls loved looking around, we bought new ally babas, bags, scalves etc and ate amazing mango sticky rice whilst watching the street performers.After over 2 hours of shopping we hadn't even covered half of the market but decided enough was enough and we should really take a break and go for a drink, on the way stopping to watch the local art colleges fashion show which was impressive and gave us loads of entertainment as we practiced our best cat walk moves and danced around to the amazing choice of tunes being used as the soundtrack - everyone else in the audience simply stood and watched but oh no not us.
After a cocktail at a local bar we headed back to the hostel where we met a group of people and it was quickly decided that a quiet night was not an option, after drinking games and some rum and red bull we all decided to head to some bars down the road.The live bands in Thailand are so funny, they cover western songs but have no clue on how to pronounce the words right so they just sing the words they know and attempt to make sure they are in time whilst the crowd fill in the blanks and drunkenly think the band is totally awesome and say how they should go on Thailand's Got Talent or something.The night was a laugh with lots of drinks, a little bit of dancing and the boys buying the girls roses which Kara romantically attempted to eat?
The following day and I woke feeling crappy but kind of excited as it was this day that I would start my 3 day adventure from Thailand into Laos by slow boat, I had heard so many good and bad stories about the boats that I was kind of nervous as I didn't know what to expect.In the morning I met up with Kara and we went to post some parcels home before our pick up for the slow boats, we had both booked the boat but didn't realize until I was picked up and she was told to wait for a different pick up that we would be going with different companies on different boats.I would have liked to do it together but I am travelling alone so I didn't stay upset for long, plus we would see each other at the other end of the journey when we arrived into Luang Probang (Laos).I said a fond fare well to Millie and set off towards my next country.
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