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We booked ourselves into a Thai cooking class for today! It cost 1050 Baht each (£21) and runs from 9am until 3pm.
We were picked up at 8.45am and taken to the local Market and shown what all the different vegetables are. There's so many different vegetables that are used in the Asian countries. We hardly use any...I don't see these down my local Asda anyway.
From there we drove about 20 minutes out of town to a nice big house. There's a large open air part that's properly geared up for cooking lessons. I think they could have around 16 people at a time there, but fortunately there were just 8 of us.
We cooked 6 dishes all together. Before each meal the teacher showed us how to make the dish, then we went off and made our own. Also, whilst making each dish, there were two teachers walking up and down helping everyone.
First off we made Pad Thai, which was lovely and is really easy to make. We ate that straight after cooking.
Then we made green Thai curry paste, which put to one side while we made prawn Tomyam soup (sweet and sour). Then we used the paste to make green Thai curry. We were also shown how to make steamed Jasmine rice (no, not as simple as throwing it in a pan!) and then we went down and ate both. We tried tomyam soup in Laos and aren't so keen it, so neither of us ate that. Our curries were good though!
We had a bit of a break from cooking and eating and then went to make papaya salad. We're not so keen on this either.
But the desert was lovely! Sticky rice with mango. Definitely one of my new favourite deserts.
At the end we were given a cookbook, so we'll definitely be trying them out when we get back!!
We really enjoyed it, and everything was obviously made from scratch so that was interesting to learn. We even used a pestle and mortar to grind all our ingredients and get all the flavours out - need to get one of these when we get home...we'll be cooking for hours!!
We set off back at 3pm in the cooking school mini-bus, but on the way, I had a problem. My guts weren't doing so well. I think it's probably due to the fact that all we had for breakfast was a banana and then was eating spicy food from about 10.30am! We had to make an emergency stop at Tesco of all places...I'll leave it at that!
I was really tired again and my ankle was very swollen, so we went and relaxed at the hotel. I was asleep for about 15 minutes before a load of fireworks (for the festival) woke me up. It was only about 4pm too! Still had a good rest though.
The heat and standing up all day hadn't done my ankle any good. I had a look on the Internet to see what it might be and a lot of people have had the same problem in the past - bites on ankle turning to bad swelling. I decided to see how my ankle is tomorrow morning and then maybe go to the doctors/hospital to just get it checked out.
We'd been given a bit more info about the Loi Krathong festival, and was told that a parade starts close by to us at around 6pm. We managed to get down there at 6.30pm but it still hadn't started which was good.
It was about 7.30pm by the time it got started!! And then it was really unorganised - the parade kept stopping and starting and tourists were getting in the way slowing it down. It was nice to watch for a bit, but we decided to move on after about 30 minutes.
Quite a few lanterns up in the sky and we were watching some people patiently trying to get theirs up there. Looked nice, but I'm hoping to see hundreds up there tomorrow night.
We had a bit of a wander around and ate in a simple small place near the night bazaar. The parade was going past there too.
After eating we decided to go watch Muay-Thai boxing! The place we went had loads of bars and as usual had lots of lady-boys hanging out. It cost 400 baht (£8) each and we managed to get ringside seats...although there's only about 4 rows of seating anyway! Didn't pay extra though, it was just this dodgy tuk-tuk driver who took us to the front and then wanted a tip. We didn't give him one though because we were expecting some security guy to come along and tell us to get to the back seats as that's all we paid for.
We'd only been there 30 mins and the couple from Australia we met in Lao Lao Gardens in Luang Prabang, called Mel and Paul, had spotted us and came over to say high! Couldn't believe it. We didn't even realise they were coming to Chiang Mai. We've spoken to so many people it's hard to remember all their plans!
It wasn't a packed out stadium at all, it's just a ring in the middle of a load of bars with about 4-5 rows of seating all the way around.
Anyway, the boxing got underway. But first up were some kids. We didn't like the look of that, thought it was a bit wrong and unfair on them. But actually it's very "professional" in a way. And I tell you what, you wouldn't want one of those kids coming at you with their shins of steel!
There was a couple of youngsters fighting, then a female fight which was quite good. Then the proper fighting started. First up was a couple of Thai guys which was very good. Absolutely belting each other...with their shins. Their shins are rock hard...it hurts me when I tap my shin on a table leg!
Then there was a Canadian against a Thai guy which was a pretty good fight but a bit slower because it was more of a heavyweights match. The Canadian won.
During the interval between fights, one of the bars had the girly-boys doing YMCA! Not the prettiest sight, but funny to watch.
Then there was a very random fight. 3 guys were in the ring blindfolded! And one of them was the tuk-tuk guy who wanted a tip off us and we didn't give him one...! There was another guy in there who was pushing the blindfolded guys towards each other, and then they would start swinging at each other. There were arms flying everywhere and they were really giving each other a whack. Was pretty funny to watch!
The last main fight was an English guy against a Thai guy. That lasted all of 20 seconds because the English guy kicked the Thai guy in the balls!!! He was rolling around on the floor in complete agony, and the English guy was made the winner!
It was really good to watch actually and I've taken plenty of videos. Lasted about 3 hours as well. I could even keep wandering up to the bars to see Man Utd winning : )
We only drunk one beer today!
- comments
Kirsty Ha the blindfolded fight sounds hilarious!!!lol.How the ref doesn't get knocked out is beyond belief!!!lol.Glad your sticking to the no drinking,even if you did have one!!!lol xxxxxxxx
Michelle Ohh I cant wait to experience your new cooking skills when you get home....looking forward to that!! The boxing night sounds fun, abit random but funny at the same time! Glad to hear the English guy won although I'd class that one as maybe 'disqualified??', ha!!