Ready Steady Cook!
Trip Start
Sep 19, 2002
1
76
129
Trip End
Sep 22, 2003
Chiang Mai,
Thailand
Friday, April 11, 2003
9th - We were supposed to arrive at 8am but Thai Rail is about as good as British Rail and we arrived at 9am but no problem, we just slept for another hour! We jumped in our first sawngthaew (means two rows) which is like a little pick up truck with, oddly enough, two rows of seats along the back. Our guest house (Midtown) was not quite as nice as we expected and the price had suddenly jumped DOWN 50 baht. We had a look at a few others around the area and noticed how quiet they all were. At this time of year, coming up for Thai New Year (Songkran), you should not be able to move for bodies but because of the war and SARS tourism is really down. Chain Mai itself is quite nice and has a much slower pace than Bangkok but still has loads to offer. Rooms and food are also a lot cheaper (hurrah). We ate in the night market for 20 baht each (30p) and sat on little plastic stools in the road to tuck into our pad thai. We managed to spend some money in the market in two stalls where we were the first customer in both cases - that's how quiet it was! We knew we were the first because apart from their sheer desperation to sell, they also waft your money over everything else on their stall to bring in more cash! After completing about 1/10th we decided to call it a night.
10th - Moved guest houses and are now staying in Nice Apartments which offers the following - clean sheets and blankets, soap, towels, loo roll, air con, TV, fridge, balcony, and more furniture to put away your things than in our room at home! All for 280 baht per night when we were paying 250 at Midtown. The rooms are really secure as well but it was the air con that swung it as it is REALLY hot here at the moment (up to 39 degrees). It was so hot in fact that we felt in need of a snifter of something. We'd heard the whiskey was quite good here so I was going to order a small set of Mekong for 150 baht (2.25 pounds) for myself but when I heard what you got I urged Pip to come in with me. We received a half bottle of very nice whiskey, a bucket of ice and a bottle of mixer. Needless to say we got quite merry and we still have over a third of the bottle left in our room - what lightweights?! He wouldn't let me go to see the rest of the market in my innebriated state either!
11th - Today began the start of our cookery school - something that we have looked forward to since we began planning our trip. For those who watch cookery programmes on cable TV (who me?) you might recognise the name - Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School with a chappie called Somphon. The whole 5 day course costs 63 pounds (bargain or what) and you get a cook book and obviously get to eat all you make (this could also be a bad thing..) All the utensils are in excellent condition and all the food is good quality and they have a high ratio of helpers to "classmates". Today we cooked tom yam goong soup, Thai fish cakes, green chicken curry, pad thai, spicy minced chicken salad and ruby coloured water chestnuts in coconut milk for pudding! You can see why we are not really hungry tonight! We hadn't expected Somphon to be there but he did teach some of the class and I got so nervous when he came to look at my fish cakes that I sliced my finger on the cleaver - very impressive! We had the course at their house (not in their kitchen) but the rest of the course for this week has to be taken at their resturant The Wok in the centre because of the festival. The Songkran festival basically involves throwing water over everyone, not a little bit, but bloody great buckets of the stuff. They even put in water taps all along the main streets and extra plumbing so that you don't have to go far to refill your recepticles. On our way back into town our sawngthaew had an open back and whenever we stopped people would squirt and throw water in. This was amusing for about 5 minutes but when we came out in the evening trying to get something to eat it wasn't so funny. It's nice to be wet in the heat of the day but when you go into an air conditioned room it gets quite cold! We are only doing the course for tomorrow then having a few days off for the festival so we will be buying plastic buckets and machine gun water pistols and standing on the streets watching the parades like everyone else! Oddly most of the people on the streets today were little Thai boys (as you'd expect) and older western males - they don't grow up do they!
