12/11/12

Chiang Mai - Literally cooking with gas

I had a busy morning yesterday that I'll go into later. I got back to my hotel which doubles as a travel agency (a common feature in Chiang Mai) with the goal of going and doing something touristy. Not that I hadn't been doing touristy things but this time with someone else in charge. My options for evening activites were limited and a cooking class from 4-8:30 had the most allure. No matter that I haven't really spent much time cooking before. This was Thai food and I've developed a taste for their curry's and coconut milk based dishes.

The school "Baan Thai Cookery School" picks up chefs to be at their hotel in a pickup truck with benches down the sides of the truck bed. All the people in my truck are very friendly and English speaking. After gathering at the school we walk to a local market to learn about ingredients that we're using. Nok is our instructor and shes very animated and sweet.
There are four lessons (Stir-Fried, Appetizer, Soup and Curry) and three options for each lesson. First lesson is Fried Cashew Nut with Chicken. We are gathered in a prep room with the ingredients placed in what I would call an appetizer bowl. Nok walks us through each set of the prep work.

In this bowl you see the expected: Cashew nuts, and the odd: Elephant ear mushrooms. Also included are baby corn, dried chili, spring onion and onion. To be perfectly honest I eliminated onion from all my dishes. The joy of cooking: No onions in my dishes. And the result I have to say was delicious.
Next up was Spring Rolls and Chicken Coconut soup. In my book you can't go wrong with coconut. Or fried food. One of the other chef's to be was talking about eating a fried and salted maggot. He didn't know that's what he was eating until after and it wasn't bad. But of course if you fry and salt something, how bad can it be really.

The wrappers for the spring rolls have a smooth and rough side. The smooth is suppose to be up for a "pretty" roll. They walked us throught the process once and then we made one on our own. I think just about everyone ended up with a "pretty" roll and a rough one because they forgot that step.
This was all the point that everyone was getting full and a little tired. The breaks between cooking were filled with talking and laughter. A really good group of people. A couple both named Jo/Joe (Guy and Girl) from London traveling for three weeks in Thailand. Another couple from London traveling through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam for 6 weeks. And a Canuk named Dillon traveling around for 4 months after working on a fishing boat and saving up.

The final dish was the curry. Panaeg Curry in my case. It's a lot of work. There's a mortor and pistle involve and pureeing peppers but the outcome is delicious even if I couldn't finish it because I was so full.

My grand plans of hitting the night market were foilled by the fact that I was falling asleep standing up. Just have to visit it on my way back through Chiang Mai. Because, I don't think I mentioned, I'm hitting the road today!

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Chiang Mai, Part Nueng

Now we're cooking with gas! Real wifi to upload pictures. I've got all my pictures uploaded onto Smugmug that I've taken so far. I'll try to back feed pictures from bangkok but for now I'm going to catch up with the last couple of days.

So after finally getting to Chiang Mai via train I settled down in the food area of the train station to eat and make calls about rooms. Had I known I would have just called up Philip at riderscorner.net for a room, good food and good riding talk. More on that later. After going through a couple places I ended up with a room at Riverside House. Not in the old city but right by the night market. It has a beautiful backyard pool/garden area.
After I got settled in a bit, I headed out to track down a bike. I was a little nervous because I had called a couple of shops from the states and they had been out of dirt bikes because of the busy season. I thought I would get in and out of town before Christmas without issue but I guess I wasn't the only one.

I walked over to Pop Motorcycle and Car rental just outside of the moat and they were swimming with motorcycle. Scheduled a bike (I'm not sure if I'm ending up with a CRF250 or Kawasaki dirt tracker) and picked up a scooter!
Now just in case you were a clueless as I was before I started looking into Thailand, they drive on the left side of the road. Not a big deal but definitely a mental switch. On the way back to my hotel I only ended up on the wrong side once. And for the rest of the day I started singing songs to myself with all the words replaced with "left". So far so good.

After gearing up with my KLIM helmet and jacket I headed out for another Wat. Wat Chedi Luang to be precise. I may have ridden around in a couple of circles but I made it without any other wrong side of the road issues.
The temples and pagodas were beautiful but what got me were the signs attached to the trees. The ones I can read:
  • "Sacrifice is protection"
  • "Be covetous and regret later"
  • "Want to be a monk, leave lust"
  • "Careless is a way to die"
That's all for now, I have to go to a cooking class. Any snickers or snorts are unappreciated and will immediately remove you from any Thai dinner party invites.

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12/9/12

I think I can...

Is what my train to Chiang Mai was saying on a hill. Apparently there were more cars that usual an the engine was having issues. And then I was having issues when he train rolled backward and started picking up speed. It proceeded to act out "One step forward and two steps back" several times delaying arrival to Chiang Mai by several hours.

Pretty country side though.

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