Chiang Mai Masterchef

From Koh Phayam we bussed it up to Bangkok, overnight, a relatively short 10 hour trip to our home from home. This was our 4th stop in what has become one of our favourite cities.

And then we cheated and flew to Chiang Mai. And my oh my did we notice the change in temperature. Koh Phayam and Bangkok were hot, probably 33 to 35 degrees and humid. In Chiang Mai it was about 37 degrees but with a feel like factor of 43!!! So we decided to take it pretty slowly.

We hired bikes but didn't go far on them, just into the old walled city for a mooch at some temples and then it was just too hot so we didn't venture out again til dark.

Conveniently the market, aptly named The Night Market, doesn't open til, you guessed it, night, so we perused that and resisted buying more useless tat. I did however purchase a very useful hat.

My new tit-fer-tat.

Day 2 in Chiang Mai = cooking lesson day. Masterchef here we come. Look out Greg and John. We signed up for a full day with the Asia Scenic Cookery School. Apart from the fact that they forgot to pick us up, the course was excellent, as was our teacher Indy.

Indy showing us a Thai long bean, and long it is.

We were shown around the local market by Indy, who explained the ingredients we would need for our dishes. We learnt to cook 5 new dishes each! Thai food heaven. To name but a few: Pad Thai, Spring Rolls, Tom Yum, Green Curry, Massaman Curry...

Rice, red, sticky, white, brown, all sorts of rice.

Here's a picture of me stirring.

And here's a video of Duncan cooking:

And of course we got to eat it all too. It was a really lovely day.

This is a video in the market. The fly swat things were exactly the same colour as the meat and I thought they were meat too. Afterwards I asked and, they were plastic. Uncanny the resemblance though...

We would liked to have spent more time in Northern Thailand but time was now against us and so off to Laos we went...

Posted with Blogsy