Day Four.

Day four was a little slower but just as interesting. We decided to spend the best part of the day learning to cook Thai at the Chaing Mai Thai Cookery School , Thailand's first cookery school.

We congregated in a small shop in Chaing Mai with budding chefs from other hotels. We introduced ourselves and found that almost everybody was from a different country. Our guide for the morning was a girl called Aire who drove to a local market by scooter with us tourists following behind in a minivan and open taxi truck. Once there we gathered around her and she explained her way through all of the principal ingredients in Thai cooking. All of the vegetables and rices and noodles and how coconut milk and coconut cream was produced. Despite a nagging concern that the place would be grotty and full of animal parts, or worse, live animals in tiny pens and bugs etc etc, the market was clean and bright.

I really liked these. Lemongrass Ginza (like ginger) and Tumeric ready to boil into soup.

The market was clean and crammed full of really diverse foods.

Aire, our Thai cook took us through each of the main Thai vegetables.

Dragon fruit.

All the food looked art directed. Wonderful.

Once we had been left to explore the market for 20 minutes, we regrouped and headed to the kitchen where we were to put a little of what we had just learned into action.

The place is run by a TV chef called Sompon Nabnian and his wife Elizabeth and was set in a building at their house in a beautiful suburb of Chaing Mai (gated naturally). The kitchen was open air and surrounded by a wonderful edible garden. We cooked four dishes and each was shown to us in a classroom first before we had to gather our ingredients and fire up the woks.

Each dish was presented by a different chef, one of whom was Sompon, the owner and celebrity chef and the last by Aire who had led us through the market. It was all in good humour and they were patient with us when it was our turn.Some of it was quite frantic and took skill to prepare the vegetables and timing when the heat was on. We all showed our finest knife skill shredding Kaffir lime leaves and smashing garlic and diagonally slicing lemongrass.

At the cookery school.

Brad prepping some of the ingredients for the first meal.

Coconut milk bubbling as Sharon makes a chicken green curry.

Ashley at work on his Pad Med, a vegetable and noodle stir-fry.

Thai fish cakes with a sweet sauce, all made from scratch.

Tom Yum, hot and sour soup with prawns.

And we ate all of the food we prepared. So full!

After cooking and eating the four meals we wished our hosts a warm ขอขอบคุณคุณ (thank you) and drove back to our hotel where we rested in the pool for a bit before showering and hitting the street markets in search of a suitcase to stow the ceramics we bought yesterday.

Sharon in the pool of the Mai Ping Hotel.

Day four done.
Tomorrow, the airport and onto Phuket.