Thai cooking class in Chiang Mai

And we were off to Chiang Mai! The overnight train was pretty fun and actually very comfortable to sleep in. Plus, just watching the man change our seat into a bed was its own experience. It somehow only took him about 3 minutes to put each bed together, which was incredible since he had to pull the seat apart, transform it into a cushion, then add sheets, tuck them in, then had pillows and blankets. Keith and I were so amused that we just had to take a video of it on the way back from Chiang Mai to Bangkok a few days later.
We were very very pleased with the guesthouse we stayed at in Chiang Mai. In fact, I am proud to say it has been my favorite hotel/guesthouse we have ever stayed in! The reason? It was insanely clean, spacious, with huge hallways/stairs leading up to the 3 floors of rooms. It looked like a huge house with smooth polished wooden floors, and pebbles around the toilet in the bathroom. Although there were only two bathrooms on each floor to share…we never had to wait our turn and only saw people hanging out in the dining room/lounge area, so crowded did not exist in this hostel. There was a top deck which had lawn chairs to lay out, and even our own porch in our bedroom. There was free internet, travel books and magazines to read in the lounge, delicious home-cooked meals, and the kindest lady who worked at the front counter. She actually even saved us over $100 since she rebooked tours through local companies for us (they were friends of hers actually), instead of the private companies we had first booked online before arriving to Thailand. All this for the price of $6 each a night!! I could not believe this! We were also walking distance to a temple, so we first checked that out and then relaxed before our 4 hour Thai cooking class that we booked for the night. This was probably our favorite tour that we took in Thailand.

We were picked up in a new type of transportation (popular in Chiang Mai). It appeared to be a safari ride built into the back of a pickup truck…very fun to ride! We first were taken to a local market (we were the only tourists!), where we were able to learn about the ingredients in which we’d be using in our dishes. Our teacher had us smell and guess the ingredients. He had fun with us and would just laugh laugh laugh if we were totally wrong with our guess! He picked out some ingredients that he had to stock up for our class, and then drove us to a house that was in a typical Thai neighborhood. Our class was taught in the home of the teachers, which was such a cool idea and made the experience very authentic. Our driver, who took us to the market, was one of the teachers, while his wife, Nancy, was the other main teacher. They started the business a few years ago and live with other friends/family members who also help bring ingredients and have other jobs around the house. The students cook right outside on the patio underneath a roof, where there are many cooking tables, tools, stove tops, pots, pans, knives, etc. It was a lovely open-doors home and the people were amazingly friendly, warm-hearted, down-to-earth and just the type of people who you immediately feel very close with. I loved Nancy, our main cooking teacher, and she did a great job of making the class informative, but also very fun! Since we booked the class last minute, Keith and I were actually the only people in the class, which made it nice because we had a private session and really got to know the couple and the other family members who lived with them…including “Peace”, another sweet lady who helped out there. We were able to each choose 5 dishes, so together we shared a total of 10 dishes. Do you think we had enough to eat? I think I formed a lil belly before I left, I was so full! We ate the dishes in the dining inside the home, and had a few dishes at a time. We would cook about 4 dishes, then eat them while they were still fresh and warm off the stove. It was exciting to make all the dishes and learn the main ingredients….lemongrass, fish oil, and sugar. We also learned about the vegetables and were able to make home-made curry. A few of our favorite dishes were Pad Thai, chicken green curry, Tom Yup soup, a glass noodle dish, bananas in coconut milk, and mango in sticky rice. It was all sooo good! We were even given a recipe book to take home with us so we can continue making these dishes wherever we are living in the world. The only challenge will be finding the correct ingredients. After chatting a long time with the couple and other family members and learning about some traditions through watching some you-tube videos about Thai tattoos online, we were off. Nancy, her husband, and another helper’s high-school daughter invited us in the front of their truck (this is a big deal to do with tourists) and dropped us off in the center of the huge night bazaar, which is very well known in Chiang Mai. It was a fun night of searching at the great deals, bargaining, and sipping on some coffee. We got back and tried to get some rest before our full-day elephant-trekking tour which I was super excited about!