Cooking and dying

bed count: 18

In Bangkok now, arrived 7am this morning after taking the overnight train. (One bed in the count for the overnight train, one bed in the count for the sleep I had this morning...). Very busy city.

However, I didn't really do our days at the cook school and the batik school justice, so I thought I would go back and share a few of the highlights.

I had been wanting to take a cooking class at Time for Lime on Ko Lanta, but the kitchen had closed for the season. However, I had heard good things about cook schools in Chiang Mai and decided to have a go.

The morning started with a trip to the market where our instructor for the day talked us through all the different types of ingredients used in Thai cooking, including a vast array of weird veggies. (We were able to pick out the tomatoes and the carrots, but that was about it).

Then, back at the Wok restaurant we were given a demonstration of our each dish before we cooked and ate them (6 in all).

We cooked (if I remember correctly):

• spicy coconut milk soup (very tasty and probably my favourite of the day)
• big noodles with pork and vegetables (also very tasty)
• mushrooms and babycorn in some kind of sauce... (which was okay but could have done with some meat)
• red Thai fish curry (not really my thing)
• spicy papaya salad (weird - the papaya isn't sweet and lots of raw garlic used - very spicy)
• steamed banana cake (which was quite nice considering I am not really into steamed puddings or cooked bananas).

At the end of the day we were knackered, a bit hot from being in the kitchen, and well and truely stuffed from all that food, but it was a really good day and I would love to do it again at some point.

We had been going to leave for Bangkok on the Monday but then saw a leaflet for the Chiang Mai Batik School and it looked really good.

Our teacher for the day, Ann, picked us and one other couple up on Monday morning and took us out to her home / studio in a gated community in the suburbs of Chiang Mai. We learnt about the different tools used for batik and we stared experimenting almost straight away using salt and sugar alongside the basic batik technique to get some interesting textures.

The basic technique is quite straight forward once you are guided through it and if you have the right tools available. It was different to the batik we were used to back home which has multiple stages of dying the material - here you paint the dyes on rather than dye the whole fabric, which makes far more sense.

Alec, of course, was a star pupil. Ann said he is very talented and I think he definitely understands colours, shadows and the like more than me, though we both had great fun and were pleased with our results.

Anyway - after successfully completing one design in the morning (hmm - who shall I give that to for christmas) and having a very nice homemade lunch in Ann's lovely house we went on to another technique and another design in the afternoon - Alec painting his design onto a shirt and me painting a bag, both of which we got to keep, making the course a real bargain!

So - another really good creative day, which is nice after spending so much time on beaches and travelling through places. It was also really good to meet the women at the cook school and to meet Ann and be welcomed into her home. Thais are very hospitable people and Ann was keen to teach us about the Thai language too, so we picked up some new words.

As a result, obviously, we will be cooking you all Thai meals when we return to the UK and you'll all be getting batik shirts and bags for your christmas presents. Thats' if we haven't sold them all on the night market before then. ;) Lucky you!