Tuesday 12th May
Day 3 of the cooking course - Course 4
We started with shopping at the local market. We were each asked to find an ingredient. I lucked out with an easy one - Coriander!!
Today we cooked the following
- Yellow Curry with Chicken
- Steamed fish in Banana Leaves - mine was a bit too dry and tasted like Fish bread!!
- Chicken with Cashew Nuts - Amazing!
- Fried Big Noodles with Sweet Soy Sauce
- Spicy Prawn Salad North-Eastern Style (Absolutely fantastic!)
- Bananas in Coconut Milk
Today was good fun, met some very sweet Canadian girls from Toronto, Rebecca and Riley. Sebastian gave me a recommendation for somewhere to go in the evening as it was Alex, Alessia and Steph's last night in Chiang Mai. The Riverside. The young canadians also said they might drop by.
So I met A,A&S at their hostel in town where they were chatting to a couple of guys from the US. One of the guys, Lucas - from NYC, decided to come with us. Riverside is a bar/restaurant, predictably overlooking the river and we sat on the terrace. Food was nice and we had a big tower of beer. Then Rebecca & Riley showed up. There was live music playing in the bar so we decided to go upstairs to hear the music. I had such a great night. Steph and I were drinking beer with Thai whiskey shots! Oh! I was in full on party mood. We all wanted to sing Karoke but didn't know where we could find a bar! Suddenly at about 1am I hit a wall, metophorically not literally and I had to go home - Right away! Said goodbye to the guys - who I am really going to miss as we'd all spent the last 4 nights together. Part of me really wanted to go with them but I need to follow my own plans at the moment.
Wednesday 13th May
All mighty hangover. I woke up with comedy hair all sticking up in the air. It seems I decided to stick my head in the shower the night before to cool down! Anyway this morning was painful but I woke up early because I was thirsty. Had some breakfast and started to feel human again.
There were only 4 people at the cooking school today, me, Sebastian, Isobel from Swizerland and Abi for the US. We started, before cooking, with some food carving to decorate the plates, Tomato flowers and tomato lotus with Carrot leaves. This just wasn't happening! My carrot leaf was pathetic but in the end the tomato flowers were really quite good in my humble opinion.
We cooked
- Clear Soup with Minced Pork - Loved it - I have a consumme obsession.
- Spring Rolls - Deep fried amazing hangover food!
- Red Curry with Roast Duck - Hot but totally totally my favourite so far. It has tomatos and pineapple and grapes in. I think I'll be cooking this at home for a few of you.
- Chicken with Ginger - one of my favourites
- Chicken in Pandanus leaves - incredible street snack food
- Mango with Sticky Rice - OMG! really really
The food gods were looking after me today and nursing me through my sore head and lack of brain function.
I went into town after the class to go to the second hand book store but also to ask one of the hundreds of travel agents about getting to Laos and my Vietnam visa. All seems straight forward so I will do this on Friday/Saturday.
Also went into the Elephant Nature Park office and saw some of the work they do. Looks incredible so Abi and I decide we want to do this on Friday?
I had a Thai Massage, my first in Chiang Mai, it was wonderful, also great for my hangover body to help me force out all the toxins.
Met Abi for a quick drink and snack in town. I could only manage one beer then I was home for an early night.
Miss you all x 
