Tuesday, November 11 9:43 pm Thailand / 7:43 am US
Yesterday night we had a good time at the Khantoke dinner. We got to sit on the floor and eat Northern Thai cuisine: deep fried pork rinds, fried chicken, fried bananas, Thai "adobo" with pork, tomato sauce with minced pork, stir fried vegetables, sticky rice, fruits, and deep fried rice cake. We also got to see all the different styles of traditional Thai dancing. My favorite was the knife dance where the guys had to balance 8 knives on his neck with 2 in their mouths and 1 knife each in between their toes and behind their knees; they then did a pirouette! That's what you call good balance! We also got to see hill tribe dances and the coolest one was a fire dancing, very similar to the ones that the Polynesians do.
We then called it a night because we had to wake up early for our cooking class. So we got up early and barely had breakfast cuz we were so tired. 8 am was pick up so we got there with 1 minute to spare. We're sitting, sitting, and sitting. "Where's the car?" And we don't see a "bald, short Thai man" (Phong's description of the cooking instructor) anywhere. We waited for half an hour and then I called Phong. I must have woken him up cuz it took him half a minute to realize who I was. He then called the school and they said 9 am was pick up. Okay, so it was 8:53 am by the time I finished that call. No problem... 7 minutes is doable (even though it was chilly in the air. Thai winter was finally setting in!). Then we get another call from Phong and he said that the car was going to pick us up at 9:30 am! Acck... we could have slept in!
So the car finally arrives and there is one other couple and a single woman in there. We pick up another couple and, lo and behold, we're the only Asians in the car. Oh yeah, and our driver was younger woman who hit the pillar of one of the hotels as we pulled up! Oopsy, our first Thai car accident.
We get to the school and we have to make a choice: 1) go the market for an hour or 2) make curry paste from scratch. Easy choice: curry paste! The instructor (which actually was a female and later on, 2 other women taught us other dishes) explained all the ingredients and demonstrated how to pound and grind the ingredients with a granite mortar and pestle! Cool.... Ryan and I haven't ever grounded stuff before! LOL it was really, really hard work. Ryan had to do extra grinding and pounding (oh, that doesn't sound so G-rated!) cuz his wasn't pasty enough. Then, after adding in the fresh ingredients, I had to pound mine more because it wasn't smooth enough. This British man next to me did really well - his looked like the instructor's and somehow he ended up with a 1/2 cup of paste. We only had about 1/4 cup???!!
We got to use the paste to make paneng curry with chicken (both of ours were good: mine was spicy and Ryan's was sweeter). Then we made deep fried fish (they made that part, probably didn't trust us foreigners to not injure ourselves while frying) with sweet & spicy sauce - good taste too; Chiang Mai curry with chicken (mine was too sour and bland so the instructor had to add more palm sugar and tamarind sauce; Ryan's was perfect!); minced pork with glass noodle salad (both of ours turned out well); sweet & sour vegetables (yummy!); and black sticky rice pudding (I didn't care for it since the instructor made mine too sweet; Ryan liked his). By the end of the class, we all were about to fall asleep. That was more food than all of us usually ate! But we really enjoyed it and one of the best parts was that we got to meet and chat with people from all over the world, including LA/Santa Barbara! We now have a contact in Vancouver when we visit Canada!
We returned back to the hotel by riding in one of those truck taxis. Ryan and I were the only ones that actually fit in there since everyone else was so tall. LOL for once it paid to be short!
I think we must have ate way too much because we both ended up napping AGAIN! I haven't taken this many naps in a long time. But we got up refreshed and wandered the night market again. I had a feeling that something big was going to happen tonight since we saw a stage being set up in the middle of the street. Sure enough, the street was blocked off and a parade celebrating Loy Krathong started down it. Man, that was the SLOWEST parade ever! We don't know why but they would stop for at least 5 - 10 minutes at a standstill. In fact, they were so slow that we just walked the whole way down the line, took our pictures, and left. We accidentally found a whole area of carnival-like festivities for Loy Krathong! We saw lots more Khom Lois and got to try some more interesting foods (custard and chocolate-filled fish puffs; a sausage-looking thing on a stick that was filled with seasoned rice; round balls that looked like fish balls or meat balls but were filled with seasoned rice as well); Thai-style dim sum (shrimp dumpling and pork dumpling - they make it with something like a fish or meat ball texture. Ryan thinks it tastes the same like home, though);and Thai smoothie (dragonfruit, watermelon, papaya, pineapple).
After we wandered for about an hour, we walked back to the parade area to get back to our hotel. LOL the parade was almost where it was when we left! We felt so bad for the guys and girls in it. Most of them were sitting on the ground or talking on cell phones while waiting. And then random people would pose with them while taking pictures.
Speaking of taking pictures, we had to take one with the "Tif-phony" & Co. jewelry booth! Haha....
Anyway, we finally fought our way through the crowd and ended up at the Internet cafe. Whew, it was crazy out there, but fun! Tomorrow's a late wake-up call (11 am!) and then we get to make our very own krathong (banana leaf boat) to sail on the river to celebrate Loy Krathong! Cool beans!
