Using my hands

I'm at my new hotel in Bangkok which has wifi, working air conditioning, hot showers, and clean white sheets on the bed. The hotel might possibly be in one of the seediest parts of Bangkok that profits the most from sex tourism, but hey- I'm not leaving the hotel until morning, so no worries here!

It's been another stressful day of traveling (something tells me that travel abroad will never be easy or relaxed, and I need to learn to accept that travel days will ALWAYS equal stress and frustration from one thing or another, whether it is flight delays, lost luggage, missed connections, no-show pickups, etc), so I'm happy to be relaxing in my hotel. And, even better, tomorrow I wake up bright and early to leave for Ayutthaya where I will get to live with the "really large puppies," as I've been referring to the elephants. I am so jittery and eager- I hope I'm able to sleep tonight with all my excitement.

I'll continue from where I left off at the airport earlier today, which is mid-day through Monday in Chiang Mai.

I spent the day eating, walking, resting, and COOKING. Here is the proof:

Khao soi, the specialty noodle dish of Northern Vietnam made with yellow egg noodles and yellow curry.

In MJ's honor, I stopped at a dumpling vendor and bought "chicken stuff" and "dried shredded pork stuff" for 5 baht (around 15 cents) each. 

Dumpling goodness

Imagine the flakiest, butteriest love-child of a croissant and a fillo dough pastry filled with salty-sweet tender goodness.

Wanting a change of pace from street food, I found myself at the Asia Scenic Thai Cooking School where I had a choice of learning to make 3 dishes from this extensive menu.

Check out their herb garden!

And check out what is possibly the coolest plant I have ever seen! It goes by several crude names, some of which are: Nipple Fruit, Titty Fruit, Apple of Sodom, Cow's Udder, Fox Face, Five Fingered Eggplant, and Mickey Mouse Fruit (I swear I found this information online and am NOT making it up!)

Look at the cute fox's face!!

After the tour of the herb garden at the cooking school, we were welcomed with Meang-Kum, which is a traditional Thai welcome snack. It consists of shallots, lime, ginger, toasted coconut, toasted peanuts, and palm sugar syrup, wrapped in a betel leaf.

Yum yum yum, what an interesting combination of flavors!

We began by chopping the ingredients for our stir-fry dish. I chose pad thai for my stir-fry. Look at all that garlic!

We each had our own personal cooking station with our own wok, cutting board, and ingredients. Here is my pad thai about to be cooked!

Mid-cooking

Ready to eat, and so delicious!

Next, we learned how to make curry powder. We had a choice from five different types of curries, and I chose to make massaman curry which is unique because of its blend of more Indian-type herbs such as star anise, cinnamon, coriander, turmeric, and cumin.

Here I am, hard at work to make my curry smooth. Apparently the smoother you can make your curry powder, the better your personality is.

I think my personality is pretty darn smooth, thank you very much!

Look how proud I am of my handiwork! (Ten or twenty minutes of pounding with a mortar and pestle is EXHAUSTING!)

Here is my massaman with somebody else's green curry in the background.

Curry goes into the wok with chicken, potatoes, and coconut milk

And is ready to eat!

Last, we worked on the soup course. I chose to make tom yum soup. Here are my ingredients, ready to go into the water!

The makings of a spicy broth!

The (deadly-spicy) final product! Even our instructor had a coughing fit when he tasted my soup. Oops, guess I was a little heavy-handed on the chili jam!

All in all, it was a wonderful day of eating and exploring Thai cuisine.

Tomorrow, if I am not too busy falling in love with elephants, I will try to update with pictures from my bike ride!

Goodnight to all, and have an elephantastic sleep!