Chiang Mai and cooking course

So out next destination… Chiang Mai, due to the fact that Chiang Mai was in the North and we were on an island the only option we had other than spending 36 hours travelling was to catch a plane.  Short boat trip, calm crossing thank god, and we had a few hours to kill before we left, so what better way then to chillax on another beach J  

A quick mention of Koh Sumni airport, its like an outdoor park, no indoor terminal.  Wide open streets with palm trees and various restaurants and coffee shops dotted along, and then when we went through to the final departure lounge, still wide open views of the runways, sun shining and the light breeze rustling the giant palm trees.  Definitely the best airport I have been too J

Chiang Mai… It had to happen eventually.  Lots of travel, a bit of drinking, loads of food and lack of sleep… I was ill :-( So I spent my first day in Chiang Mai in the hostel room watching TV while Ems went out to explore (after making sure I was ok J

Luckily it was just a 24 hour bug and I was right as rain the next day (almost, not quite up to eating the local cuisine, and an incredible runny nose… which led to quite an embarrassing incident.  So anyway we spent the morning lazing around in the local park, enjoying the heat and a couple of iced coffees our planning for the evening was a Thai cooking course…

The course was amazing, with our lead chef being a small super camp guy called “A”.  The innuendos where flying all the way through, starting with morning glory (a veritable), the size of my banana, how sexy we wanted our curries.   And the climax was the pounding of the spices, “harder, Harder, faster, faster 1 min more…. Noooo to slow!!”

Such a fun evening where we cooked Pad Thai, spring rolls, Spicy basil and chicken, Penang, and a favourite Chaing Mai dish….  All of which we are both happy to say where delicious J

Sadly it was now Ems turn to feel ill, and as always she had to go one better than me, and she was bed bound (and not in the good way) for two days, which I think almost drove her nuts.  Fortunatley our hostel was able to put us up for the extra nights and rearrange our jungle trek…

The Chiang Mai weekly market. Amazing!  It went on in every direction as far as you could walk, with a 1000 different stores. All the way through where these groups of deaf and blind performers.

"A" our cooking instructor 

 Our spring rolls :-)