Clayton and Danae's travel to Southeast Asia: Day 1 in Chiang Mai -- Learning to Cook Thai Food and a Night Bazaar

We arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand, early in the morning. CM is the third largest city in Thailand and is nestled in between the mountains of the northern part of the country. One of the neat aspects of this city is that the interior of it is surrounded by a man made moat. There are remnants of fortified walls surrounding parts of the moat. Below is a picture of the moat and fortified wall in the back left.

Our hotel, Le Meridien, was pretty good. It's was about par for the course in terms of all our hotel stays in Asia. Below are pictures and a video (below, click play on the picture of Clayton) of our room/hotel.

Hotel From Outside

We basically only did three things our first day in CM: (1) swim in our hotel pool; (2) take a Thai cooking class; and (3) go to the CM Night Bazaar.

The pool was nice, but there was nothing spectacular about it. Below are some pictures.

Our Swimming Pool on the 7th Floor

Tuk-Tuk Truck

The Thai cooking class was awesome! They picked us up in a tuk-tuk truck from our hotel and drove us to the class. The class lasted about five hours. It was taught by a Thai teacher, whose name was too difficult to pronounce. In Thai, you can have the same word mean numerous different things, the only distinguishing feature being the pitch used. Her name was one of those examples. If her name was pronounced with the wrong pitch, it meant death. Anyways, she told us to call her "Rabbit." Danae said, "like a bunny." She said yea, so we ended up calling her "Bunny." She called Danae "Sexy Girl" and me "Sexy Boy." There were also 5 other people in our class. The class was taught in English, even though the remaining people were not from countries that spoke English. One was from Hong Kong, one from Holland, and 3 from Germany.

Rabbit AKA "Bunny"

Our Classmates at our Food Preparation Table

Our Thai class started with a walk to the local outdoor market. Bunny went through all the ingredients we would be using to make our Thai dishes. We purchased our ingredients, and went back to our outdoor kitchen. Below are some photos from the market.

Various Types of Rice we learned about

Thai Chili Peppers


Bunny Explaining the different types of Basil and garlic used in Thailand

We got to pick our appitizers, entrees, and desserts. I picked hot & sour prawn soup, Thai style fried noodles (AKA Pad Thai) with chicken, green curry with chicken, and sticky rice pudding (basically rice with coconut milk) with mangoes. Danae opted (for the complete opposite so we could sample everything) for spring rolls, stir-fried chicken with cashew nuts, and red curry with chicken. Below are pictures and captions of the stuff we made throughout our class.

Our Name tags with our names in Thai

Our Stoves. A lot of Thai kitchens are outside because of the smell of the food

Bunny showing us how to make our Curry Paste

Danae mashing the ingredients to make Red Curry Paste

Danae mashing the ingredients to make Green Curry Paste

Green and Red Curry Pastes - Mix it with fish sauce and oil to with chicken and veggies to make Soup that goes over rice

Plate on Left made Pad Thai and Right made Hot & Sour Prawn Soup

Danae's Ingredients to make Stir-Fried Chicken and Cashew

Me Making Pad Thai

Danae making Spring Rolls with Bunny

Spring Rolls

Sticky Rice and Mangoes

Finished Spring Rolls

Sticky Rice and Mangoes

Pad Thai and Hot and Sour Prawn Soup

Danae's finished Stir-Fried Chicken with Cashew Nuts

Finished Green Curry and Chicken

Finished Red Curry and Chicken

We also went to a Night Bazaar, which is basically a night market so we could buy junk: tee-shirts, knock-off Western clothing and CDs, etc. The best part was we had dinner for $7 dinner, which was two entrees, one appetizers, and a couple of drinks!