Cookery School – Day Two

Moved outside of the city today to carry on the course.  The school as a second site adjacent to the house of Sompon the owner.  Much nicer than being in the middle of the city!  Bigger and better facilities, the pace seemed a bit more relaxed and just to make the American girls day (and mine too I must admit) there were 4 stupidly cute puppies just willing you to play with them!

First was an introduction to Thai ingredients which was a bit of a bore to be honest, passing round bowls of rice and smelling fish sauce etc, but for people who know nothing about Thai food I would imagine it is excellent.  It was all done by a very funny Thai girl however so her constant jokes meant I managed to stay awake for the duration.

The first dish of the day was that most Thai of soups, Tom Yam Goong or Hot and Sour Soup with Prawns to you non thai speakers.  Sompon himself (owner, tv chef) led the demonstration in a thankfully air-conditioned room.  We all piled in after he had finished to see if his cooking matched his extremely impressive knife work, you will be glad to know that it did.  Bloody hot though, he had put seven birds-eye chillies in a soup made for one!  My attempt was pretty successful I must say, only used 4 chillies seeing as all I had had eaten so far today was a cup of coffee and a sweet basil leaf.  Definitely one to do at home:

Second up was Thai Fish cakes, again demonstrated by Sompon, who was loosening up a bit now.  Very easy to make apart from the actual cake making part.  We had to do it one handed and then slide the patty into the frying pan….it’s a bit hard to make something round and flat when the oil is spitting up at you!  Anyway they don’t look that great but they tasted fantastic.  I didn’t make the sauce and kind of spilled it over the plate a bit, apologies.

Third dish of the day was Green Chicken Curry.  The paste had already been made so it was basically a case of chopping up a load of ingredients, cooking them in coconut cream and serving it up.  Mine tasted ok, not as good as Sarah’s (that is a damn good curry I must say love) and thanks to the very dark paste we used looks kind of grey in the pictures!  When they cook curries out here, at least in decent places, they apparently use brass woks as the more even heat allows the curry to keep its color better.  Considering how much a brass saucepan is I don’t think I will be buying one any time soon!

For the last dish of the morning we did that backpacker favourite (mainly because it costs about 60p or less off the street) Phad Thai.  Basically fried noodles with peanuts and whatever else you want in there to bulk it up.  Not much explanation here and they tasted bloody good, better than the green curry actually.  The addition of sugar balanced the flavours out nicely.

The afternoon was taken up with a Minced Chicken and Mint Salad and a desert of water chestnuts with sugar syrup and coconut milk.  The salad was pretty tasty actually, if you put a lot more mint in there and boosted the flavours it would would be much better.  A big bowl of this stuff as a sport on tv snack would be great, make a change from sarnies anyhow!  The water chestnuts were really refreshing, really easy to do and the food colouring added to them looks awesome.

So I have one more day tomorrow and then I’m done, I might extend it to do the two final courses but I’m not sure yet, will see how I feel on the day.  And finally for the picture you all wanted to see from the beginning one of the puppies and Sompon chopping away at a cucumber.  More later!

Cooking Course in Chiang Mai + A Few Photos

So today was the first day of a three day cookery course I am doing in Chiang Mai, pretty cool I have to say.  Not having cooked a single thing for myself over the last 6 months my knife skills and gernal cooking ability was a bit bruised and battered but I got back into the swing of things fairly quickly.  Over 6 hours you cook 6 different dishes, eating each one after you have cooked it (missing out on breakfast was not a problem).

The day started with a lesson in vegetable topiary, as in those pretty little roses you see made out of tomatos are leaves made out of carrots.  The roses are actually pretty easy, a bit like trying to peel an apple without breaking the peel.  We then made a lotus leaf, again from a tomato which looked pretty cool.  I did fail first time on the carrot leaf though…..it looked like something that had been gentically modified to assume an appearence that was anything but leaf like.  My second attempt was a bit more respectable but still a bloody fiddily process.  They all made good decoration for my plate of spring rolls though.

First dish we did was a minced pork and glass noodle soup, very nice and suprisingly easy to make, only took 10 minutes of cooking once the ingrediants and been prepared.  After that was the spring rolls, seems the ‘pastry’ of spring rolls is very different to anything else but I guess the nearest thing in the UK would be a slightly thicker filo pastry, actually much thicker.  They came out pretty good and looked great next to my tomato rose/lotus flower: (sorry about the quality I forgot to change the setting on the camera):

 After that was my favourite dish of the day, a royal roasted duck red curry.  Rather than just the usual kaffir lime leavels, basil and eggplants (they have about 8 types over here) you had fruit in as well, grapes, pinapple and a couple of other bits.  Tasted fantastic after we had made it, presentation wasn’t quite up to scratch but who cares really?

The rest of the afternoon was taking up making a chicken and ginger stir fry, chicken in pandanas leaves and sweet sticky rice with mango.  Personally I though my chicken and ginger stir fry recipe was better but I will admit that theirs looked a lot nicer!

Can’t remember what I am cooking tomorrow but I am heading out to the guys house in the countryside rather than the restaurant kitchen in the city so that should be interesting.  Chiang Mai itself is nice, very calm and peaceful compared to the chaos of Bangkok but there is still plenty of nightlife knocking around and things to see.  Despite being much smaller than the capital, Chiang Mai has almost the same number of temples (300), went to a couple yesterday which you can see at the bottom of the page.  Will probably go out to do some trekking after I finish the cookery course but it is so damn humid up here at the moment, the threat of rain hangs over you from the moment you wake up until you step back into bed. 

Might go to see the Muay Thai boxing tonight but it is bit of a trek from where I am, from anywhere actually.  I have taken up walking everywhere again which is nice.  After being in Bangkok and Kao Tao where I either didn’t move around a lot or took tuk tuks it is nice to be using my legs again.   Have to do something to counter the effects of all the food I’m eating at the moment! 

So the photos below are of the Ko San Road at night in Bangkok, a very funny headline in the Bangkok Post newspaper, the beach in Koh Tao and one of the caberet act.  There are a couple more up on flickr but not many, haven’t taken many interesting pictures recently but I shall get back into the swing of things!

     

   

See you all next time!

xx

An (apparently) long waited for update

Sorry about the lack of posting for the last week or two, I was struggling to find much to say seeing as most of my days have been filled with diving, lying on a beach and eating! Not a lot of grade A material for an interesting blog post! But I will relate the missing time in as interesting a way as I can….

So Koh Tao was great, everything came together pretty well. In general I was diving every other day as quite a few of the days were fairly crap as regards to the weather. The dives were mostly great, a day trip out to Sail Rock which is essentially a big rock pinnacle sticking out of the water was cool, the best part about the site is that it has a ‘chimney’, essentially a long vertical swim through from around 4m down to 18m wide enough for 2 divers to go down side by side – lots of cool stuff to see. The visibility wasn’t great on the day we were there but I sorted out my deep dive qualification on the first dive (30m) but unfortunately had a pressure build up in my sinuses on the second dive and had to come up after 10 minutes, I had only got down to 8m but the squeeze was not nice. There are only really 3 other dives worth describing in a bit more detail. The first of these was at Chumpon down at 30m, we sat on the floor and hung around for 2 minutes before about 6 sharks (oceanic black tips mostly, although there was one decent sized bull shark) came out of the murky water and started pottering around, very cool. Had to shallow up quite quickly due to being so deep for a relatively long period of time – my dive watch gave me 3 minutes until it went into deco as we were leaving. Second dive worth speaking about was the first night dive, first one I have done actually and a pretty good way to start I must say. It literally is pitch black down there apart from the torches which are pretty crappy. Trying to judge your depth and keep level without the aid of a computer or looking at console is actually pretty hard….I just followed the DM. But we did see a big Hawksbill turtle, hunting barracuda (one got a kill right in front of us….awesome sight) various nocturnal fish and if you turned the lights of and stirred up the plankton then they began to glow which was cool. Balance that dive with the second night dive the day after, we were all hanging on the line as somebody had problems with their ears. There were also 4 people who just finished their open water and were doing the first part of their advanced cause so they were a bit nervy. All of a sudden a guy drops down through us head first, cracks me on the head with his tank and turns around as if to say ‘what you doing here?’ tosser. About 12 people then dropped down causing absolute fucking chaos, no one had any idea who was who and where they were meant to be going. Only having one dive master for the advanced group plus me and a couple of other people wasn’t great but it was the actions and attitude of the divers from one of the other schools that was a complete joke. Ruined the rest of the dive to be honest. But there you go, take the rough with the smooth and all that, it won’t always be brilliant. The diving around Ko Tao is not as good as the other side of Thailand but the weather and conditions are better at this time of year, was a really nice place to chill out for a couple of weeks as well.

The island was quite busy when I arrived but then quietened down dramatically as at least 3/4 of the people went over to Koh Phannagn for the full moon party, those 3-4 days were the best ones I had on the island. There weren’t so many motorbikes needlessly crowding the roads (seeing as most places are a 15 min walk at most), the dive sites were much quieter and the place seemed to have a better atmosphere. Contrast that to about 2 days after the full moon when the place was mobbed with people coming over from the party and the place almost turned into another version of the Koh San Road – pretty much everyone I had been spending my time with now decided it was time to leave Koh Tao.  Must be me getting old but why is it so difficult for people to put on a top or even a vest when they are in a bar?  As I have mentioned numerous time….people get some respect for the local culture!  Oh and while I am at it, driving an ATV (quad bike) on paved roads when you could walk in about 2 minutes does not make you look cool….in fact it makes you look like a cock.

The night before I was due to catch the boat/bus combination up to Bangkok turned into a rather big night. Originally we were going to the Muay Thai boxing but they wanted a stupid amount of money to get in so we went to the free ladyboy show instead, much more fun! A few slightly strange sights but the guy who did Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” whilst changing from a woman into a man, scrubbing off make up, changing clothes etc was quality.   One of the guys in our group got dragged off back stage and came pack with lip marks all over his nipples, I got away with someone (he, she, mixture??) telling me they loved my eyes. Think we left there about 11-12 and then I stumbled home at something like 4.30am. I woke up the next morning an hour after the boat had left which also meant I would miss my flight to Chiang Mai from Bangkok that I booked. Stupid Thai Air Asia don’t allow you to make any changes within 48 hours (what?!) so I had to write that off.  Lesson of the day kids is don’t drink buckets of Sangsom the night before having to catch a 10am boat.  I did manage to complete my advanced diving course though after nearly a year so am now qualified to 30m depth and at least round here that’s where the cool stuff is.

The journey back to bangkok was alright, bloody glad I missed the boat the day before actually.  Catamarans may be fast but they don’t half bob up and down with the swell, there were lots of  extremely sick looking people knocking around!  8 hour bus journey after that which was ok, nice bus, tv etc.  I also updated my iPod with a couple of movies before I left Koh Tao.  If you get the chance to see it then go and see ‘Lars and the Real Girl’ absolutely bloody brilliant film.  Essentially it is about a lonely guy who can’t talk to women who buys a true to life sex doll off the internet but has a delusion that she is real.  He does not use the doll for her intended purpose (doesn’t even kiss her until the end) but instead treats her as a real person essentially using her to learn how to speak to girls and get over his insecurities.  The scene just before and just after the dolls funeral are some of the most moving bits of film I have seen in ages.

So I am back in Bangkok and have re-booked my flight to Chiang Mai for tomorrow afternoon.  Will sort out a cookery course for a few days, maybe do some trekking and then see where I go after that.  Looking into going into Burma for a 5 day tour.  It is a bit contrived and you don’t get anywhere near the main parts of the country and it is meant to be ‘like Thailand but different’, would be interesting though I think.  Still thinking about going down into Laos or maybe I’ll just get off the track around Northern Thailand, we shall see!

In terms of photos there isn’t that much to put up.  I didn’t hire an underwater camera whilst diving as it was about 20 quid a day and the visibility wasn’t too hot sometimes.  The rest from Koh Tao are mostly of the beach and I haven’t got many in Bangkok yet.  I’ll take a look later and think about putting something up to give you an idea.

Will probably go and check out Patpong’s night market later on or I might just skip out on that and go see Kung Fu Panda at the cinema….

xx

Diving in Koh Tao

Evening all,

Caught a flight from Bangkok last Tuesday down to Koh Samui, very strange airport much more like a boutique hotel than somewhere that has a dozen flights land a day. A couple of hours on a boat and I docked in Koh Tao. Dive resort is pretty good, no beach bungalows which sucks but room is good enough and there is a nice beach bar which is a decent enough place to watch the sunset. Unfortunately I apparently bought the shit weather with me, day I landed everything clouded over and the sun has hardly been out since. Not much rain but the wind is playing havoc with the sea, coming back from the afternoon dives has been made more interesting by trying to avoid the heavy wooden table that has a habit of sliding around the deck trying its best to break someones leg!

Haven’t dived the last two days. Didn’t get to bed until 4am this morning so the idea of getting on a boat this afternoon with the swell as it is did not appeal to my already queasy stomach. Have a 7am start in the morning so having quiet night reading on the beach, not a bad alternative. The diving so far has been so-so. One site had some great swim throughs and caves to explore, the shafts of light coming down through the gaps in the rock were cool. Tomorrow should be better, going to the other side of the island out and into the sea a bit, more life out there apparently – some black tip sharks and other larger reef life.

Sorted out my last couple of dives to get my advanced certification and rewarded myself with a new scuba mask, was going to get some fins as well but they were pretty pricey for anything more than your standard rental models so will hold off on that for now. Also have a night dive course booked, something I meant to do in Malaysia but never got round to.

Not really a lot to say as you can tell from the rather labored and boring message above but once the weather clears I shall stick up another post with some pictures and what not.

A Shock in Bangkok (wow…that’s lazy even for me)

So I arrived a ciuple of days ago as I said before.  Still haven’t done an awful lot but thought I would make a couple of observations:

• Coming from India it is a bit of a shock walking down the Khao San Road to realise that there are such things as female legs and god forbid even breasts.
• The number of english people is astonishing.  Of course I knew the area was a backpacker havan but I didn’t expect anything on this scale.  It almost seems like a everyone from Loughborough decided to move to Thailand for a couple of days.
• Coming out of the India ‘bubble’ isn’t very easy, especially when you are thrust straight back into the real, or rather neon enchanced world of the Khao San Road.  Coming to terms with pissed people drinking on the streets, hordes of scantily clad Thai women tempting you into bars, fast food signs on every corner and the pumping sound track of the Khao San Road tends to get to your head a bit.
• At times the area, I imagine seeing as I have never been there, is a bit like Malaga.  First afternoon I got here there was a rather overweight cockney guy covered in tattoos off his face (3pm) dancing around, shouting and generally making everyone wish that he would be taken away somewhere.  Alas that didn’t happen and for whatever reason he decided to take someones glasses off their head and stamp on them on what I imagine was a display of primeval superiority……when I went back 4 hours later his head was slumped on a table asleep.
• It’s so clean!  Even the backpacker ghetto is fairly spic and span, compared to India this place is almost like an operating theatre.
• No car horns!  That is one thing that I am not sad to see the back of in India.  You can go down the street without fear of popping your eardrum as some stupidly loud car horn decides to let loose for no reason just as he drives by you.

Now all of the above taken into account, I still quite like the place.  I think a lot of what I am ‘seeing’ is a result of being in a very busy but relatively quiet and certainly sober country for the past couple of months.  Publuic drunkeness for the most part is a non entitiy in India, suddenly seeing it in all its’ glory came as a bit of a shock.

Still I will obviously persavere and am sure that most of what I am seeing is exaggerated in my head.  From what I have seen of Bangkok it is a great city…although I can’t find a waterproof case for my camera for love nor money…and I look forward to seeing more of it.

Will probably go diving for a couple of weeks in a few days before heading up north.  Not sure but will see what the next 2 or 3 days bring.

Peace and Love to you all

xx

Bye Bye India

Another post and a new country to go with it.  I left Dharmsala a few days ago and had a lovely 12 hour bus journey through the night that I didn’t sleep a wink on thanks to a combination of no legroom and a chubby monk next to me who for some reason thought that because I made polite conversation with him at the beginning that he could proceed to sleep on me for most of the journey.  He was a monk, what was I supposed to do?  The bus left at 7.30pm and by 8pm they had turned all the lights off, there went my plan to read Ranulph Feinds biography of Captain Scott (the Arctic explorer).  Instead I listened to my iPod for 12 hours and stared at the patterned seat cover in front of me, what a laugh.

I had one night and a couple of days to kill in Delhi before my flight to Bangkok, same old same old really.  I did get pissed off when on my last day I got ripped off by a rickshaw driver who nicked 100rps of my change.  Ah well, win some and you lose some, serves me right for not checking it I suppose.  I knew there was something strange about a rickshaw driver who could change a 500rps note!

I’m going to miss India.  As I walked through Paharganj at 6.30am when everyone was just waking up and the mess from the day before had yet to be burned at the side of the road I felt a strange affection for the place.  India has been wonderful, the people are generally some of the most honest and trustworthy people I have come across.  They are invariably hospitable and if you start to talk to them hours can pass while you talk about everything from the local crime rate to how much money you earn in the UK (they love that one).  Whilst the incessant questions can get annoying, some of the best times I have had have been talking to random people in a restaurant or sitting around in a park.  Once you know how to get by without being hassled every 5 minutes and bed yourself in there really is no problem in getting around and doing your thing.  The sheer size of the country means that there is so much diversity in the kinds of places you can visit, there really is somewhere for every mood you could find yourself in.  The heat at this time of year makes it bloody hard work getting around and seeing things but that is soon sorted out when you go up to the hills of Sikkim or Himachal Pradesh, those weary of ‘India’ can find themselves in what seems to be a different country sometimes when you are in Gorka populated West Bengal or the foothills surrounding Darjeeling.

In short there are countless places that I didn’t see and I’m damn sure that I will be back to see some of them at a point in the not too distant future.  Part of me wondered why I was leaving when I still had a month left on my visa.  Getting itchy feet is a funny feeling, I can’t quite explain it I just knew that I wanted a bit of a change of scenery, a bigger change than simply going up into the mountains could provide.

So I find myself in Bangkok.  Grabbed a decent guesthouse not far from the infamous Koh San Road, close enough to be in the backpacker grapevine and just far enough for a bit of peace and quiet.  Coming out of the airport was a revelation, as was the drive into the city.  In just over an hour I did not hear one car horn!  After India when the tings were going 24/7 every second it felt like I had put ear plugs in!  The driving was fairly moderated, everyone kept a fair distance apart and even obeyed the traffic lights, amazing what people can do when they put their mind to it!  I haven’t ventured too far yet, in fact I haven’t ventured anywhere.  I was too engrossed by the word ‘bacon’ on the menu for breakfast!

Not too sure what my plan is at the moment, I think I will end up going north towards Chiang Mai for a couple of weeks before going across the border into Laos.  Guess I will travel south for a bit and then either cross into Cambodia or come back to Thailand and set up shop on Ko Tao for a week or twos worth of diving.  I will let you know in more detail when I figure it out!

Missing you all

xxx