Chiang Mai Cooking Class and Walking Tour - July 20

Today was our fourth day in Chiang Mai, but the first that we actually spent in the city itself.  We knew we wanted to take a cooking class in Thailand, and I had arranged for us to take a vegetarian class at May Kaidee’s cooking school.  Before hopping in a tuk-tuk to get to the class, we stopped by the (much nicer) hotel across the street from ours and enjoyed their breakfast buffet for 150 Thai Bhat each (less than $5), including a mini-mango sticky rice dish.

When we walked into the cooking class, we immediately knew we were in for a real treat.  The beautifully presented ingredients were laid out among six wok stations. The class was just the four of us and a young couple from Hong Kong – she had surprised him with a birthday trip to Thailand, a frequent spa destination for them.

Our teacher, Nim, got us started right away making a chili paste for Tom Yam soup, and then had half of us make Tom Yam soup (water-based) and the other half make Tom Kha soup (half water/half coconut milk).  Each dish took just minutes to make given that Nim and her family (her husband and sister helped with prep and dish washing as well) had done all the pre-chopping and, as necessary, pre-steaming of vegetables.  

Nim is from a village in northeast Thailand and while we had recipe books to follow she also gave us pens and we took notes on how she really cooked (which often differed from the recipes as written).  She was a delightful woman who really wanted our dishes to taste authentically Thai.  She tasted our cooking as we went along and knew just what was needed to adjust them slightly for the perfect taste.

We took our bowls of soup over to the restaurant side of their operation and knew then that our breakfast buffet had been a huge mistake-- we should have come to cooking class on an empty stomach. I think the food we prepared was some of the best tasting we’ve had since we’ve been here!  After the soup, we went back and made our own peanut sauce, followed by Pad Thai, and sat down to eat this delicious noodle dish. 

Then we went and made two curries – Massaman (yellow) and Green Thai Curry.  By that time, I could only take a couple bites of each.  After taking a short break, we made fresh spring rolls and she demonstrated how to make pumpkin hummus and green papaya salad, both of which need an extra-large mortar and pestle. Then we went back to the cooking side where Nim’s husband showed us the technique for making sticky rice for dessert.  We took the rice and cooked it down with coconut milk and a bit of sugar to get it to the right consistency for sticky rice.  He added banana, mango, and raw coconut.  Though we were totally full, we all managed to finish it—it was amazing!

I really can’t sing the praises of this cooking class highly enough.  We were there from 9 am to 1 pm and enjoyed every minute.  We’ve had such a great trip overall, but this was a true highlight.  We got to see raw ingredients (like Thai ginger and Kaffir lime leaves) that I’d never seen.  I have always felt so intimidated to go into Asian markets, but now that I know what I’m looking for, I’m excited to go home and explore what is available to us. 

After the class we walked across the street to a used bookstore which had one of the best, if not the best, selections of used books in English I have ever seen, in Asia or really anywhere.  I can’t imagine how they collected all of those titles. 

At that point, we needed to recover from our food coma and headed back to the guest house.  Jim had some down time while the girls went to a tea shop across the street to read and I went to the laundromat, made even more necessary by the rain and mud we’d been in over the past two days. For some reason I love a laundromat but am not a fan of doing laundry at home.

In the late afternoon we finally set out on a walking tour of the city to get a better sense of our surroundings before we leave tomorrow.  The first stop was the Wat Phra Sing, the first temple we have been in so far that was actively in use. We could hear the chanting from outside and when we entered saw about 100 monks seated in front of the Buddha and three dogs milling about.  The monks ranged in age, some as young as 10 or 11 it looked to me. After the chanting, an older monk sat facing the crowd and during his reading it was interesting to watch the young boys.  They weren’t quite as poorly behaved as a group of American school children would be, but weren’t as well behaved as I would expect young monks to be – they were fidgeting and casting glances at each other.    Sitting in our area were a few other tourists and also some locals worshiping.  It felt like our first glance at the role the temples actually play in the community.  And I thought the whole complex was one of the most beautiful to me – I loved the murals, painted doors and windows, and wood carvings. 

We continued our walking tour down the street of the Sunday Night Market which looked very different on a non-market day.  We had previously been unaware of the number of temples we were passing.  Stop number two on the tour was Wat Chedi Luang temple that was already closed for the night but we could enter the grounds.  There was a small building housing the city pillar that was open, but only to men.  Women are not allowed to enter because we menstruate and are thus unclean. Jim didn’t go in out of solidarity (and he doesn’t like taking off his shoes).  The old stupa there used to be tallest building in Chiang Mai.  The next stop on the tour was next door but it too was closed, so we abandoned the guide book tour and just kept walking down the street taking it all in.

carved out of a single piece of wood he found on the mountain

I have been wanting to pick up a piece of art from Thailand, and have been particularly drawn to the wood carvings we’ve seen. I came across a guy whose work I really liked at the Sunday Night Market but since then hadn’t seen anything that compared.   As we were walking down the street, Rachel noticed a man setting up shop and before he had anything out of his crates Rachel knew it was him!  I couldn’t believe my luck.  He said he hadn’t been back out selling since Sunday night and we just happened upon him. It seemed too fateful to pass up the opportunity. We selected a piece and asked him to hold it for us while we went to dinner.  Jim had done more research into where the noodle house Dean recommended was located and we took a tuk-tuk to where Google said it should be, but once again we were unable to find it. We gave the area a good search and ended up at a lovely restaurant right on the river, though the food was not as good as what we had prepared ourselves earlier in the day.  By the time we had finished dinner it had started to rain quite strongly and I was worried that my wood carver would pack up and leave but Jim was sure (and was right) that he would wait for us.