Day 22

Sawasdeeka! (greetings in Thailand)

Today we booked a full day Thai cooking class on an organic farm just outside Chiang Mai (lonely planet recommended) Our cooking teacher nicknamed 'Cookie' picked us up from our guesthouse and we loaded into the back of a songtheauw taxi (sort of like a closed bakkie) and picked up the rest of our class.

Our first stop was at a local market where she explained all the different types of ingredients that we were going to be using which was really interesting to learn! We then headed off to the farm where the setting was so peaceful with farm style kitchens. We walked around the farm where she showed us more ingredients and then started on our first dish.

We could each choose 6 different dishes, so I ended up cooking green thai curry and made the paste too, then it was chicken cashew nut, pad thai, chicken coconut soup and lastly my new favourite sticky rice with mango yum! Sven made the red curry and tom yam soup and springrolls and some other dishes.

After all our hard cooking we ate a massive thai feast and could barely move! what a fantastic cooking course, anyone going up to Chiang Mai should definately do this! after our course we loaded back into the songtheauw and got dropped back at the guesthouse.

After a power nap it was time to go and check out some Muay Thai boxing! so we headed down to the local arena where we were greeted by a very obvious lady boy at the entrance who skreetched 'sawadeeskaaaa' and Sven bolted by! haa haa

We sat near the ring and betted on a few fights only to lose them all (oh well it was only a few pounds loss) the first fight was amongst two 12 year old boys insane! then there were another 5 fights, the last one being an international fight against a French boxer. With Muay thai they have a whole dance sort of ritual in the beginning and a band playing some type of flute music while they box. They dont only box though they also kick each other and the poor frenchie got hurt and we lost our money on him :(

All the waitresses were lady boys and one brushed a bit too close to Sven at the bar for his liking, so funny!

Enjoying Chiang Mai, glad we made the long train ride up after all!