Chiang Mai is cool. The city centre has a huge moat around it keeping the hippies and backpackers circled in around a feast of restaurants and cheap hotels, we found a large on-suite room with cable tv, air-con and a fridge/freezer for a backpackers price.



I signed up for a day cookery course to learn the difficult art of Thai fairy cake decorating. Those wings can be so tricky. (joking) I picked the Baan Thai cookery school, because the menu was extensive and flexible enough so you could choose your own six dishes, out of 36, to make that day. I ticked the box's for;

Fried noodle Thai style (Phat Thai),
Hot and sour prawn soup (Tom-Yam-Kung),
Green curry paste (Nam-Phrik-Kaeng-Khiaw-Waan),
Thai green chicken curry (Kaeng-Phet-Kai),
Papaya Salad (Som-Tam) &
Deep fried bananas (Kluay-Thord).

My class of four went out in the morning with our chef, his name was 'r', and walked to a local market for some fresh ingredients and a brief explanation of the vegetables and the bags of brown lumpy stuff. Back to the school and its straight on with slicing, dicing, pummeling and listening to our instructor who demonstrated us through the ingredient preparation process. Most Thai dishes are like this, most of the time is spent in prep, cooking time is always quick and frantic.

We were in the middle of doing some prep for the hot and sour prawn soup and had started slicing some ginger up. An Ozzie guy speaks up and says can he leave out the ginger because he doesn't like it. The instructor, a fiery young Thai girl, stops chopping but continues to look down. There is an un-naturally long pause while we all wait with baited breath for her to speak. After about 7 seconds of freeze-framed action, she looks up and across at him and coldly says, "No ginger - no Tom Yam". It was such a well-timed Icey response, I couldn't stop from smiling for the next hour. The Ozzie started cutting his ginger and I watched the instructor look down again and a tiny smile broke out over her face.

After each dish we all sit down to eat and compare spicy-ness. All of the food was fantastic and we were given a recipe book with all 36 of the dishes included so we can try them out on you when we get home.



The last thing we did in Chiang Mai was to buy a road map of the surrounding area and hire a motorbike for the day. I had heard about a 100km loop out into the local hills, past some waterfalls and elephant parks. We hired a brand new Honda scooter and set off to navigate our way out of the city's complex one-way system and busy traffic and into the hills. I can count the number of hours I have spent on a motorbike on the fingers of one hand so it was with much trepidation we sat on the bike and stared at four, later six lanes, of fast moving traffic. Thank god they drive on the left is all I thought as I shut my eyes and pulled out into the busy traffic. The traffic lights turn from green straight to red, so we managed to successfully jump five sets of red lights. The worst mis-demeanor was to turn the wrong way at t-junction and I ended up facing three lanes of oncoming traffic. Kat was laughing behind me , as we pulled onto the hard shoulder to turn around. Fortunately the road was empty.

Once we were out of the city, and into the hills the roads were practically empty and we slowed our speed down to cruise along at 30kmh and enjoyed the views. The next day we leave to cross the border into Laos PDR, the Peoples Democratic Republic, a communist country.

Cooper out

Love Dan & Kat