Cooking (Lots of pictures)

One month later... Not all the pics are here, but I'm posting it anyway.

So I've gone on and on about the food. ... The food that WE made.

Wow, was it ever good.

The school picked us up at the hotel. There were already two riders and we went on to pick up a few more. One of my favorite parts of travelling is meeting people and finding out thier stories. There were lots of them. Unfortunately for them, this blog is not about them...

It started with a trip to the market. This was really cool. There were obviously a lot of other schools there, but it was also obviously where the locals shop.

Once we got to the school, we took off our shoes and sat down at low tables and got a few introductions and instructions. We were told to put our names on name tags, but not take them off. When we got our name tags back, the teacher had written our names in Thai. That was pretty cool. A fellow student, Jay found out his name means "vegetarian" in Thai.

We were divided into groups, according to what we had already said we'd like to make. We went to tables where all the materials were laid out for us. All ingredients perfectly measured, all the right utencils. It was great.

First up, Pad Thai:

Then I think we made spring rolls. We made them, but didn't eat them yet.

Then to the soup. One of my fav's.

We were allowed to eat the soup and spring rolls together.

My favorite was the green curry. First we made paste and then the curry.

I still dream about it.

Finally we got to stir FRY some chicken and cashews. Not my favorite, but fun to make.

Come and gone

I'll still have tons to write and pictures to show, but in the mean time....

Left with: 3 pairs of shoes
Came back with: 7 (well, 6 and a pair of slippers from mom)

Left with: about 5 shirts
Came back with: about 9

Left with: one disk for my camera, almost totally empty
came back with: 2 almost completely full ones

Left with: 2 suitcases (1 each)
Came back with: 4 suitcases (2 each)

Left with: no visible tan lines
came back with: a slight one on my feet from my flip-flops

Left: having never made some amazing Thai food
came back: knowing how to make some amazing food, with a certificate to proove it

Left: not having touched many "wild" animals--or have them crawl, slither or hop on me
came back: 3 snakes, two different times; birds; elephants; monkeys

I won't even go into the foods, souvineers and memories....

I've travelled enough....

...to know that there are always delays, always changes. I'm just surprised it hasn't been until now that we've had our first one.

We'll be going to Tokyo instead of Hong Kong for the first leg. Oh, well.... We know that one; we were there a few hours 2 weeks ago.

It was hard leaving this morning.

And, yes, I did cry as the cab pulled away.

Can't wait to write more.

bird pic

Oh, and did you see (Grandma and Jan!), that I finally got the picture of me and Ryan with the birds all over us?

It's a few blogs down from here.

World Cup Fever

World Cup Fever is wild here. Maybe not as much as in Europe or South America, but it's pretty big.

The Chaing Mai (Thailand) market is lined with stall after stall of goods to sell. Once the Cup started, people would bring out TVs and huddle around them. (When the Cup wasn't on, they were all paying rapt attention to the King.) Right in the street there'd be TVs on. One gentleman was excited to tell us that "The Americans" were on TV at that moment. We were ashamed to admit we knew....that they were getting their butts kicked.

Last night Argentina and some other team played. We couldn't see the TV, but could just about figure out the score based on the yelling we could hear from the next bar over.

It's funny to me how different the Americans are. Most of them, on a whole, are not that into the World Cup. Yes, yes, I know the NBA finals are on now.
And the metric system. The rest of the world is on the metric system. Why aren't we? Then at least I could understand better when someone tells me they weigh 85 kilos or something is 12 kilometeres away or to cut a piece of fabric at 2 meters.

But that's another thing.

Right now I love watching people watch the World Cup. Overall, people in the same area seem to be rooting for the same team. At a bar watching the NBA finals, half could be for the Mavs, half for Shaq. But from what I've seen here, it's like they all rally around the same country. I think that's cool.

I've enjoyed watching a few bits of games here and there. You're right, I haven't sit and watched an entire game, nor do I have the desire to--there's too much else to see and do in my last days here.

Merely an observation.

Sad...

It's 11:30 a.m. Saturday. That means we leave tomorrow. It hardly seems real that we leave tomorrow. Our plane leaves--LEAVES at 6-something in the morning, so that means we'll be going to the airport all alone. Terrible, I know. (I guess Jan and Glen had to do the same).

It seems like I've been gone much longer than a week. Everyday has been wonderfully jam-packed full of new and exciting and different activities and food.

I didn't get the chance (desire?) to blog as much as I had anticipated. I imagine I'll have to blog some once I get home, almost to process it all.

I'd love to tell you more about the people, the food, the things...

Things I've never done before....

Things I had never done until I went to Thailand:

Made green curry paste.
Made green curry.
Made Pad Thai.
Made spring rolls.
Made Tom Kha soup.
Ridden an elephant.
Kissed a python.
Ridden in a tuk-tuk.

And for those who keep asking, here is a picture of me and Ryan on the tuk-tuk.

Spoken any form of Thai, besides food dishes. (I now know a few phrases.)
Drank Beer Chang.
Seen silk worms actually making silk.
Had a 30 minute foot massage in a market place.
Had a 1 hour foot massage in a private room and practically fall asleep.
Eaten dragon fruit.
Eaten mangosteen.
Bargained over the equivalent of about $ .02 USD.

I'm sure I'll have to add more to the list as I remember more....

Pedicures

Disclaimer: Some of these pictures may not be suitable for the squeamish.

Mom's and my toes before our pedicures:

And after:


We were glad to have them done before we went to Thailand becuase we often wore flip-flops and even had to take our shoes off several times.

Birds, snakes and aero-planes

It was like once I started, I had to keep going...

It started with a face off with an owl at the Night Safari:

Then it was the snakes. Two of them:


Then it was the birds at the Jurong Bird Park:


I then moved onto elephants:



Followed by a monkey. It's dark, but it was on my lap:




Finally I ended with a Burmese python:

SOO much to say

You know that Dave Matthews song, "So much to say, so much to say...." yeah, that's me.

We leave tomorrow afternoon.

Ate like a PIG today at the Thai cooking school. It was fabulous. Made all my favs. So good.

Of course lots of pictures and lots of stories.

If I weren't about to go spend a bunch of baht, I'd tell you the menu, but Ryan just said to me, "I thought we weren't blogging..." I couldn't resist. Had to say hi.

Thanks for the comments, all.

More to come soon.

Oh, and Ryan does exist...

To the "anonymous" reader who said that some f0lks in the family wanted to see pictures of Ryan, I have some. I have tons of pictures to share. Just can't put them up while here at the open-windowed internet cafe, with all the motos and tuk-tuks driving by.

Soon, though.

We're back in Singapore Tuesday night--late.

It's 22:31 here....

And we're in Chaing Mai. It's great here. Neither of the men brought his laptop (I'm okay with that), so Ryan and I are at an Internet cafe down the alley from our hotel. The folks went to bed, we came out to play. I was thinking it, but Ryan asked, "do you want to go in there?" motioning the internet place.

Mainly I wanted to let all my loyal readers know that I am in fact still alive--and loving Thailand.

We got here yesterday and made our way to our hotel. Yours truly had a few problems with the ATM, but thanks to mom's cell phone and probably a hefty call charge, hopefully I'll be able to get some baht out of the machine tonight. Guess my card was flagged because I withdrew some money in Singapore. I'm okay with them noting odd behvior, though.

Last night we had food. I'm sure it's just "food" here, since we're already in Thailand. They wouldn't go out and have "Thai food." It was good stuff, of course. Did you know they don't use chopsticks in Thailand? That surprised me to hear it and kinda makes me laugh now....you know we go to those Thai places and think we're cool cuz we're using chopsticks. Really we're just crazy Americans....

We did some shopping at the Night Bazaar last night. Talk about cheap stuff. And good stuff. And neat stuff. People all over the place.

As the pattern has been going, I woke up early this morning--close to 7:00 and didn't sleep much between then and 8-something or other when I got up.

Mom and Greg took us to a travel agent type of place--the same place they went to when they were here in November and our guides Durian and Nyun were very wonderful. A cute husband and wife team. Durian started us out and took us to a beautiful silk-making place. Next to it was a jade place.

The people here are so nice. So friendly.

After a few more shops and driving around, we went back for naps. It's suggested to take breaks during the day because of the heat. I'm okay with naps.

Dinner was quite an experience. Maybe a whole other blog in and of itself. I'll just say I danced on stage. Unfortunately, there were camera problems and it wasn't photographed, but it did happen.

Anyway....mainly a random, blathering blog to say hi and let you know I still love it over here. Thailand is great.