Thailand Tour: Cooking School and Muay Thai

Day 6: May 2, 2008 In and around Chiang Mai

(These are snake fruit. They have the strangest texture and flavour. I haven't decided if I like them or not.)

This was a day of optional activities and Elspeth and I chose cooking school for our first one. Everyone one else went bamboo rafting, which didn't really interest us (I'm not a river swimming type of gal). After meeting our guide we picked up people from other hotels and then made our way to our first stop - the market, where we went shopping for the ingredients for our dishes. We got to taste a variety of fruit and Elz and I impressed everyone with our knowledge of Thai fruit (the other tour members were British and appeared to have never heard of any of the fruit).

(If I remember correctly, these are longans. They had a slight lemony-lychee flavour)

(Elspeth with our market basket)

(Gorgeous, gorgeous mangosteens. These things rock. We ate so many of them during our trip. I love their shape, colour and taste. They are sweet but also have the right amount of tartness.)

(We bought coconut and brought it to this man's stall, where he pressed it to extract the coconut milk. The smell was heavenly.)

(Above - a scene from Elspeth's nightmares...)

We finished our shopping (including a stop at the sketchy fish/meat section) and got back into the van. We drove and drove until I was sure we had left Chiang Mai. We finally turned down a lane and then another lane...until we emerged into a jungle-y area.
The facilities were awesome. The kitchen was huge with rows of counters with wok stations. The roof was vaulted and a breeze blew through the open ends of the room. We were outfitted with aprons, chef's hats and towels and assigned spots in the prep area.

We made four dishes - pad thai, spicy soup, green curry and sticky rice with mango. I liked everything except the soup (just not loving the corriander/lime leaf flavour). I was most impressed with the pad thai. It was somehow ridiculously easy! We only used the one wok and it was done in about 6 minutes!

(Sorry, I'm currently too lazy to turn the above picture...My pad thai was delicious though)

(A giant jackfruit - This fruit has a meaty texture and is slightly perfume-y. Not my favourite but interesting...)

(I took this picture because I've never seen a pineapple plant before!)

By the time we got to the sticky rice with mango I was almost too full to eat it. But somehow, there is always room for the candy-sweet mangoes in Thailand. You only need a little bit of the rice because it is so sweet (that deadly combination of cane sugar and coconut milk!).

(Here I am, hot and sweaty after our cooking lesson)

After we finished cooking, we travelled back to the city and were dropped off at our hotel. It was really hot out by that time so I took a shower, watched James Bond on TV and had a nap. At 8PM we met our other tour members and headed our for a night of Muay Thai (traditional Thai boxing).

The first thing you notice when you enter the arena is the overwhelming smell of blue trident gum. Apparently, they put wintergreen or whatever that is, into the water that they pour over the fighters to loosen their muscles (?). We were told to go up some chairs, where we found a comfy leather couch. We were excited about that...until we found out it was a mistake and the couch was for military members, not us. So, we didn't have a leather couch to sit on but we did have good seats and could see everything.

Most of the audience were foreigners, which was strange (I hadn't seen that many foreigners in one place in a long time). They started with the lightest category and the boys looked about 12. Before they started fighting, each fighter did a kind of ceremonial dance/warm-up/prayer in the ring. I don't know anything about boxing but muay Thai seemed more focused on kicking/punching certain body areas and not punching your opponent in the face (thank goodness).

The last match we watched included a foreigner. Right away you could tell he had a different style. It was more North American boxing-like and he tried to punch his opponent's face a lot. Close to the end of the match, they had to stop it so that the medic could wipe up the Thai fighter's bloody face. 

The whole tour group wanted the Thai fighter to win, but the foreigner ended up the winner. The crowd went a bit crazy and he was so proud of himself that he did a ridiculous dance around and even kicked his mouth guard into the crowd (eeeww... gross!). Here's some video of the fight and the stupid foreigner.