It is Songkran in Thailand – Thai New Year celebrations. This involves much water fighting in the streets and outside our Hotel there will be concerts and lots of celebrations. It will be great be in the middle of the festivities, but no, we won’t be buying water pistols!!!

 

Paul had booked us into the SilomCookingSchool for a 3 hour class. So we were up early to catch the Skytrain (station right next to out hotel). We had to go 3 stations and meet our cooking guide. The Skytrain staff were great helping us to purchase our tickets and making sure we were going in the right direction. Tickets were 20THB per person (less than $1). We hadn’t even seen Baht coins until now so they gave us change so we could but tickets from the machines.

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As usual we were very early so we had an hour to fill in before our guide would be at Chang Nonsi station to meet us. So we went exploring in a local market next to the station and  then walked through the food stalls along the road. We were amazed to see how many Thai people bought breakfast from these stalls. We have since learned that most homes don’t have kitchens and so most food is purchased, ready cooked from the street.

 

We just loved the ‘Milo’ stand which had the longest queue – it was just like arriving at Brian’s coffee shop near my work at a busy time. However, Brian doesn’t put my coffee cup in a plastic bag for me to carry away.

 

We returned to the meeting place to wait for Mai and met some other Aussie ‘cooking school’ students waiting. Two teachers from Melbourne and a young lady from Glebe who is thinking of moving to Newcastle – its such a small world.

 

We were waiting above the main road and were amazed by the waves of motor bikes heading into the city – it was now 8.30 am. Also saw motor bikes used as taxis, dropping young women near the station so they could catch the Skytrain. The other sight I loved was the mass of bright pink Corolla taxis – thousands of them!!!

 

It was extremely hot and humid as we waited so we were wondering how we would cope cooking over hot woks.

 

When our guide arrived we had a 10 minute walk to the fresh markets to purchase our ingredients. He showed us many different vegetables and herbs and allowed us to taste, smell etc. We all had a small cane basket and shared the load to carry our ingredients the 10 minute walk to SilomCookingSchool. We went down a laneway from the main road for 2 blocks into a house. This is not a place I would have ever ventured on my own as it was quite dirty and isolated.

However when we arrived the school was very well organised. There were 17 of us altogether and we worked in 2 groups.

 

As customary, shoes were left on the ground floor. The deal was you did not get your shoes back until you paid for the lessons. We found this unusual as we had already prepaid all out other tours before we left Australia.

 

We cooked Tom Yum soup, Green curry with chicken, pad thai, chicken salad with sticky rice and bananas in coconut milk – (we made our own coconut cream and milk).

 

This was a great experience we would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys cooking.

 

When we left we returned to the main road  and thought we would get a taxi back to our hotel rather than walking in the heat back to the Skytrain. Our cooking teacher warned us all to make sure the drivers put the meter on. We tried 2 taxis but both refused to use the meter so would not let us in their cabs. Then a TukTuk driver offered to take us for 20 BHT. I was very hesitant, but Paul was keen. When we got in the tuk tuk, he told us he would take us to a shopping centre where they would give him a fuel voucher. I immediately jumped out and Paul followed. We were just lucky he told us before we were in the traffic. These drivers also do nothing to support their tourist industry – just like the cab driver at Sydney airport ripping off the Canadian lady!!!

 

So it was back on foot and up the long flight of stairs to the Skyrail station. We bought our 20THB tickets and returned to Siam Square, had an afternoon nap and then went for another foot massage – Paul came this time as he knew what he had missed on Thursday night.