The course starts with a tour of the local market to sample and understand all the ingredients used in cooking Thai food:
3 types of basil, 4 types of chilli, 12 varieties of rice, 2 types of garlic - thank goodness they give you a cookbook.Then its onto the school itself. There are a number of prep tables where you work in small groups with the chef and half a dozen assistants who runn around doing all the grunt work, washing up , assembling ingredients etc. Finally there are a number of "wok stations" where we poor punters try hard not to massacre the food.
What I had naively overlooked was the fact that you eat everything that you cook! Therre were something like 6 courses, I thought I was going to burst. I could not have survived for 3 days at that pace! It was however a completely delicious experience. I made all of these from scratch:
vegetable spring rolls, classic Pad Thai, Green Curry, Jungle Curry, Banana Fritters etc etc
How do you top a day of gustatory overload? Well, how about shooting? I don't mean wimpy little .22 guns either, I mean the real thing. Chiang Mai has a public shooting range run by the Army on a local military base. I've always loved shooting, and never agreed with banning full bore guns in the UK - another knee jerk political decision that hurt a lot of businesess and sportsmen, so I can't resist a chance to shoot proper guns.
From an extensive cabinet of guns I chose the trusty Glock 19, hammerless 9mm, and favourite of police forces worldwide.
I'm delighted to report that I scored in the high 90 percentile, I'm just happy that I'm moving on soon as I could happily spend all day here and it would cost a fortune in ammunition! Ok 1 more day left in Chiang Mai then it's south to Phuket Island.Next: Off Road & Dangerous
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