This was on a trip round Indochina – with a group, and the month was fantastic:

We got to The Thai Park Hotel at 11.25am (where we were given individual rooms and it was all sort of posh). Then I had a shower and washed my hair, relaxed on the bed for ½ an hour after drying it; and came out at the same time as N, M and D, and we went downstairs, then a Chinese woman (whose name sounded like Puiey) appeared, collected our money, said (when asked by someone) that the cookery school was outside the city and a 25 minute drive, that we’d go to the local market and get the ingredients, and then go and make 5 courses (I could remember her saying was padtai – and everyone else said they loved it, so I thought I’d just wait and see what it was). We got in what was a trailer with a roof and benches on either side, people were talking about weird things they’d eaten (1 of them had eaten kangaroo), it started raining at 4.20pm, and we got to this supermarket at 4.25pm.

There were rows of stalls and Puiey picked up various things to show us – such as Thai coriander, durian, and rambuthan; at 4.37pm a man got out a microphone and started singing; in the meat section there was a red version of black pudding made from chicken blood, and above most stalls were metal prongs with backs on the ends twirling round (which are to swat away the flies); and we all got back in the van at 4.45pm and were each given a piece of (really really hot – but reasonably tasty) deep fried banana.

J had several lumps of yellow tofu in her basket, I had pig ear mushrooms in mine, someone had sticky rice, and there were lots of herbs; and then we came back again, we’re all given aprons and chefs hats, I persuaded Anik, the guide for our trip round Indo China, (who didn’t really want to wear 1) to put 1 on, and I photographed him, he insisted on photographing me. Everyone had a drink, hands were washed at 5.10pm, and Puiey told us we would be making pati first – and showed us the rice noodles, dried baby shrimp, dried white radish, Chinese garlic, brown sugar, tamoline, and several other things I forgot because we began chopping garlic, today, bean sprouts, and something else I forgot because I noticed Anik had got my camera and was trying to take a photo of me with it but didn’t know how to use it (I said – humorously – ‘Anik, are you sneakily taking photos of me?!’) (and I got it back). Then soy sauce and oyster sauce were added, and sugar, white radish, dried shrimps, and tamarin juice, and then we mixed it all up, I added a bit of water to mine and got rather sticky, we all plated up and sat down to eat it – with chopsticks – at 5.40pm. I had the chopsticks positioned correctly in my hand by Puiey, and I managed half the plate, but my little finger was hurting by that point so I gave up and used a fork. Puiey showed us galangal and a kaffir lime, and then we went back to the chopping boards to make spring rolls, and were shown how to cut (among other things) baby sweetcorn and jelly mushrooms (also called pig ear mushrooms). The cooking of all of these began shortly after 6pm, some of which I filmed; we all started peeling apart a small square of spring roll paper, put the filling in, rolled it up (in the specific way we’d been told to), and started the next recipe. That was yellow curry – and the people doing the meat version put chopped chicken with fish sauce (followed by brown sugar) in a bowl, and for green curry – we were given (after we found the 1 already in front of us was all brown and gooey inside) a small green aubergine, and chopped it up. Before cooking anything, some coconut milk, a leaf of ‘pandanas’ (I think) – which she said was of the banana family, and some palm sugar were mixed together in a wok, sticky rice (apparently that’s already cooked jasmine rice) was added and we all tried a bit. Everyone doing red curry added some spices, and while the cooking continued Puiey went round asking ‘too spicy too spicy?’ and offering to add spices if it wasn’t, I think it was M who said ‘wow that’s spicy’ when she tried hers, we all sat down to eat shortly after 7pm, and were presented with spring rolls 10 minutes later, followed by half a mango with sticky rice (each).

Then we got lychees and lamboutan on a plate (the lamboutan was very very hard to break open by hand, and mine was particularly hard, so M did it), and finished it all at 8pm. The 3 girls who are teachers were talking about class sizes and kids struggling to adapt when they move from other countries, I said I thought learning Latin and the routes of words was useful, and how many people have said that its the music that helped them learn English; and back at the hotel we considered the options for tomorrow morning (N looked at the map), and at 9.10pm – cocktails began to be ordered, so I decided to retire for the night.