Cooking in Chiang Mai

Chiang Mai is famous for its night bazaar which is pretty extensive. We wandered around it our first night in town (after dumping our bags in a hostel and swatting about 40 mosquitoes in our room). We past touristy t-shirts, fake watches and pirate DVDs, artists drawing portraits, tailors making silk suits, fabulous wood-carvings, and even a Thai kick-boxing match.

The next morning we switched hostels and booked ourselves on a full day of Thai cooking classes (the Pad Thai Cooking School) that turned out to be a wonderful experience.

First we went to the market to identify the ingredients we were going to be using.







Then we got to see each dish prepared and then had a bash at making them ourselves. We learned how to make pad thai, fried spring rolls, green curry chicken, ginger chicken, curried chicken with basil and finally sticky rice with coconut and mango for desert - and we ate it all as we went along.











The finale was the ginger chicken which involved flamble-ed onions, of which I have a little video.

I'm looking forward to trying these dishes out again once we're home.