It rained last night, really heavily. It rained before dinner, and then again when we were going to bed at around 9.30pm.
Monsoonal, like the heavens had opened.
I have no idea what happened between 9.30pm and 6.00am because that sleeping tablet I took did exactly what it says on the label: “May cause drowsiness. Do not operate machinery or make important decisions.”
We were being picked up at 9.00am for a cooking class today, and we needed to get to breakfast early … so we were there at 8.00am.
An hour should be long enough for a healthy breakfast, right?
I had my now customary small omelette with some bacon, deep fried vegetables, and fish in garlic sauce.
So here is the dilemma … fish is brain food, and with the amount of fish I’ve eaten over the last week here in Thailand, you’d expect I’d be a genius.
I could be Professor Geoffius Sumner Millar asking “Why is it so?”
But if I was that smart, you’d think I’d realise that with my age and elevated cholesterol I’d know better than to eat anything deep fried at any time of the day, especially breakfast.
Why is it so?
Breakfast over and we were waiting out the front of the Ramada for our pick-up.
And right on 9.00am, a sleek, black, stretched Mercedes Benz rolled in the drive.
Actually that’s not completely true. I was black, but it was a Toyota Hilux. And when I say black, it was the shade of black that you get when your car has been parked outside in the tropical sun for the last 15 years.
Black-ish. But it had working air-conditioning.
A man hopped out and introduced himself as Jokie.
So off we went to the markets to buy stuff for our cooking class and lunch.
We had pre-ordered the following meals for our class:
- Mango sticky rice
- Stir fried chicken and cashews
- Pad Thai with chicken
- Pineapple fried rice with prawns
Jokie took us to the market and explained a lot of the ingredients to us, and we (he) made the purchases. I was a little worried about the chicken sitting out on a tray in the heat at the markets, but Joke didn’t seem overly concerned, so I decided not to be either.
I mean, salmonella isn’t fatal. Is it?
Purchases made, and we were back in the truck heading to his place, where he and his wife (Ning) run the classes. They have a maximum of 6 people in a class, with two classes per day, but we jagged a class by ourselves.
With a further explanation about the stuff we’d bought and how they related to each dish we were cooking, we were put to work cutting and chopping and seasoning and preparing.
Now I’m not going to insult your intelligence, nor embarrass myself, by explaining the cooking process except to say it was incredibly quick, and incredibly simple.
None of this fancy “stand on one leg while you stir counter-clockwise”; it was heat up an aluminium wok, throw in some oil, sizzle sizzle, and pull it out.
There was obviously some requirement that you cook some of the ingredients in the correct order, and for the correct length of time, but for someone who eats fish for breakfast everyday and is currently waiting for an invitation to join Mensa, counting to 10 while the vegetables cook only required a small portion of my brain.
Have you ever watched Masterchef and the judges rave about how amazing a traditionally cooked meal is? Well, that was our experience today.
The chicken and cashew stir-fry was just astonishingly good. As was the pineapple and prawn fried rice, and the mango sticky rice should have been illegal it was so good.
The Pad Thai was nice, but I’ve never been a big fan of PT anyway.
So after we’d cooked it, we got to eat it. Just the 2 of us.
We pleaded with Jokie and Ning to join us, but they wouldn’t.
It’s not everyday that you hear me say “I wish I hadn’t had that third croissant for breakfast”, but today was the day.
Actually, I wish I hadn’t had ANY breakfast today because lunch was so good.
They do all of their cooking outside, probably because their house is so small. We needed to use their bathroom when we arrived (3 mugs of coffee at breakfast will have that effect on you) and their building looked like a block of units (like a single story motel), and they lived in one of the units.
But their unit (house) couldn’t have been any bigger than a single car garage … it was tiny. In fact, I’m not even sure that they have a bedroom because they might have slept in the living room.
And they didn’t appear to have running water in the house, because we were shown how to scoop water from a bucket to flush the toilet.
In any case, they do all their cooking outside on a “stove”, like a circular clay pot filled with burning charcoal.
They use these aluminium woks to cook everything, and I don’t know I’ve ever seen them at home before… so we bought some at the market on the way home.
We also got the recipies sent to us, so we can’t wait to cook some tasty Thai food when we get home.
We were back at the resort by 1.00pm and we both decided to slip into something comfortable – like a coma.
15 minutes lying on the bed in the air-conditioning and regretting our overindulgence once again, and we squeezed ourselves into our swimmers and headed for the pool.
It’s interesting people-watching at the resort, and especially by the pool.
Although you have to be careful doing that, because you could end up wearing an ankle bracelet 😞.
Many people seem to leave common sense at home and forget they are in public.
I’ve previously mentioned people in their budgie smugglers/bikinis who should know better.
Then there are the (mostly) young and (mostly) attractive women who like to get about in those bikinis where the bottoms are so brief that it’s hard to tell if the owner is outside trying to get in, or inside trying to get out.
We had the fortune … er, misfortune … er, experience of following one of these ladies from the pool yesterday when we went back to our room. As luck would have it, she was ahead of us and going the same direction.
And when she started to climb the stairs ahead of us, it felt like I was watching a chipmunk at feeding time, right at eye-level in front of me.
It was rather … unnerving. Confronting.
I might need therapy.
And yes, I understand that may not be an image you care for, but I had to see it.
So we spent this afternoon sitting by the pool, and trying to avoid getting burned by the sun.
MBW read her book (I think she is on book #8 or 9 by now) and I checked emails.
I was also watching this woman in the row of recliners in front of us trying to complete a crossword in German.
Seriously? Crosswords are hard, so why make it more difficult for yourself by doing it in German?
Back to our room at 3.45 to make ourselves beautiful for cocktails. It was our last night for cocktails so we wanted to go out with a bang.
If not a bang, then maybe just a bit of a rumble.
Dinner tonight is the buffet again, although our inside sources told us that it will be “pasta, spaghetti, and pizza” tonight .. and our sources were correct.
Pasta was the last thing I felt like eating tonight, but I had a couple of slices of pizza, some icecream, and decided that was enough.
The fruit display gave us a chuckle though.
We got back to our room to find a lovely thank you letter from the resort, and a reminder that we have clocked up an impressive 620 baht in expenses since we’ve been here, which equates to about $26 – mostly for the 2 x 500ml bottles of water that we buy with dinner each night.
Last of the big spenders!
Tomorrow we can stay in our room until 2.00pm. Then we have a 2.30pm pick-up by some local -and highly recommended – taxi service to take us to Phuket airport for a 6.40pm flight back to Singapore tomorrow night.
Then a night and day in Singapore and we will be flying home on Thursday night, arriving roughly 6.00am Friday morning.
Hopefully Zach will remember to collect us from the airport.
But you’ll hear about that later.
Ciao
#Thailand2024