February fun: markets, cooking and Laurent Garnier

Hello again everyone!

We've had a busy few days recently - a lot to write about and a lot of photos too

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself! Best to start at the beginning, or at least where we last left off. We haven't got up to anything too interesting since the Muay Thai night - just the usual BKK fun (eating out, cheap DVDs, chilling, markets etc). We did spend a hot but fascinating day at the mother of all markets: Chatuchak (or JJ to the locals). It's bigger than anything you can possibly imagine; you need a map to navigate around it and it is impossible to see it all in one day. Still, we attempted the impossible and wandered for hours in dark tiny alleyways and bigger brighter pedestrian roads around thousands and thousands of stalls. We saw everything from clothes (jeans, shoes, bags, funky one-offs, 2nd hand hippy stuff, mass produced fakes, jewellery, hats, sunglasses, you name it!) to furniture, from books to pets (fish, puppies, squirrels, rabbits, turtles, etc) and from food stalls to sticker stalls. In fact it was all so overwhelming that the only we bought weresome stickers to bribe our students with (for the record, they worked wonders!) No photos though as we forgot the camera!

Also, I took a day off from the brat pack (I loved them dearly, honest!) and went on a cooking course taught by the lovely (if slightly camp) Nusie from the Silom Thai Cooking School. I had a very laid-back morning which started with a trip to a food market to buy the ingredients and get a lesson in the differences between various kinds of ginger, limes and basil! Then Nusie, the two other people taking the class and myself headed down a Soi (small road/alley) to a house where we were to be drilled in the art of Thai cuisine. Well, not so much drilled as gently lead through the making of 5 delicious but simple dishes: Pad Thai (a typical Thai noodle dish), Tom Yam Goon (another typical Thai dish that goes under the name of Hot and Sour Shrimp soup I believe), Green curry paste and consequently Green Curry with Chicken, Laab Gai (a spicy North-Eastern Thai chicken salad - a favourite of Matt and I) and for dessert something called Rubies in Coconut milk. The dessert was the only thing I didn't paricularly like; it's made from dyed and parboiled turnip (covered in tapioca flour which goes see-through and slimy during the parboiling) and served in sweetened coconut milk!

We spent the morning washing, peeling, dicing, pounding, mixing and chatting while sitting on the floor in the prep room, and then going next door to the woks for cooking. Once each dish was ready we ate it and everything (bar the aforementioned dessert) was delicious! All in all I had a lovely relaxed time, ate freshly cooked amazing dishes which I can now make for myself and learnt all sorts of exciting things like how to make coconut milk or cream and tamarind paste, and the differences between the main kinds of Thai rice

Anyway, that was the Monday of my last week at school. The rest of it was fairly relaxed as I just had to supervise and mark and few exams and say my good byes to my kiddiewinkles (which was very sad indeed!). I won't bore you with all the photos I took of them but here's a photo of the rather primitive cafe us foreign teachers usually ate at, as well as a photo of part of the foreign teacher gang on one of the days we escaped to a nearby Au Bon Pain for a more Western (and hygienic) lunch!

I finished work on the Thursday, and by a collosal stroke of luck Laurent Garnier was to be DJing that night at Bed Supper Club which is where Bangkok's rich and trendy hang out. The club itself is like a giant pod decorated in all white with beds instead of seats and tables! LG played a typically eclectic but fantastic 3 hour set. It was an awesome night and a great way to celebrate my last day (as well as me and Matt a friend from work, Lou, was there too).

Matt on the other hand had to get up to work on Friday, though school's out and he has very little to do so it didn't matter that he arrived late. Also, it meant he could take Monday and Tuesday off so we could head to a tropical island for the weekend! But that's a whole story in itself so I think I will leave that for a new entry!