Christmas Break

As announced in September we had planned a second trip to Bangkok, so we would be able to enjoy more of this wonderful city.

We flew on Christmas day (25th of December) which is a bit of an odd day to fly but still it was quite busy at the airport. I excepted the airline to do something special, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Luckily we did manage to upgrade to Business Class. Merry Christmas!

On the upper deck of the Qantas Boeing 747-400.

Our suite in the Dusit Thani Hotel.

Thailand is all about food, so we ate lots of different delicious dishes in various street-side restaurants. Many thanks again to our friend Ayre who helps us pick the best dishes and is excellent in translating to and from Thai.

Street food on Silom Road.
Whole fish	A proper restaurant in Soi 4.
Local eatery in Sathorn	Huge BBQ Prawn!

But besides just eating all that food, we also wanted to know how to prepare it ourselves. So we booked a Thai cooking class.

All students meet up in the cooking school above a restaurant, from there we all took the Skytrain 1 stop to a local market where one of the teachers explained everything about the fresh ingredients used in Thai cooking.

Blue Elephant Cooking School.	“This is one of three types of Holy Basil”.
At the Butcher.	Spicy !
This is how you drink Thai coffee… from a plastic bag!	Not for sale.

After that we sat down in the cooking studio for the head chef to show us how to prepare 5 dishes. She needed a hand during the demonstration and Hans volunteered to help out. After the demo it was time to put on our aprons and start cooking.

On the menu was:

• Toong Tong Keaw Waan – Golden Bags with Green Curry Minced Prawn and Chicken
• Tom Kha Kai Sai Phang – Coconut Milk Soup with Chicken and Straw Mushrooms
• Kruang Kaeng Daeng – Red Curry Paste (to use in the Jungle Curry)
• Keang Pa Nua – Spicy Jungle Beef Curry
• Woon Sen Pad Kee Maow Koong – Spicy Stir-fry Vermicelli with Praws.

The kitchen, still clean.	Hans helping out.
Masterchef?	You better watch out!

After all the hard cooking our own dishes were served as lunch in the restaurant for us to enjoy.

Toong Tong
And a diploma, Arjan can finally cook!

Ofcourse there was time for more culture and history, we booked a tour to the famous Bridge on the River Kwai, the war cemetery, a train ride on the Burma railway and the Tiger Temple.

The War Cemetery with lots of graves of Dutch soldiers.	The Bridge.
Weird fruit!	The river Kwai.
Nice tracks.	Ieeuuww!

Nice pussycat.

As you can see, again, not enough time to see and do everything we wanted, so we will be saving up for another trip!