So the report is in on what the deal was at the Suan Bua Resort near Chiangmai, Thailand, where most of the people at our conference were puking and/or pooping their guts out. E.coli and clorliform on the silverware, fruit, and in the water!! The main filter for their water is the kind you’re supposed to change every month, and they hadn’t changed it in a couple of years.

Just in case you were planning a trip to Chiangmai any time soon…

You can read about this year’s Thailand adventures here:

• The Suan Bua gave us E.coli!
• Puking in Paradise
• “Kill It – NO Mercy!” Cooking Thai in Chiang Mai
• An Irresistible Opportunity
• First Day in Chiangmai

Scroll down to read or write comments!

These photos are from Jessica’s cooking class:

2007 Feb. 9-21

First, I should say that the orientation (at a hotel in the city) and the annual conference (at a resort outside the city) that we’ve been attending in Thailand has been great. We’re learning a lot and meetings tons of really interesting people. There’s about 200 people here counting kids, and from all over the Western world. Lots of Kiwis and Aussies and Brits, Germans, even a French guy, and a few Yanks. The really cool thing is that almost everyone has tons of overseas experience in different parts of the world doing all kinds of stuff, especially all over China. Sexual health education, water development for villages way out west, doctors working on the Tibetan plateau, and of course, people teaching and working in the coastal cities from the high frozen north to the tropical south. One British couple coming in with us lived for 14 years in Hong Kong, then 17 in South Africa, and now their starting language school with us in Tianjin.

You can see from the photos that this resort is beautiful. The most immediate downside to all this is that for over a month, for every group that has come to this resort (lots of groups use this for conferences during Chinese New Year), they’ve had dozens of people get really bad diarrhea and/or vomiting on day two or three. Yesterday we had 50 adults listed as sick, and I don’t know how many children. One of the singers threw up on stage. Jessica, who got sick and spent most of the day in bed, saw a lady suddenly shove her baby stroller in another woman’s direction and say, “Watch my baby I’m going to be sick!” before throwing up in the bushes. Our general meetings are less than 2/3 full. And these are all seasoned ex-pats, too. Jessica’s doing much better today, and although we both feel yucky, she’s been able to eat some at breakfast and lunch. So it looks like we’ll be mostly OK by the time we fly out for China on the 21st.

This may or may not be the last post from outside of China. Depends on if we manage to get online again or not.

One month after my birthday, I got the best birthday present ever…a chance to attend a one-day cooking class at the “Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School.” This was the first cookery school of its kind to open in Chiang Mai…and I’d have a hard time understanding how any of the schools that have opened since could compete. Sompon Nabnian (and his British wife) are the owners of the school…he’s a world renowned celebrity chef who has even done cooking shows for BBC and National Geographic. He has eight assistants, some of whom have already attended cooking school before coming to work for him, and all of whom undergo a special training course (over a year) under his supervision. The school offer five days of courses (with five different menus to prepare), but our schedule for the week only left one day open for me to attend.

The price of the class includes transportation, teaching, all ingredients, meals (you eat what you prepare), beverages, and a cookbook (with pretty colored pictures) including the recipes from all five days of courses. It also has detailed lists of what you can substitute when ingredients aren’t available in your neck of the woods. For example, if you can’t find any palm sugar in Canada – you can simply substitute some maple syrup or brown sugar.

The menu for my course included:
(morning)
Chicken in Coconut Milk Soup (Tom Kha Gai) – one of our favorites!
Red Curry with Fish (Gaeng Phed Plaa)
Fried Mixed Mushrooms with Baby Corn (Phad Hed Ruam Khao Pod Om)
Fried Big Noodles with Thick Sauce and Pork (Raad Nah Muu)

(afternoon)
Papaya Salad (Som Tam)
Steamed Banana Cake (Khanom Kluay)

We started off the morning with a market tour led by the assistant chefs – An and Piim. They showed us the most essential ingredients for Thai cooking, explaining for us the differences between coconut cream and coconut milk, the different types of basil, different kinds of rice, and lots of other stuff. Then we took about a 20 minute drive into the countryside to Sompon’s home, where he has a special area set up for the cooking classes. They also have classes at his restaurant in town, The Wok, but I thought it would be more fun to go out of town and see a little bit of the countryside.

The flow of the class was like this. We would go into an air conditioned demonstration room, where the assistants (and later Sompon) would show us how to make the dish. Then we’d head out to our individual cooking stations and prepare it ourselves. I was surprised at how quickly most of the dishes were cooked! Of course, it helped that most of the ingredients were already prepped for us – fish was sliced, papaya was grated, etc. After we finished cooking each dish, we’d take it over to the dining area and eat our results. It was awesome! For our third and fourth dishes (the red curry and the mushroom stirfry), Sompon himself was on hand to do the teaching.

All of the teachers were great – very professional, relaxed, and seemed to be having a great time. Each of them had their own style for the demonstrations and made lots of jokes throughout. One of my favorites was that every time we used garlic or chilis, they would use the flat side their giant knives (like a cleaver) to smash the ingredient on the cutting board. They’d say something like…”Now for the garlic…Kill it!” SMACK…down went the flat side of the knife. “No Mercy!” BAM BAM…then they’d pound a fist onto the flat of the knife to smash the ingredient even more. I guess you kind of had to be there, but it was really funny.

They were also always joking around about the garnishes added to the food after preparation. One teacher said, “How much you pay for this bowl of Tom Kha Gai? 10 Baht?” Then he stuck the garnish on it and said, “Ah…there we go. Beautiful…Now, you can charge more. 300 Baht!” Sompon also had this great bit about curry that illustrated perfectly why Joel and I love Thai food so much:
…so many curries, so little time!!!

Class went from 10 am – 4 pm…and it felt like we did far more eating than cooking, though I’ve definitely picked up lots of tips to improve my own Thai experimentation. I can’t wait till I locate a wet market in Tianjin and see if I can find the ingredients there so that I can try out my new cooking skills on Joel. I wish my sister Shauna, friend Kelly, and Joel’s mom could’ve joined me for the day, since they all like to cook Thai food too. I was SO full after the class that I couldn’t even eat dinner. I took lots of photos, so everyone can see what it was like…including photos of my own personal creations. Well, all except for the banana cake. It was so yummy that I finished it off before I even remembered that I should take a picture…oops. :D So much good cooking, eating, and laughing made for a great experience and wonderful day…one I’d highly recommend for anyone else passing through Chiang Mai. I wish I could take all five days of classes…and if we ever make it back to Chiang Mai again, maybe I’ll get the chance!

This one’s for mom. It was an epic battle between mind and stomach. The mind won, but just barely.

We met a wonderful lady named Maya who works at the hotel. She has a beautiful daughter and lots of free time, so she enjoys talking with us in the lobby. I asked her about the bugs, and if they are just a gimmick for dumb tourists. She said the big bugs are from western Thailand, and people in the north don’t eat those very much. Northern Thais prefer the bamboo worms, and she especially likes ant eggs, which are in season right now.

This market was way better than the first night. The “night bazaar” was almost entirely tourists. This market had some tourists, but was mostly Thais, and it was several blocks packed. It had way more variety and interesting stuff, bigger crowds, better prices, better food, more buskers (not sure that they were better)… it was the “Sunday Market.”

Also, the Thailand photo gallery is up! We’ll update it as we go.

This place is crawling with mzungus. We saw more white people in our first hour here than in our last 6 months in Taiwan.

I can see why this is such a tourist friendly place. Our hotel is really nice, and cheaper than that dingy motel we stayed at one night in Nowhere, Texas when our ’77 Nova broke down. We spent all day yesterday walking around Chiang Mai and basically doing the tourist thing. It seems more relaxing here – not as crowded, things seem to move a bit slower (relative to Yonghe). We’ll get some photos up when we get a better internet connection.

The tourist thing is honestly kind of boring. Street markets designed for tourists for some reason turn me off a bit, I don’t know why. It seems like it’s “not as real” or something… I don’t know what that means, or if it’s even fair… oh well. But since we’re here early to do some visa stuff, no one else from the conference is here that we know of and we’re sort of on our own, at the mercy of the tourist industry… which is pretty big here. It’s easy to get around and find stuff, but not half as interesting when you don’t have local friends.

Jessica is off at a Thai cooking class today, I’m getting some work done (visas, etc.) and reading. Next time we’ll have some photos up that we took yesterday and today.