(Big) Cats and Curry

After leaving Koh Tao I spent one more night in Bangkok - so that I could go see Jurassic World in 4D... totally worth it!

I also wandered around the shopping mall where the cinema was. They had a gourmet market supermarket which was very very fancy; check out what they sold!

Needless to say I bought a Pale.

The next day I boarded my night train for Chiang Mai. The night train takes around 14 hours, but has sleeper compartments and is actually quite nice. The ride was a little rough but I generally got a pretty decent sleep.

On the train, by total coincidence, Luke and Will whom I met diving in KT a few days earlier, where in the same carriage just a few compartments down. They decided to check into the same hostel.

The boys were keen to check out the Tiger Kingdom. I wasn't all that excited based on what I'd heard about poor treatment of the tigers but between doing nothing and going out I decided to tag along. We hired scooters and made our way out there.

We paid the 450 baht ($18aud) to get up close with the big tigers. Once we entered the zoo, we saw a keeper trying to get a few tigers to jump at a branch...

My initial thought was about how big they were - you could almost feel a thud as they hit the ground!

From here we entered the cage. We were invited to lay next to one of the female tigers for a photo - I obliged. 

At one point I was watching one of the tigers and turned around to see this right behind me, to my surprise!

To be completely honest, I'm unsure of how well the tigers in this place had been treated; it wasn't like the big pens back home that they were living in. Admittedly, it was good to see tigers up close and get an appreciation for how massively powerful they are!

From here we rode a little further up the road to check out the waterfall a little up the road. Unfortunately it was nothing all that special - I've seen way too many amazing waterfalls in Vietnam!

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The next day I locked in for a Thai cooking class! 

I was picked up at 9am and taken by songthaew to the cooking school. The group was sat down and explained how the day would be run. We got to chose around about five choices of each a soup, a curry, a stir fry, an appetiser and a dessert. 

We then jumped back on the songthaew and were taken to a local market to purchase the goods needed for our dishes and a chance to wander around and check out their wares.

We had explained to use the different varieties of Thai local produce that is commonly used in Thai dishes - different herbs, ginger, spices etc. 

After getting back to the school, we were taken back to the cooking area to prepare our first dish - the soup. I chose a tom yum seafood dish, a spicy soup with shrimp. 

It consisted of a mix of chilli, lemongrass, ginger, chilli paste and a few other ingredients - the end result, incredible! It was a great sense of achievement to eat a great tasting Thai dish that I had prepared, albeit with a lot of help!

Next up was the green curry and pad thai. We first began by making the curry paste by mashing the ingredients together with a mortar and pestle, with the end result looking like below.

After slicing the chillies, eggplant, shallots and lime leaves as instructed, we moved on to the cooking benches to prepare the dish.

The end result, once more, was fantastic!

After demolishing the green curry and pad thai it was time to make the spring rolls. Once more we started by preparing the ingredients, then frying them, and then wrapping and frying the rolls. 

Finally we finished with mango sticky rice. Unfortunately this one we didnt really make ourselves, just watched the chefs do it while they told us what they were doing. It tasted pretty good though!

After a chill day not doing a whole lot I organised my transport for the next week ... a Honda CRF250 motard, ready to begin the 650km trek around the Mae Hong Son loop! More on that to come...