Indochina Day 17: Chef Leez cooking, Khao San Road, and walking, walking, walking
We booked our third and final cooking class with Chef Leez. Her lessons were billed as one of the top ones on Trip Advisor so we Decided to check it out for ourselves.
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| Some interesting things you can not do in a taxi. |
The website had very specific instructions on how to get to the location and how much it would cost. Taxis in Bangkok have a tendency of overcharging tourists because they don't know any better. We were lucky enough to have our hotel book the taxi for us and we did not get shafted. Another thing we noticed was how locations were not always address driven as numbers and street names were really difficult to find. Sometimes you just had to go by a displayed name or landmark.
In any case, the lesson started like the others with the chef walking us down to the local market to check out the produce and pick out some ingredients for the dishes we were to make later that day. She gave us a bit of history about herself as well as some very interesting descriptions as to the differences between the various types of curries, like red, yellow, green, massaman, etc. Probably some of the most informative portion was when she showed how shrimp oil was used to flavor some of the soups and dishes. That reddish oil that you see floating in the soup, or the reddish color you see in Pad Thai is from the red shrimp oil, and not chili oil, which is what I had thought all this time. Making it is also really easy: Take the bottom of shrimp heads, fry them in palm oil and then extract. The oil is used to flavor dishes, and the deep fried shrimp heads can be eaten. Tasty!
We finished our cooking lesson, full and with time on our hands so we decided to talk down to Khaosan Road to check it out for ourselves. The walk was not long, but it began to rain and we had to find shelter amongst the covered stalls lining the street. We ended up walking there with a couple of ladies from our class - they had pretty much just arrived and were looking for something to do so we agreed to help them find places to visit and guide them to certain locations because we had a map handy.
We did not stay long in Khaosan Road as we were full, and weren't interested in purchasing anything at that time, so we decided to check out the royal palace, which was not too far away. The walk was fairly uneventful, but due to time constraints, we had to hurry to the entrance (which was a little harder to find considering that the entire compound was walled and sign-less) at which point we were told that people entering had to wear long pants, closed shoes, and covered shoulders. Maggie and I were not too interested in going as the visiting hours were ending in less than an hour, but the two ladies were and they found something to wear from the conveniently placed clothes rental shop and went in. Maggie and I went out to look for a public bathroom.
I won't go into the details of that near-fiasco, but we did find a public pay toilet eventually and decided to head back to the hotel. Since the BTS and MRT were both far away from that part of the city we decided to hail a Tuk Tuk. The prices some of the drivers were giving us were rather ridiculous, sprouting prices that were way more than the taxi we paid for on the way to the cooking lesson, and we were only asking to get dropped off at the closest MRT station! We eventually settled on one guy who kept following us and dropping the price. He did a pretty good job getting us to our destination despite the horde of vehicles that filled the roads.
We got a chance to get on the MRT for the first time and it was quite a nice way to travel, especially compared to the madness on the surface. We got cleaned up and went in for yet another therapeutic massage at Health Land before heading out to dinner.
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| Maggie making Pad Thai at Chef Leez. |
In any case, the lesson started like the others with the chef walking us down to the local market to check out the produce and pick out some ingredients for the dishes we were to make later that day. She gave us a bit of history about herself as well as some very interesting descriptions as to the differences between the various types of curries, like red, yellow, green, massaman, etc. Probably some of the most informative portion was when she showed how shrimp oil was used to flavor some of the soups and dishes. That reddish oil that you see floating in the soup, or the reddish color you see in Pad Thai is from the red shrimp oil, and not chili oil, which is what I had thought all this time. Making it is also really easy: Take the bottom of shrimp heads, fry them in palm oil and then extract. The oil is used to flavor dishes, and the deep fried shrimp heads can be eaten. Tasty!
We finished our cooking lesson, full and with time on our hands so we decided to talk down to Khaosan Road to check it out for ourselves. The walk was not long, but it began to rain and we had to find shelter amongst the covered stalls lining the street. We ended up walking there with a couple of ladies from our class - they had pretty much just arrived and were looking for something to do so we agreed to help them find places to visit and guide them to certain locations because we had a map handy.
 |
| Maggie standing in Khaosan Road. |
We did not stay long in Khaosan Road as we were full, and weren't interested in purchasing anything at that time, so we decided to check out the royal palace, which was not too far away. The walk was fairly uneventful, but due to time constraints, we had to hurry to the entrance (which was a little harder to find considering that the entire compound was walled and sign-less) at which point we were told that people entering had to wear long pants, closed shoes, and covered shoulders. Maggie and I were not too interested in going as the visiting hours were ending in less than an hour, but the two ladies were and they found something to wear from the conveniently placed clothes rental shop and went in. Maggie and I went out to look for a public bathroom.
I won't go into the details of that near-fiasco, but we did find a public pay toilet eventually and decided to head back to the hotel. Since the BTS and MRT were both far away from that part of the city we decided to hail a Tuk Tuk. The prices some of the drivers were giving us were rather ridiculous, sprouting prices that were way more than the taxi we paid for on the way to the cooking lesson, and we were only asking to get dropped off at the closest MRT station! We eventually settled on one guy who kept following us and dropping the price. He did a pretty good job getting us to our destination despite the horde of vehicles that filled the roads.
We got a chance to get on the MRT for the first time and it was quite a nice way to travel, especially compared to the madness on the surface. We got cleaned up and went in for yet another therapeutic massage at Health Land before heading out to dinner.
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