Orn's Travel Blog

A few days ago we went to a cooking class with …well I can’t remember the name right now …in Chang Mai.  It was a full day course, thought by the Thai version of Rachel Ray.  She was just like the pirate movies that the street vendors are selling – almost a complete replica.

The course was set up in a way that first we went with our Rachel to the market to buy the stuff we needed and after the market it was time to cook the courses we had chosen – we were able to choose 6 different dishes plus making our own curry paste from scratch.    I picked banana spring rolls for an appetizer, spicy papaya salad, Tom Yum (hot and sour) soup with shrimps, chicken and cashew nut stir-fry, red curry with chicken and mango and sticky rice for dessert.  Elínborg however picked fresh spring rolls, seafood salad, the same Tom Yum soup, Phat Thai stir-fry, green curry with chicken and banana cooked in coconut milk for dessert.

The whole course was a lot of fun and we learned a lot about the Thai ingredients.  We were also told what we could use at home instead of the Thai stuff that we can’t find in our stores.  We seemed to be naturals in Thai cooking, at least everything that we cooked tasted fantastic and the best part of the whole course was to eat all that great food ;)

Now that we know how to cook Thai food, you guys will just have to buy the ingredients and invite us over for dinner and we’ll come and cook for you !!! :)

We also went to the Chang Mai Zoo.  The zoo was just OK, not more, but had a few very interesting animals.  The main problem with the zoo is it is widely spread over a very hilly area so it is hard to walk around. 

We were very impressed with the selection of cats where they had both big and small cats.  In the big section they had white tigers, lions, Asian tigers and both a black and yellow panthers.  The panthers were a lot of fun, the black lady was in heat and the yellow male would make rough love to her every two minutes or so – lasting about 5-10 seconds each time.  The small cats section has some interested cats as well, cats that we hadn’t seen before – desert cat, panther cat, fishing cat and others.

The main attraction of the Chang Mai Zoo are two Pandas, a few months old baby Panda and an adult panda – we weren’t sure which sex.  The baby Panda was awfully cute and full of life.  He sleeps most of the day but is woken up twice a day to play and eat and we managed to be there for that.  He was like a two year old human kid, running all over and playing with his keepers, doesn’t want to do anything he is told to do – just play.

The older one was not as playful at all, just sat and ate and only moved to get more bamboo to eat.  You could really see though that Pandas are not just cuddly cute teddy bears, he or she had huge fangs and seemed powerful enough to snap a human in half in a few seconds.