25 September - Cooking!

It is pouring with rain when we wake up. After our very late night everyone is lazy and the gym is not on the list of things to do. It is pouring with rain and we are very happy that we booking an inside activity for the day. We arrive at Pum’s Cooking School in Pantong Town just as it starting pouring down and make a grand “running” entrance into the restaurant.
Bunny (Subun) is our teacher for the day. She is a petite, soft-spoken girl and looks like a young boy with her hair hidden away under the cooking bandana. We start off by getting an introduction to the local herbs and spices. Luc opts to watch Transformers on the computer whist Katie joins the cooking team. We each choose 4 dishes we would like to make and then it is off to the kitchen – complete with our aprons!
We start with Gaeng Kheo Wan Gai (“Green lipstick”). Cooking turns out to be a pleasure as all the ingredients are already cut and measured into little bowls. So it is just a matter of adding and cooking! It is so quick and within minutes we have done our first dish. This is followed by Tom Kha Gai (Chicken in coconut soup), Tom Yam Goong (Thai hot and sour prawn soup) and Phad Prio Wan (Stir fry vegetable and chicken in sweet and sour sauce). The best tip of the session is that you have to “massage” the food – “they very happy, get massage’. To massage the food is to press the spatula down on the meat and move to around. So slightly different than the Chinese way of stir-frying.
After an hour we sit down with a big bowl of rice and our delicious food. The kids join in and we start the tasting feast. And a feast it is indeed! The food is absolutely divine! The green curry and Winsome’s red prawn soup comes up tops!
The rain is a little less and we decide to venture off to the local market. We are bundled into a cute little truck with Bunny in the driver seat. The poor girl is holding on to the steering wheel like she is terrified and we come to the conclusion that she is a very new driver. She drives very slowly and even stops on the side of the road when the traffic gets a bit hectic. The market is absolutely incredible! Incredibly clean with many stalls full of goods from herbs to vegetables to amazing fruit. We have a long stop at the fruit stall where we buy Jack Fruit, Dragon Fruit, Rose Apple (funny shaped apple), custard apple and Lon Tons (similar to leechies). The sweet shop is filled with bright coloured sweets of which we buy a variety – they all turned out to be better looking than tasting – not sweet at all! The seafood section causes great entertainment – when Katie gets sprayed by a clam (thank goodness she was wearing her raincoat) and the bucket with the slimy catfish, still moving, got everyone squealing.
When we get back the to the restaurant, the rain is pouring down again and we are half soaked! It helps a bit balancing the heat of the kitchen. Now it is time for our last dishes – Haw Muk Pla (Fish Cakes in Chinese Kale Cups), “Fish dancing under green lipstick”, a Pum’s special and Phad Thai. Luc finally joins in and is in charge of doing the Phad Thai – which is rice noodles with egg omelet. The highlight of this session’s food is definitely the fish and the Phad Thai.
We are stuffed when we finally leave – it was definitely one of the best days of the trip!
We meet up with Quentin to look at the PSP’s – eventually Winsome decides to get a Nintendo DS game – with 50 free games! We have a quick beer with Quentin before hopping onto the hotel transfer. It is a quiet night. We put the kids into bed early and we have a long girly talk.