Chiang Mai - Action Man!

25/03/08

What kind of 'action' were you expecting? Don't forget the modern man has to be able to cook too! This is the organic farm at the Thai cook school and that's no.1 student making a Thai green curry, a beautiful little number with enough green chillies in it to blaaa the lid off a nuclear sub! Some of you will be lucky enough to try out some of my new dishes when I get home and don't worry, I'll reduce the number of chillies! Before we went to the cookery school we had a visit to the local market for our supplies.


This market was not for the faint hearted and I wouldn't advise that any vegetarians visit either. The sight of chickens, goats, fish and even frogs being 'processed' is enough to put a man off his grub! We steered clear of the strange creatures during our class and stuck to chicken and tofu - and to Suzanne's delight, I learned how to make sticky rice with mango - her little favourite. I met loads of great people, had a good time but we never got friendly enough to swap recipes - ah well maybe next time! (I plan to do some cookery courses in India too - do all you readers have watering mouths?).

Now this is proper 'mans' action I hear you all say - rock climbing!! I used to be a rock climber between the ages of 5 to 16 (unofficially of course - and don't tell my Mother or she'll worry in retrospect) My brother, friends and I would often climb the local cliff face named Claxeugh Rock in Sunderland. Thirty odd years later I'm not as easy going anymore, however, although slightly nervous I had a fantastic day. It's something I should have done years ago and I was really surprised how fit you need to be. After the third climb I got to a point about 20 metres up where I could hardly take another step. I was driven though by the fact that no one in the group could do it (a 19yr old and a 20 yr old) so I got energy from somewhere and made it to the top. That's me at the top 'rubbing it in' celebrating! CS eh!!!

This is something that I've never really wanted to do, but I thought I'd have to try. It's called 'Rapelling' and it's kind of dangling on a rope and lowering yourself using a contraption around your harness. In this picture (which I hope you all appreciate was very difficult to take!) I am rapelling into the mouth of an underground cave, carved by rain water millions of years ago. It was excellent and the atmosphere was so eerie, I felt like I was intruding into one of natures little secrets! In case you're interested and NOT prone to nightmares, we exited the cave by following the now dried up river bed through a tunnel and after about 50 metres we emerged out the side of the mountain. I would have done the whole lot again but I was so thoroughly knacked I couldn't have, in fact I didn't recover properly for four days!

So for a simple cup of tea question, who can tell me the main reason a Thai green curry is green and a Thai red curry is red. And if you're feeling lucky (well arrr ya punk) tell me what other colour curry is popular in Thailand.

After all of this our time in Thailand was up and we were off to one of the few 'land -locked' countries in the world, Laos - surely the subject of another blog.