one of the main reasons we chose to go to thailand was because we love thai food! naturally, we took a cooking class while we were in chiang mai. we took a half day (morning 9am to 2pm) class at siam rice cooking class since it was highly rated on trip advisor. for 700 baht (US$23) you get to choose a noodle dish, a soup and a curry paste/curry.

the food was amazing! (there is still hope for me as a cook) we hung out with nancy, our pretty awesome instructor. if i could, i would hang out with her all day! she taught us about the main base ingredients in thai cooking, the food, and thai culture/traditions.

a few awesome things we learned:

• a lot of thai dishes use the same ingredients. the addition/subtraction of certain ingredients make a different dish/type of curry!
• thai cooking uses a lot of sugar and fish sauce! in every restaurant, you will find sugar (sweet obviously), fish sauce (salty), and chili at your table so that you can customize to your own preference.
• it’s not that hard to make! just a lot of ingredients to get together!

before the cooking class, we were taken to the market! i dont know if you know…kyle and i love going to local markets when we travel…its our way of immersing ourselves into the city’s culture. (plus kyle used to work at a supermarket so he loves that stuff).

as you can tell, we took a bajillion photos…this is what happens when you have an awesome day (2nd favorite thing we did in thailand).

what we cooked:

• noodles – pad thai and drunken noodles
• soup – spicy soup with sweet basil and hot and creamy soup
• curry paste / curry – panang curry and kao soi

we highly recommend doing this when you go to thailand! email nancy! we received a little booklet with all the recipes from the day. we are hoping that we can cook some thai food at home soon! fingers crossed.