Cooking and Koh Chang

Cooking Lesson – Bangkok Thai Cooking Academy

Ian signed up for two cooking lessons with the Bangkok Thai Cooking Academy on Saturday. At 8:45, he met Ron, the owner, at Dunkin Donuts just outside the Skytrain stop Asoke. Ron retired to Thailand from Louisiana 3 years ago and looking for a challenge decided to open up a cooking school. The school is run out of his house located on soi 23, in the heart of the Asoke area.

The lesson started with a visit to the market where Ian was introduced to all the ingredients that find their way into Thai cooking: different varieties of eggplant; fruits; spices and herbs; tons of vegetables; meat and fish. Nothing was purchased because all the ingredients were already prepared.

There were four students, the other three being Australian: three males and one female in total. Chef Nat has a vast range of experience cooking Thai food internationally. According to the website, he acquired his love of cooking by helping his aunty in the kitchen in his hometown northwest of Bangkok.  At the academy, he teaches 50 dishes and on that day, the students would be learning 8: papaya salad, pad tai, massaman and green curry paste, creamy tom yum gung, coconut sticky rice with mango, rice custard, and basil chicken. Four dishes in the morning and four in the afternoon.

The students sat on mats cross-legged, a small table in front of them.  The curries were made from scratch and involved vigorous pounding in stone mortar and pestles. 

Garlic, shallots, lemongrass, long beans, rind of kaffir lemons, basil and coriander root, mushrooms, peppers and galangal were chopped on wooden cutting blocks. Stems were removed from lime leaves and leaves picked from basil and coriander plants. Dishes were cooked outside in woks and sauce pans on small gas stoves.

Chef Nat imparted all kinds of wisdom about Thai traditions, where dishes originated and “secret” cooking techniques. Ian said all the food was amazing and he was quite full eating two meals not that far apart. His favourite was the massaman curry. “It was out of this world,” reported Ian.

The day cost 3500 baht, just over 100 dollars. It was one of the cheaper courses offered in Bangkok. The thing we liked about this particular school is that the menu is set up over 7 days so you can sign up for the meals you want to learn how to cook. The Academy changes things up too. Ian might take a third lesson which I encourage because everything he learns there I will benefit from back in Canada!

Koh Chang

Koh Chang is Thailand’s second largest island and is located in the southeast not far from Cambodia. We decided to do this little jaunt because we missed diving and we hoped in our absence, Bangkok would dry out.

I booked a flight on Bangkok Airways and our accommodation through Agoda online. You purchase tickets at the Trat airport for transportation to your hotel via air conditioned van and ferry for 800 baht return. Leaving Sunday, the only flight I could get was at 5pm, arriving in Trat 55 minutes later.  We took a taxi to the Bangkok airport rather than the train for about 200 baht, tip included (6.50) and a 20 – 30 minute drive with no traffic. If only taxis were that cheap back in Canada!

All domestic flights are leaving from the large international airport in Bangkok because the domestic airport is flooded.  The airport is huge and quite busy but we found our way around easily.  We kept busy playing cards until herded onto a bus and taken out to a tiny turboprop plane painted with marine life and water in bright colours.  As we ascended you could see several areas of Thailand still underwater.

Before we knew it, we were landing with the sun setting in the distance leaving a red sky. As we exited the plane, the smell of trees, grass and clean air greeted us and everything seemed peaceful and calm. The tiny airport was open to the air and everyone working greeted us with smiles and “sawat dii” the Thai word for hello. The ticket counter to purchase transfer to the island was easy to find and once we received our luggage, we were ushered onto a large air conditioned van as promised. The ride to the ferry took no time at all and the ferry was there within minutes of our arrival.

Gaja Puri, our hotel, is located towards the southern end of the island. Female staff greeted us with cool washcloths and a delicious welcome drink. We sat in the tiny reception area to fill out the paperwork before being taken on a tour of the property.  Rooms are huts, most of them individual, and there are a few private villas hidden behind tall fences. A wooden sidewalk snakes through the property connecting the rooms and leading you to the pool and beach. The pool is very clean with a built in bench on one side of the pool and large whirlpool with a view of the beach. Here’s a photo of our little beach:

The rooms are spacious with king sized bed, a/c, fan, TV, lots of storage and a gigantic bathroom with separate tub and huge shower. We splurged on this room, getting a good deal. It is originally over 200 dollars but we got it for 138, WIFI and breakfast included.

The next morning we were up early for pickup by BB divers. Breakfast was served on the second floor of a large building at the front of Gaja Puri. There was fruit, homemade bread and jams, yogurt, etc. and an egg making station where you could get poached eggs that we were actually soft; a first for us since arriving in Southeast Asia.  You can just make out the ocean from our breakfast venue and can see the resort huts below:

The BB Divers pickup truck arrived as scheduled, 8:20. The taxis here on the island are pickup trucks with two benches lining the sides of the truck bed and a canopy over top. It was full of tourists so we sat in the cab. The road to the Bong Bai pier was crazy: windy and steep and the driver drove fast. Apparently there are a lot of road accidents on the island. I think they rent scooters to anyone with a driver’s license because clearly some of these people did not know how to ride a motorcycle.  

We piled out and followed the driver down a covered narrow cement pier hemmed in with stores, restaurants and shops built on stilts in the shallow water below. BB Divers was about halfway down extending out to the side and open to a view of the water.  We met Wee, our Dive Master – a thin muscular fellow with dreads, scars and tattoos. We learned later that some of the scars were the result of fish bites.  Just the week previous he had been attacked by two Trigger fish and was bitten on the head (apparently it’s mating season) and another time, a cleaning fish took a nip out of his ankle.

 Our equipment was sorted out and we loaded onto the boat.

Pulling out to the ocean revealed a world you couldn’t see standing on the pier. From the water, we noted several different accommodations: one had a large deck with several yoga practitioners doing their thing; while another had small huts built on stilts connected by a narrow walkway. There were colourful boats for snorkelling, tours and fishing that were either docked or leaving the pier.

BB Divers owns two slow boats and one speed boat. The boat we were on had a freshwater shower, washroom, kitchen area, deck for napping and plenty of seating. In typical Buddhist fashion, the front of the boat was covered in flowers to keep us safe.

The ride to Koh Tien took about an hour and a half. I sat beside a German fellow on route and we chatted to help pass the time. On arrival, we geared up and our entry into the 29 degree water was by giant stride – taking a giant stride off the boat with fins and gear on. It was the first time we had done it since our training in the pool and both of us found it relatively easy. The descent went well, no ear problems (we took decongestants that morning just in case) and we dove at a maximum of 13.4 metres with visibility about 8 metres. The area was covered in urchins and if you weren’t careful, you could get stuck by one. There were also many large sea cucumbers of various colours and some great barrel, leaf, and feather star coral. It was neat seeing mouth-like openings in the coral clamp shut as we swam overhead. Our dive time was 66 minutes, the longest yet.

The boat anchored not far from a secluded beach and the water was a gorgeous blue. We spent an hour swimming and eating a Thai lunch of rice, seafood, and veggies. We chatted with a family from Ottawa who were on a month long vacation. The teenagers were grade 11 and 12 and not one of them was concerned about missing that much school; very different from my students last year who were worried about missing a few days for the England trip we went  on in 2010….

Our second dive was at Koh Yak for 65 minutes at a depth of about 13 metres. During the dive, the weight belt gave me a lot of grief, it kept getting twisted with all the weights on one side so my body would rotate to the left as I was swimming. In the middle of adjusting the belt, it came undone and started slipping off my body. I grabbed the end just in time but one of the weights slipped off and fell to the bottom. I turned the belt around to prevent more weights from falling off. Without weights, I would float and the last thing I wanted was to shoot up to the surface without a safety stop.

The weight wasn’t far below so I swam down to retrieve it. I looped the belt through the slots on the weight, getting it back on (I should have just stuck it in my pocket, oh well). I then attempted to get my belt on. The belt had a cheap plastic latch that was difficult to get done up on the surface let alone with a jacket and tank on under the water. Ian saw that I was having some trouble so he came over to give me a hand – unfortunately as we were working on the belt, we ended up coming up to the surface. Neither of us had realized we were only 5 metres down– which was good because we hadn’t done the safety stop.

Since we had lost our group, we waited on surface for them to appear. When you lose your group underwater, you stay where you are for one minute then surface and wait there. We didn’t have to wait long for our group to surface. We explained what happened with many apologies and down we went to finish the dive.

The second day’s two dives went well. They were about the same amount of time 55 to 65 minutes with depths of 13 metres. The first dive of the day, we saw a great many fish including a large school of barracuda. At the time I had no idea they were barracuda, I just saw this huge school of silver fish so I swam over to them and ended up in the middle with all of them circling around me – it was truly spectacular. It wasn’t till we were on the boat later when Ian asked Wee what kind of barracuda they were that I found out I had been in the middle of them. What a great experience.

We also saw several tiny tan coloured Kuhl stingrays that are covered in blue spots. There were more thick sea cucumbers and one that was about a metre long and snake-like called Godeffroy’s sea cucumber. The reef was again covered in urchins and sea slugs and we were lucky to see two turtles up close:  a Green turtle and a Hawksbill. We saw some huge marbled grouper under a shelf of coral, a lionfish, and a nurse shark. On the second dive we hit a strong current and were swimming against it for some time. That really ate up our air.

When we came up, we were quite far from the boat so the rubber dingy came out to get us. Getting in wasn’t fun at all and I ended up with some pretty serious bruises but getting out was easy.  The divers on BB Divers have a habit of pushing people off the boat so of course one of the instructors tried to throw me off the dingy.  I grabbed him last minute yelling: if I go, so do you – so into the water we went.

We headed back to Koh Chang happy to get some diving in and hope that we hope have to wait long till our next dive!

The last day and a half on Koh Chang we spent at the Gaja Puri pool – sad to say, we didn’t even hit our lovely beach; just soaked up the sun and swam in the pool. Pick up at the hotel was 3pm and we loaded onto our little plane for the trip home.