Cambodia

-->

English is spoken widely in the region, although there are some interesting translations. The other day I was requested by a sign to “Please put some things in the rubbish bin” I was mortified that I didn’t have anything to throw away. The weather forecast on our arrival in Siem Reap said 36 C, realfeel 38 C. I asked Mags for a realfeel later but she wasn’t amused.

Yes, we’re in Cambodia and, like all the other visitors, we’re here to explore Angkor, the centre of the Cambodian empire that ruled most of Indochina from the ninth to thirteenth century. Early starts every day here for the dual purpose of avoiding the hottest part of the day and the coach loads of tourists that set out a little later. First stop Ta Prohm Temple. This is famed for being overgrown with trees with roots growing out of, and over the walls. Angelina Jolie was filmed here in her role as Laura Croft.

Next up, Angkor Tom, or Great city, a focal point in Angkor and home to the royal palace. This is a massive site established in the twelfth century by King Jayavarman VII covering nine square kilometres. We visited the Bayon temple on the site, a mind boggling sandstone structure with thirty nine out of fifty four towers still standing, each representing one of the Cambodian regions at the time. Each tower is adorned with giant faces on each side. It’s a giant site and mobbed with tourists but large enough to cope without it feeling overcrowded.

 

We left the old city and headed to Tonle Sap Lake, the largest in Indochina. We drove to a diminished river feeding the lake where we transferred to a small boat, cruising through the fishing village of Kampong Phluk before reaching the lake. The Tonle Sap river drains the lake during the dry season meandering towards Phnom Penh where it merges with the Mekong. The Mekong swells during the wet season with melt water and monsoon rains and it actually pushes the Tonle Sap river back upwards causing the lake to swell to five times its dry season size. So the river runs in both directions depending on the time of year. It really is a large lake, even in the dry season, covering 2,500 square kilometers. It supports a population of two million people nearly all of whom live from fishing. The Cambodians told us that around seventy percent of these are Vietnamese who remained after the war (technically illegally).

 

It floods every year here, and the locals have devised a brilliant idea – they build their houses on stilts. Radical I know, but perhaps we can learn from this and apply it in the Thames valley. There’s a twelve metre difference between the dry season and the flood in the village. This makes the houses look like giant cranes in the dry season.

Next day we started with a visit to Banteay Srei temple, dedicated to Shiva and the Hindu religion built with high quality pink sandstone. The carvings are wonderfully preserved as a result and the detail is fantastic, even after a thousand years.

We’d booked a hike up a jungle mountain before we flew out, but on the day with the realfeel at 40C we were having second thoughts. Well, we sweated out a few gallons of accumulated toxins, but managed to enjoy ourselves in the beautiful countryside. We saw no animals, due largely to deforestation as most of the forest has been cleared for farming, and, as our guide explained, people were hungry during the Khmer Rouge period and the subsequent civil war. If it moved, it was eaten. There were tigers and elephants in this region but, alas, no more. We did hear but not see a gibbon and heard cicadas a plenty, a particular species sounding like an electric saw. The walk terminated at a sacred royal bathing site where hundreds of lingas have been carved into a river bed. The linga being a Hindu phallic symbol. Water flowing over these lingas is deemed to turn it into holy water.

We finished the day at Beng Mealea temple. This site has not been restored but allowed to collapse slowly with mother nature gradually taking over with trees sprouting up through the ruins. Its main claim to fame is as a forerunner to Angkor Wat, built first with a similar design but on a smaller scale – a kind of baby Angkor Wat.

Our final day and we’ve saved the best till last, the daddy of all the temples, Angkor Wat. We rose at 5a.m. to catch the sunrise over the temple. This early start doesn’t guarantee a jump on the other tourists as everyone is doing the same thing. Walking over the concourse approaching the temple was like London Bridge at rush hour. Most of us gathered at the left inner moat that still had some water after the dry season waiting for the sun to appear, looking like paparazzi at the Oscars. The site itself is incredibly impressive, three of the five large lotus like towers visible as you approach providing the world famous image. There are three levels representing different layers of Hindu heaven, the higher as you ascend. The lower level is adorned with stone carvings on the walls depicting Hindu religious stories covering 800 metres in four galleries.

So it’s the end of our travels in Indochina and I think its fair to say that we are a little templed out, but we’ve enjoyed every minute. Next stop Australia and, at the risk of offending my Aussie friends, perhaps a little less culture but more R&R.

Vietnam: After Hanoi

We drove east for four hours to Halong Bay, home to two thousand limestone islands in the gulf of Tonkin.

We boarded our cruise and made for a fishing village nestled in the shelter of several islands. There are a number of these communities dotted around the gulf that sprung up as places to service the fisherman but gradually ended up as permanent communities. All the dwellings are built on plastic drums lashed together with wooden beams to provide a floating platform. On this is built a usually modest dwelling of wood topped with corrugated iron. The one we visited had about seventy abodes, a meeting place and a school that was built with money donated from Kambala School, Sydney.

Mags’ new policy this trip is to say yes to everything. This is how I came to be standing on deck at 7a.m. for a lesson in Tai Chi. We managed remarkably well with the warm up moves but there was lots of creaking and groaning as the stretching increased, and then we were soon tottering and flailing all over the place as the pace increased. Must have looked hilarious, the instructor barely able to keep a straight face. We warmed down with a climb up one of the tiny limestone islands. Tiny, but still five hundred steps to the top where the view from the observation tower was worth the effort.

Another short flight to Hue in central Vietnam, pronounced Whey with a light Geordie accent.

Another city tour that took in the impressive Citadel, and a three walled fortress and dwelling for the kings of the Nguyen dynasty from 1802 to 1945. A quick stop at a monastery after a short river cruise where a monk who burnt himself to death in Saigon as a protest to the governments restrictions on religious freedom in 1963. They have strangely kept and preserved the Austin car that he used to travel to Saigon. We also stopped at the tomb of Emperor Khai Dinh where ten thousand workers died in constructing it, many from Malaria.

We spent a few bizarre hours in a Zen Buddhist retreat. A home built recently by a wealthy businesswoman from Saigon who retired here. She receives a few visitors now and donates the money to good causes. It was a beautiful, immaculate house built with iron wood, a dark, incredibly durable and beautiful material. It has four buildings forming a square around an ornamental rectangular pond. We had a pleasant vegetarian lunch provided mainly from their own gardens, and joined our host in some quiet meditation slowly doing laps of the quadrant with our hands coated and massaged with a mixture of banana honey, yogurt and herbs. I don’t know what Mags was meditating on, but all I could think of is what a sight we must all look.

 

We indulged ourselves in a three day stop at a beach resort in Hoi An, bordering a long stretch of golden sands looking out over the South China sea. We spent a half day in the town which was a major trading port in the seventeenth century and has a well preserved old quarter where motor vehicles are excluded, so making it a pleasant change to stroll around without being beeped at incessantly by motorbike riders.

I’ve observed that the further south we travel, the country feels less and less communist. And in central Vietnam, the natives are born capitalists. Just pause at a shop front and the proprietor or shop assistant well pounce, maneuver you into a half nelson and not release you until you’ve made a purchase. Consequently, there’s all sorts of tat now being shipped back to our place.

Another short flight to Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, but still referred to by most Vietnamese by its former name. We stopped on route from the Airport at Cu Chi tunnels. This is area famed in Vietnam for resisting the US in what is known here as the American war. The VC built miles and miles of tunnels underground that they used as shelters, living quarters, armories and a means of escape from the Marines and a way of outflanking them. It really was humbling to walk through a battle field where so many people had lost their lives and to see the huge hollowed out craters created from bombs dropped by B52s. We entered a short thirty metre section of one tunnel and had to squat low to proceed along it. It was very small and uncomfortable, my shoulders touching the sides of the walls. To spend hours and days down there would have been tortuous. Only one night in Saigon. Shouldn’t that be Bangkok? Anyway, enough time for a quick photo opportunity at two impressive structures built by the French; the post office and the cathedral, a derivative of the famous Notre Dam in Paris - and for Mags to enter into a lively debate with a local politician in the hotel bar. Lucky to escape imprisonment there.

We continued south to the Mekong delta where the mighty river spreads out into countless waterways, like the back of an old man’s hand, before finally emptying into the South China Sea. Here we visited a brick factory by boat where the clay from the river is shaped, dried and fired in kilns for days. The kilns are heated by burning rice husks and the resulting smoke hangs heavy over the surrounding area. On route to the next stop we changed transport to bicycle. Mags was a little apprehensive about this as it’s many years since we cycled; Mags reckoned it was thirty five years since she was last on to wheels. But anyway, it’s literally like riding a bike, and we were soon wobbling our way along the narrow lanes of the local villages – although most of the locals we passed couldn’t help smiling or laughing. 

After 20 minutes we came to a typical village where we chatted with a veteran from the Cambodian war with the Khmer Rouge. He spent five years at the front and, unlike most of his compatriots, came back alive and in one piece. The war started in ’79 , only four years after the American war, and lasted until 1989. We also visited a coconut factory, the area being famous for this fruit, and known colloquially as the coconut region. Every part of this incredible tree is used. There’s the juice, the flesh that is used to make milk, cream and oil, the outer husk is used to make mats, the inner shell is used as fuel, either directly or it is turned into charcoal. The leaves and trunks are used in building, and there’s even a coconut worm that lives inside the tree that is eaten as a delicacy. It’s very expensive, as you have to kill the tree to harvest it.

Next day, an early morning tour to the local floating market where farmers sell their produce wholesale on the river. Each boat ties a sample of what they are selling at the top of a large pole at the front of the boat. They stay at the market until they sell out, usually two or three days.

We pressed on by road further south to Chau Doc where a respected general who lived in the eighteenth century dreamed that a female deity told him that she was on the mountain and that if he would seek her she would keep the region safe. Well, being a general, he didn’t climb the mountain personally, but sent some soldiers. The boys came back with the intelligence that they had found the lady goddess in the form of a stone but that she was too heavy to lift. (A neat way of avoiding the issue by the men, I thought). The general had another dream where the lady says to him that she can only be brought down off the mountain by nine female virgins. As Mags said “We virgins always get the hard work”. Anyway, said virgins were rounded up and made their way upto the mountain. (No doubt escorted by the soldiers now frantically looking for a rock resembling a women so as not to disappoint the general). The lady was duly found and brought down to the village and installed in a temple. She is there today looking remarkably like a painted sculpture. We arrived on a holy day and, it being a Saturday, there were thousands of Vietnamese people all jostling to enter the temple and pay their respects to the Goddess. This site doesn’t attract many foreign visitors and we found ourselves quite an attraction. There was a real carnival atmosphere with street vendors everywhere and people clearly having a party. Inside the temple there were several signs in Vietnamese. Mags asked our guide to translate. They were the dos and don’ts of the temple, the “not allowed”. One stated “No superstition” Mags observed “But its all superstition, isn’t it?” Possibly not the wisest comment considering we were surrounded by the faithful, but thankfully only our guide spoke English and he misunderstood. “Exactly. The people pray for good luck, fortune, health and happiness but they are supposed to be just giving thanks to the Goddess for peace.”

Alas, our journey in Vietnam ends – and yes, the spring roles are sensational.

Hanoi

Good morning Vietnam, the land of the spring roll. How exciting is that!

First stop Hanoi, a place that I think can best be described as complete pandemonium. We absolutely love it.

I really must read our itinerary though, as shortly after arriving Mags announced that we were off to see a water puppet show. Yes, I thought I was hearing things too, a water puppet show.

This is a traditional art form that originated in the paddy fields of Northern Vietnam. The farmers would entertain their children with home made puppets operating them from behind a bamboo screen in the water logged fields, Our show was in a theatre in the centre of town. A small rectangular pond was the stage with musicians either side playing traditional instruments.  The performance was very skillfully done with traditional farming scenes interspersed with dancing serpents, phoenix, turtles and ducks. Unfortunately, the target audience is clearly children, and not aging tourists who can’t understand what’s being said.  The fifty minute performance was possible forty minutes too long.

First thing next day, the mandatory city tour. All aboard to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum located in Dinh square. This is a very impressive, very obviously Soviet inspired monument to honor the father of the communist state. Also on site are two residences that Ho Chi Minh lived in surrounded by beautiful parkland, and the presidential palace. The residences are relatively modest as the great leader wanted to set a modest example to the people. The presidential palace is a grand yellow building erected by the French but used in Ho Chi Minh’s time for official functions and is sometimes now used to house VIP international guests.

Two more temples (one Confucian and one Taoist), a short stop for coffee, and we’re off on our street food tour with guide Tu, dodging the traffic down the back lanes of Hanoi, sitting on very low plastic stools along the roadside being cooked improbable meals all along the hustle and bustle of everyday Hanoi life. This really is an assault on all the senses. First, you have to negotiate the traffic. Hanoi used to be known as the city of a million bicycles. Now, it’s more like the city of 10 million motorbikes and scooters. No one stops here for pedestrians (they don’t often stop for traffic lights). You cross the road by slowly walking into the traffic and trusting that the motorbikes will weave around you. Keep a steady pace and trust to luck! 

Tu knows his way around and guided us expertly to the best (and safest) places to eat. We stopped first for a bowl of fish noodles; crispy fish in a broth of rice noodles and a mount of fresh greens all prepared before us, with chili sauce to add as required  - yum. Next an omelette with Vietnamese greens cooked by a girl on the kurb with her portable kitchen. She spent a few minutes looking for trade after she’d served us and then upped sticks to find another patch. Lots of other dishes swilled down with the occasional local beer. I think my favorite was crispy prawn pancakes that were deep fried in front of our boggling eyes and served piping hot with a green salad and dipping sauce. Not forgetting fresh sweetcorn, stir fried with butter, dried shrimp and fresh herbs by a girl who looked twelve years old and, oh, what I think can best be described as a Vietnamese hotdog; a small thin baguette filled with pork paste, cucumber, spring onion and a peanut and chili sauce – wonderful. I’m getting hungry again just writing this. Quick plug for Tu’s blog http://streetfoodtourshanoi.blogspot.com/

Laos

We were startled to discover that our reputation had preceded us on our first night in Laos at our hotel when we ordered a bottle of wine with dinner. “I’m sorry sir but this is the last bottle of this wine that we have. Do you still want to order it?”

Entering Laos was very entertaining. Although we could see Laos from our hotel, we had to drive for an hour south to cross over the river at the new bridge. Exiting Thailand on one side of the river was fairly straightforward, but entering Laos was a lesson in patience. First, you have to queue to hand in your passport and forms filled in in triplicate. There are six immigration officials behind the glass who work on the passports in turn, presumably each performing a different function. Eventually the chap at the end holds up a passport to the waiting throng and calls out a name. This usually takes a few attempts as not all of the nationalities come easily to him. The passport holder then approaches him to pay the appropriate visa fee to reclaim his or her passport with said visa. The fee for the visa depends on where you come from – 30 USD for Eastern Europe, 35$ USD for Western Europe and the United States, and for some unknown reason, 42 USD if you are from Canada. Not sure what the Canadians ever did to upset Laos but there it is. This is not a quick process so you just have to roll with it and wait. All the officials are laughing and smiling the whole time clearly enjoying themselves.

Anyway, certainly no stress and before too long we were through and had been transferred to our boat for our cruise down the Mekong river to Luang Prabang. There was about thirty of us motoring down river in a Na Va, roughly translated as long narrow boat (or dragon boat) which I think neatly sums it up. We were arranged around tables laterally across the boat, eight people in wicker chairs around a table. All very comfortable. The tourists were split roughly equally into French speakers and English speakers and there was a guide for each group. The Mekong runs from Tibet to Vietnam over four thousand kms. We travelled down a short 300 km stretch entirely inside Laos although we had Thailand on the right bank and Laos on the left for the first hour. 

We stopped at a couple of riverside villages along route. People living very simple lives in self made bamboo huts farming a few crops, rice in the wet season and peanuts and sweet potatoes in the dry. They keep chickens, pigs and ducks that run around the village under the houses that are on stilts – very free range. They also farm water buffalo that are regularly seen on the riverbank.  One of the villages had a thriving hand made scarf cottage industry, all made by the women of the village on hand looms. Mags bought a few dozen.

A couple of our fellow passengers asked the guide if the villagers operated a cooperative for their produce. On hearing that they didn’t asserted loudly “Oh they’re doing it all wrong. They’d get a much better price if they formed a cooperative. We had great success in India with it, didn’t we darling?”  The villagers have been doing this for hundreds of years and they’d taken all of five minutes before telling them how to live.

 

We arrived in Luang Prababg two days later thoroughly relaxed. This ‘city’ was once the capital of Laos and is famous for its temples, monasteries and monks. You really can’t escape Buddha in this part of the world and Luang Prabang is Buddha central, also known as temple city with over fifty temples serving a population of only fifty thousand.

We started very early to catch the ceremony where the townsfolk offer alms to the monks at dawn. Hundreds of monks, resplendent in the orange robes, walk in a single file down a street crammed with temples where mostly old knotted women seated or kneeling on the pavement give each monk a small portion of sticky rice. The monks collect the rice and share this out as their breakfast. Some of the monks are incredibly young, just boys really. We were informed that novices can begin from the age of nine. All male Buddhists are expected to serve some time as monks. Here in Laos, the custom provides a means for poor rural families to provide an education for their older children as the trainee monks are taught English, French, Maths and the sciences as well as Buddhism.

  

Our tour then took us from temple to temple where we marveled at the decorative art work and craftsmanship. I found it really interesting as I’d never been inside a Buddhist temple before and knew very little about the religion. We also visited the ex Royal Palace where the beautiful rooms were filled with presents from around the world. The USA had sent Lincoln cars and rocks brought back from the moon. Australia had sent a boomerang (and yes its still there). The UK appears to have sent nothing. The Japanese had sent some stunning coloured glass that local craftsmen had used to create intricate and beautiful murals on the walls.

We made friends on the cruise with a lovely couple from Henley who share our love of wine and a mutual dislike for condescending tourists. Wandering the streets of Luang Prabang looking for something to eat, we bumped into them at the Tamarind restaurant and joined them for dinner. Well, this ended up being quite messy but I think they were to blame. No, honestly. We did justice to a very fine Laotian meal that included barbequed buffalo and steamed river fish before repairing to a nearby bar to put the world to rights, again!

I’ve never been in a city before where the road users are so polite. The primary mode of transport is by motorbike with whole families sometimes hanging precariously on. Not many people use helmets so, on the face of it, it looks really dangerous but everyone drives so slowly and considerately. Well, a lot of these vehicles probably can’t go over 15 mph. So in the end I think it’s probably very safe. I didn’t hear anyone beep his or her horn the whole time we were there.

A very short hop south by plane to Vientiane, the capital. A much larger city with around seven hundred thousand inhabitants but still relatively small and laid back and with a compact city centre that is easily negotiated on foot. I say easily, in that you don’t have to walk far, but the pavements are used for parking cars and motorbikes so you have to walk on the road. We arrived in the afternoon and went exploring but it was hot and dusty and we soon felt in need of refreshment. We found a wine bar and had a couple of beers while the obese French proprietor fussed over his accounts smoking Gauloises, and an English charlatan ex-pat preached to a gullible American backpacker. Next day we had the obligatory half-day city tour with several more temples and a visit the Putuxai, a strange copy of the arc de triumph in Paris that somehow ended up being adorned with Hindu gods.

 

We’re so relaxed that our brains are definitely in neutral now. While we were at the airport waiting for our flight to Hanoi, Mags said

“I can’t believe I’ve been bitten by a mosquito here.”

“What, in South East Asia?” I replied.

“No, you idiot, here” pointing to her wrist ,and we both burst out laughing. We’re regressing into childhood alarmingly quickly.

Thailand

Bangkok. Yes, we’re in Thailand and there’s flowers everywhere. Stand still for a moment and someone will throw a garland over you.

Only a short stop in Bangkok to acclimatize ourselves. We stayed on the banks of the Choa Prayo river, or river of Kings. After a short power nap we drifted downstairs for a little R&R.  The bar was promising some live Jazz so we installed ourselves there after a light dinner. The four-piece house band was doing a fair job of knocking out a few old standards. After about three numbers a large, American lady burst in, took the stage and apologised for being late. She was the singer. She clearly didn’t know any of the band, what they were called, or what their individual names were. Not a lot of preparation there then and not looking promising, but thankfully she could sing and we had a fairly good evening’s entertainment. After a few songs, she started to sweat profusely (she was a large unit) and said that she was tired. Mags looked her in the eye and said “Oh no you’re not”, clearly unimpressed with our Diva’s work ethic.

We spent the next morning at the Grand Palace, reached via a twenty minute ride up river in a water taxi. 

 This is a very impressive site housing temples spread out over roughly 200,000 sq. metres built by successive kings all handily named Rama (versions 1 to 9 starting in 1782). It’s an enormous site. Each building is decorated lavishly with glass, gold leaf and bizarrely broken Chinese pottery. There are lots of tall sculptures of Demons, monkeys, Queens and Kings, and Buddhas of course. Demons feature prominently here and there are stories from the Buddhist religion marvelously and decoratively illustrated on some of the walls. The chief Demon appears to have taken a liking to the Queen devising and executing various cunning schemes to abduct her, obliging the King to rescue her.

At the centre of the site is the emerald Buddha housed in the most important temple. Not actually a large Buddha but very sacred and brilliantly dressed in robes of jewels. He has a costume for each season, Winter, Summer and Rainy.

We flew an hour or so north from Bangkok to Chiang Rai in the golden Triangle, a region encompassing parts of Thailand, Myanmar (formally known as Burma), and Laos. Another hours drive and we arrived at our resort at the very centre of the triangle where we had views of both Myanmar and Laos from our balcony. 

 

We stayed in an elephant retreat, and duly took the opportunity to on our second day to learn how to be a Mahoot (elephant rider). If you’re thinking that this sounds a little adventurous for us you’d be right, and when we came face to face with these magnificent animals at the elephant camp, we thought so too. After a few basic instructions in elephant speak – go, turn and stop – we had to climb aboard.  I’d naively thought the elephant would kneel down to make this easier but you actually have to climb up hauling yourself up with a rope which encircles the elephant’s midriff.  It’s at this point that Mags cleverly claimed shoulder injury so that she’s be allocated the smaller, baby elephant that was easier to mount. I was given the old lady – no need to say any more there. Anyway, we both managed to embark OK largely due to the assistance of two real local Mahoots who shoved us upwards. 

We rode around for two hours upwards to the top of a hill where we had magnificent views over the jungle encompassing the mighty Mekong river. After just two minutes riding we both knew it was going to hurt. You ride bareback just behind the elephant’s ears and with your hands on her head. But even at this relatively narrow point on an elephant’s back, its girth is considerable, so your legs are permanently forced wider than a ballerina performing a grand jete.

Despite our ‘training’, the elephants just do what they want really, which means veering off the path to eat. And these animals are deforestation machines. They chew through a hundred kilograms of vegetation a day, stripping leaves off branches with ruthless efficiency. They happily ignore our vain shouts for them to move forward. Luckily each of us was accompanied by a proper Mahoot who the elephant will eventually, reluctantly obey. Anyway, quite an exhilarating experience overall (or was that relief at just surviving). We finished with the elephants diving into a bath to wash with us still on them. Great fun. We walked back to the resort like John Wayne after three days in the saddle.

We spent the afternoon in the spa, having booked a Thai massage to try to knock our bodies back into their normal, non-bow-legged shape.  I’d not had a Thai massage before but soon found out that it involves applying pressure at various points on the body. We had three options, light, medium, or deep pressure. I opted for medium whilst Mags went for deep – she’s always had a high pain threshold. Two slight Thai girls ushered us into the massage room. They start at the bottom and work their way up, so at halfway it was starting to get interesting. I had to recite Shakespeare to myself backwards to keep focus. Actually, no need as I was just trying not to shout out in pain. It was hard to believe that such small people could apply so much pressure. I’d started to think that, once they’d covered our eyes up, they had swapped places with a couple of Russian discus throwers. The soft background music was in sharp contrast to the violence meted out at the tables. No really, it was a very relaxing experience and a great way to unwind.

The next day we awoke early to travel to the nearest town, Chiang Saen, to visit its fresh food market. We had booked into a Thai cookery class and the first job was to buy the ingredients. Yes, I did say ‘we’ meaning Mags came along too. We arrived at the market about 7:45 a.m., early enough but it had been open since 3 a.m. The market was vibrant but not too busy as most locals shop earlier. Our chef and guide, Wit, took us from stall to stall where we tried all sorts of new and strange delights from pig’s blood soup to Thai coffee with some barbequed catfish in between. Also available were ants’ eggs and fried crickets, which are eaten as a snack. We bought a fresh Tilapia and I mean fresh, as the locals like to buy their fish live, so they are brought to market in tanks and ours was killed in front of us. Of course there is the usual array of vegetables, fruit and spices. All sorts of chilies and curry pastes were available and the smells were fantastic as the produce was so fresh and fragrant.

 

Back at the hotel, we were taken to the cooking school and to our cooking stations. We felt like contestants in masterchef. We donned on our aprons and chefs hats and cooked up a feast. We were the only two in the class that day so we had some very personal tuition. I found it hard to concentrate with the novelty of seeing Mags behind a stove next to me. Actually, we didn’t have to do much as most of the ingredients were pre-prepared, but we had a ball and learned quite a lot about how to balance the flavors from the chef. Anyway we both managed to prepare a hot and sour soup, a crispy sea bass with green mango salad, and a Pad Thai that we then ate with a Thai white wine, delicious.

Off to Laos tomorrow.