Day 3

Exhausted at 2:28 am Bangkok time, but comfortably checked into our comfortable hotel. The flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok was packed and not too long. Judging from the length of the drive from the airport to our hotel, this is a big modern city. We drove mostly on a 6-lane highway which is in much better condition than many of the roads in our area!

Looking forward to our Thai cooking class tomorrow - we are going to a market to buy the ingredients, cooking the dishes, and having them for dinner.

The photos on yesterday’s post were taken off the screen on the back of the seat in front of me; the odd one is from a camera mounted under the plane and shows our flight path over the North Pole.

I think this is still day 3... breakfast in this Bangkok Hotel could be mistaken for lunch; while they do make eggs any way to order and offer various pastries, there were 50 items on offer that I did not recognize and a wide array of dishes with rice and other non-traditional breakfast foods, including dim sum, pork satay, and chicken curry. Lots of fruit and juices, some of which I recognized. Coffee not so great - will need to learn to drink tea!

We took the free hotel boat ferry up the river and across, disembarking into an area of crowded markets and many street food vendors. The streets were crowded with all manner of devices with wheels and tires, and it was hot and humid. We had a 4 pm appointment with the cooking school, so we had to catch a cab - which was not easy - no Uber here. And of course the cab driver did not know exact address where were heading, so we were dropped off at the entrance of this giant temple compound (Wat Pho) and thus ensued  one very long, hot, and frustrating effort to find the “cooking school.” Turns out none of the 15 people we asked had heard of the school (which turned out to be a one man operation), and he was unable to give us directions over the phone (in spite of 5 separate calls).

We finally stumbled on it, 1/2 hour late, hot and flustered thinking it was a bust. But we were the only two students, and after we calmed down and drank a bottle of water, we had an interesting evening. Andy took us to a market (alas some distance away), where we bought almost all the gredients for three dishes - pad thai, a coconut-based Massaman curry, and minced meat (pork) with herbs. We each had our own cooking station, and Alex did an excellent job of walking through the recipes. In the end, there was way more food than we could eat, but he was able to share the leftovers with neighbors. Will post a few photos tomorrow - too beat tonight.