Masumi and I love to travel and have been many places around the world. To name them: Germany, Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Russia, Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, USA, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, Hong Kong, and South Korea. And of course, we’ve gone from one end of Japan to the other, Hokkaido to Okinawa and much in between.
But for four years, until this summer, we couldn’t travel internationally. Covid lockdowns and related travel obstacles put our wanderlust on hold. Our last trip was to Chiang Mai, Thailand, end of December 2019/beginning of January 2020. Now, with the fear porn of the “pandemic” at least temporarily suspended — I say that because I see their ramping it up again now targeting a return of many Covid restrictions in October — we boarded a plane late July and returned to Chiang Mai, I guess to pick up where we left off.
The trip was only eight days but it was action-packed and full of pleasant surprises. Maybe it was the rebound of being “let out of the cage” that created the perfect mindset, or maybe it truly was spectacular. Whatever the case, we both agreed that this was one of our best vacations ever!
To get things off to a unique start, the day after we arrived, we went to a Thai cooking school. We really lucked out and got the best instructor/stand-up comedian of the lot. That’s our class in the photo at the top and our instructor is the lady with the yellow apron bottom left. A lot was packed into six hours of hands-on learning the secrets of Thailand’s exotic, delicious, if sometimes way-too-spicy cuisine.
The school van picked us up at our guest house early in the morning. First stop: a local market to . . . well, I guess to shop.
Next we arrived at the school, and Masumi immediately made a new friend.
Anyway, back to the herb and spice garden. Our teacher took us on a tour, we pinched various spice plants, rolled their leaves between our thumb and fingers, smelled them, occasionally tasted them. Not much else to say about it. I guess it was a bit of an epiphany for yours truly that herbs did not magically appear on the shelf of a supermarket in bottles with fancy labels on them, stamped with an expiration date.
The final phase of our instruction, though it actually seemed out of order, was the preparation of pepper, both green and red, which seem to find their way into the preponderance of cuisine in this unique and colorful country. I mean hot pepper, not ordinary pepper. Use of this caustic substance is fairly common in the East. In South Korea, they serve dishes which could start a forest fire in Antarctica. India is another country that comes to mind when I think of pepper, and its wicked step-sister, curry. We learned how to grind into a lethal paste this venomous herb, which I think it God’s way of giving us a preview of Hell.
I was able to capture briefly how funny, energetic, enthusiastic, and entertaining our teacher was for this entire educational experience. Here it is. What a hoot!
So there you have it. An unforgettable six hours learning to make inedible food — just kidding! Our final dishes weren’t that spicy. At least we didn’t have to call an ambulance.
