Bangkok

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August 15th
Our two days in Chiang mai were spent absorbing the local culture. After visiting Doi Suthep Wat the first day we looked for something uniquely Thai that we could immerse ourselves in…we were roaming the streets of Chiangmai visiting various Buddhist Wats when a sign lead us to a Thai Cooking Class. We signed up for the cooking class beginning the following day.

August 16th
We were picked up by the cookery school bus and were transported to the school were we joined others and headed out to the market to learn Thai ingredients. After picking up produce, we headed back to the class and began our first dish.Thom Khe Ghai…we then quickly advanced to Red Curry Tofu, Papaya Salad and Flat noodles in vegetable sauce.
For dessert we prepared Steamed Banana Cake which we took with us to the train station to catch our evening sleeper train.

We boarded the 530PM sleeper train to Bangkok. We arrived in Bangkok the next morning at 615AM and headed to the hotel by city bus. Bangkok is a huge bustling metropolis with crazy traffic and awful pollution. We checked into the Hotel Manohra which is located in the jewellery district. The latter happens to be inhabited by a large number of Indians we found out. This was not a very tourist friendly place and we were met by a large number of touts and swindlers. We headed to lunch at a vegetarian lunch market. In the evening we decided to head to China town but to our surprise found this part of town closing early with most of the streets appearing desolate and very unclean. Sanjay was planning to give a talk the next morning and we were both planning how to get out of Bangkok shortly after.

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