Day 5. Thai Culinary School.

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Besides having to look for accommodation and the nightmare of thinking to transport my two trunks full of dive and photo gear I had another issue. I was down to the last couple of pieces of clean laundry. I’ve heard next door to the school there is a super affordable laundry place…I put my stinky clothes in a bag and carried them all the way over on the subway. It rained during class and the clothes wash lady dries the clothes under the sun and I couldn’t get my stuff back the same day. I was starting to think that if I wanted to wear clean clothes I was going to have to buy something on the side of the street.

I wanted to look at 2 places to move to that I had found online.One place I found in the Facebook page for tourists: BANGKOK EXPATS. IT was awesome but completely out of budget…the price online in their website was different and they wanted a crazy amount for deposit. I took a screen shot of the prices on the website and the lady still told me to my face that it was not the price. That besides the high deposit she was asking for threw me to the side of the road.

The second place was a suggestion of one of the ladies at school and to tell the truth, as I write, I haven’t decided what I am going to do yet.

Deb had sent me info n a bundle of links…the price and area were right but it had to many signs of “not responsible for stuff left in the room” or bring your own locks and bla bla…but I wanted to ck it out…even though all red flags, I wanted to see for my self.

Once in school one of the girls told me about a place 2 train stops down for 6000 B a month…called lodge61. Everyone told me just to go there…so took off the option with the “safety red flags” off my list of places to visit today. I asked if lodge61 was close to a metro station and safe, they said yes, close to a mall and a terminal station to travel all around Thailand. Easy and convenient… but I thought it was going to be a hole in the wall.

My first option, Liberty Place, was beautiful but a bit of a walk…doable walk…located in in an average area for 14000 B a month and with a 24000 B deposit…

There is a girl from Vietnam, Chloe, living in Thailand for the last 2 years and told me to try as much as possible not to give deposit because they always find something not to give it back to you and they keep it. I kept that statement fresh in my head and when the lady told me that she wanted 24000 Baht deposit…I wasn’t willing to risk it even if it is beautiful. I continued down my list of options, I headed back to the sky train and went to the see Lodge61 the option that one of the ladies at school had suggested www.lodge61.com .

Another thing that I had to make sure is that the new place is “real” walking distance to subway or Airtrrain. Chloe is staying outside of Bangkok for 9000 Ba but she has to take a cab or bike to school every day…which I think she said about 500 B a day in transportation. I told her that she was crazy. That is the price want to pay for the room a night!!

Lodge61 ended up being awesome! The price is actually better than affordable and the area is touristic, clean, pretty and neat. It is located behind a very nice mall with a huge movie theater. Its 1 minute walk from Air train. The entrance is nice and it looks like a french ample cafe. When I saw it I thought oh oh its going to be $$$. Well the second floor is 8000 B for the month. Higher floors are double and triple. Small clean pretty and cozy room. 500 B extra a month for Internet. 300 B extra for refrigerator and Aircon is by meter and he says that average is about 1500 a month for running it 8 hrs a day. It has elevator and bellman. Visitors not allowed. Private bathroom with king size bed. I do have to bring my own linens and pillows. 2 stations from my school and I might be able to walk the distance it I wanted to but I don’t care for that yet. I will be doing a lot of walking regardless.

The downside is that they want 2 months deposit and they swear that if I don’t break anything they will give it back to me and they wanted cash….I did a google search for reviews but what I found is mostly from people that stayed a few days I didn’t not see anything about people getting screwed with the deposit...

Any way, class was yummy and and delish today. We made 5 dishes: Yellow curry, Tom Yum, Chicken Satay, Pork stir Fry and Papaya salad.

I confirmed that I can’t really eat curry in the middle of a hot day but I enjoyed the Tom Yum and the papaya salad as they are a couple of my favorite Thai dishes.

The girls had to help me macerating ingredients because I hurt my wrist with the mortar and the teacher told me to give it a rest. It even hurts when I'm typing.….I always had weak joints and every now and then my wrist hurts just from cooking…chopping with a heavy knife or lifting a heavy pot…anyway Thai cooking requires to macerate the condiments in a stone mortar. Today I couldn’t even lift it up : ( I listened to my teacher and went to a pharmacy to get a wrap and I'm giving my wrist a break other wise I won’t make it thru the class next week.

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