My my- we are in Chaing Mai- cooking and muay Thai

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I woke up at about 7am and sam was also stirring. It was light outside, and wow, what a lovely scene to wake up up to- chugging through the smokey green hazy hills of northern Thailand. Word passed round that we were 2 hours late and had another 2 hours to go, so we decided to see if we could get some more sleep. Eventually one of the stewards on the train came round calling breakfast, so we had to get up and change the bed into 2 seats once again. Breakfast consisted of 2 fried eggs, toast, a slice of ham and some small sausages. It tasted ok as far as train food goes, and we opened a bag of crisps and kitkat to polish off with our train cup of morning tea- yum! 
We sat and read some of our book still chugging along slowly, and once again- were told we were delayed so laid on the seats in hope of more sleep. Thankfully it came, although I don't know how we managed to get squished up on those seats.
We were woken up about 20 minutes from Chaing Mai, by now we had been on the train almost 21 hours! At last, we arrived and the humidity was a welcome change from the aircon that had been constant on the train.
We were going to go straight for lunch to a temple, but as we were late, our transport had other arrangements, so we were taken straight to the park hotel; our home for the next 2 nights. 
We had a couple of hours to get a shower and changed before meeting up with Boom again at 1615 pm for cookery classes.
We were given a leaflet to choose what dishes we were going to make, and headed off to the market to buy our ingredients. Now, one thing about this place which I don't think I could ever describe, would be the smells. When it smells good it smells good, when it smells bad it's bloody awful. Luckily, the majority of the market smelled good, with cooked chicken and spices. Some of the dried, and fresh fish sections were a little less pleasant but ok in the grand scheme of things. I tried to ignore the lack of hygiene routines that would see any uk fish market closed down (I.e fish guts and blood all over the floor and we were stepping through it in our flip-flops) we stopped at one stall where she netting a fish out of the container and whacked on on the head a few times for good measure, before slicing and gutting it in next to no time. There was a bag of toads on the side, and I did actually feel quite sorry for them sat in the net bag waiting meet their fate. Accoss the way from them sat a bucket of eels- all flapping about everywhere when she took the lid off- nice....
So, with out visit to the Thai equivalent of tesco complete, we boarded the minibus again to head to the cookery school.

It was a lovely little place nestled away, called Baan Hongnual cookery school
It had such an intimate homely feel to it. Our teacher Pam was excellent, explaining every last little bit of the ingredients, and showing such patience and we'd cocked up the spring rolls.
We made pad Thai with prawns, a mixture of Thai green curry and a Masaman curry. The preparation seemed to take a while, with all the sugars, and flours and herbs, but whack it all in the pan, and it was relatively easy. I think it's fair to say we all did a good job as it tasted amazing. For dessert, we made deep fried banana which tasted fab, but by this point we were all quite stuffed so had to take it back in a doggy bag. This wasn't before trying a Thai take on an egg that was pink on the outside and green on the inside on account of it being soaked in something for a month or so. It was kind of like jelly in its appearance, and looking at the wretch expressions on the faces of others, didn't make me tempted to try any.
We thanked our teachers, and got given a cookery book to take away with all the ingredients and recipes in that we had made today. Not bad for 800baht.
Some decided to go on back to the hotel, but a handful of us went with Boom go watch some Muay Thai. It was a really good atmosphere, and the first bout was a pair of lads who were only 13, but had six packs to put any man to shame. I loved the little ritual dance thing they did before the fight, and with the music in the background and the smell of tiger balm in the air, a bottle of beer Laos in my hand-I was having a brilliant time.
There were a couple of other good bouts with one girl getting knocked out. Boom seemed like she'd had a bit to drink and wanted to go onto a reggae club but we came home squeezed in the back of a tuktuk, in the pouring rain.
Sam checked her Internet, we went to bed watching the news about the riots in the UK- which thankfully feels a million miles away right now.     

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