Sat. Jan 13

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January 13

Today was a little rough in the sense that I still wasn’t feeling well and it was go go go. I was in the shower when we were leaving to go to a cooking class, so that was quite the rushed morning. We went to a popular market to pick out food to make for the Thai cooking class, then we headed to make some food. The market was hard for me—there were pig’s head and frogs and fish and I’m pretty sensitive to smells as it is. It was an experience, though. For lunch, we made green curry, papaya salad, pad Thai, and sticky rice with mango. You need a wok for basically all Thai meals so my mom already offered to buy one. It was quite a process to make (it took about an hour and a half). Lots of chopping, stirring, and turning up and down the heat. I still wasn’t feeling great so I couldn’t eat any of it, which was a bummer. I’m sure I made it perfectly, though. We got a cookbook to take home so I will definitely try some recipes when I get home. The Thai use ingredients like dried shrimp and fish oil, things that I never thought I would eat, but when they mix them with other things like basil (and a whole bunch of other stuff that I don’t know the name of) it tastes pretty good. After lunch, we went straight to the umbrella factory where we got to see how umbrellas are made. It is all completely hand-made and workers sit outside as you walk through and look at the process. It is very different from an American factory since there were no machines. The umbrellas were beautiful. After the factory, we went to a hot spring. This place was super interesting. You could buy eggs in a basket before entering and then cook them in the hot spring and eat hard-boiled eggs as a little snack. I didn’t dare try the eggs because my stomach is the worst, but they had quail and chicken eggs. It was funny to watch people waiting for their eggs cooking in a hot spring (the smell was different). We hung out there for an hour or so. It was very relaxing. After the hot spring, we went to another walking street to do some more shopping. This walking street was more like a flea market and had a lot of food so I didn’t really find a lot of stuff. I was also feeling really sick so I was ready to get back to bed. We had to make one last stop at McDonald’s for those who didn’t eat dinner and McDonald’s in Thailand is WAY different than America. It is pretty expensive compared to other foods, whereas in America it’s the cheapest thing there is. It is also so so fancy. They have patio seating! Super nice. I think they also served rice, but welcome to Thailand. It was a pretty long day and I was ready for bed when we got back tonight.

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