Cooking and celebrating Thai-style

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Since Russell and I are both keen cooks, we decided to do a one-day Thai cooking course at Apple's Retreat, a nearby guesthouse with a modern cooking classroom attached. Despite the dishes chosen being virtually identical to the course I did previously in Chang Rai, I still learnt a lot. Our teacher was a lady called Apple (apparently not the Apple of guesthouse name), an excellent cook who talked relentlessly about everything and anything.

She took us to the local market to show us which ingredients we would be using. This was a fantastic experience in itself as Apple took the time to show us around all the different stalls, pointing out the various strange ingredients and buying us various things for us to try.

Back at the guesthouse (located in a beautiful spot directly on the river) we got down to the business of cooking. Russell and I took two dishes each; I took Tom Yum soup and green curry, Russell took Chicken with cashew nuts and Pad Thai. Apple proved to be an excellent teacher and all the food we cooked turned out far tastier than we had any right to expect.

Once everything was cooked, we sat down in the restaurant on the river and consumed the tasty fruit of our efforts. It was a significant amount of food which we struggled to finish; I didn't eat again until lunchtime the next day, 24 hours later.

(A quick note on Apple's Retreat: This place serves fantastic food, yet because of it's location slightly away from the main strip, it is often overlooked as a destination for a meal. I saw the restaurant virtually deserted a couple of times. In my experience (and I've spent more than a month in Kanchanaburi now) this is the best food to be had. It's five minutes walk over the bridge next to the second 7/11. Try the steamed fish and the banana flower salad. And obviously the Pad Thai, which is the best I've ever eaten.)

The remainder of our time in Kanchanaburi was spent celebrating Songkran, the Thai new year. The locals celebrate in a way that seems entirely appropriate given the intense heat we were experiencing (we had several days of 38 degrees) – a huge national waterfight.

Whilst this isn't the traditional way to celebrate the new year, one way Songkran was originally celebrated (and still is) was by throwing scented water over Budha images in order to cleanse them. This water was then collected and gently poured onto people's shoulders. But given the heat and the Thai's natural sense of fun, this evolved into the massive waterfight that we took part in over five days.

Some consider the evolution of Songkran to be disrespectful to Thai culture (not to mention dangerous - every year sees numerous deaths, largely as a result of traffic accidents – more than two hundred during the five day period this year), but all we saw were Thais having a great time and cooling off in style.

So for several days all we did was roam up and down the main riverside road, engaging in waterfights with the locals and the smattering of other westerners staying on the strip (and willing to engage in the celebrations – a surprising number of people chose to cower in their guesthouses rather than brave the streets). For a short time we made our base a streetside bar we had visited a couple of nights earlier (the benefit being easy access to water kept in a tank – with a huge block of ice in for extra shock factor!), but for the most part we roamed up and down, filling our water pistols in the nearest tank whenever they ran out of ammo.

It was wonderful to see the Thai people relax and enjoy themselves so much and to have the opportunity to engage with them in such a fun tradition. It was a fantastic way to round up our stay in Kanchanaburi. Once again, I've ended up staying here for weeks instead of days and, as always, it was a great place to hang out.

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