Nellie and Monk were off cooking again today on their 2nd and last course at the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School. The course is actually held at Sompon Nabnian's house which is about 20 minutes drive outside Chiang Mai on a private gated estate - more California than Chiang Mai. Participants are picked up from their hotels, shuttled to the office in the walled city to pay their dues and are then driven off to Sompon's bijou residence. It's not actually held in his house as such, rather, in an an extension he's built to house the cookery school. It's very well equipped nad has a large, airy cooking area with individual workplaces with cookers, and a separate classroom where the techniques for each dish are demonstrated before we novices go off to try our best. ... read more

Nellie and Monk were outside the hotel this morning at 9:30 waiting to be whisked off to their Thai cookery class. Monk had booked today, which was an introduction to the ingredients and some basic dishes, and also Thursday which includes a trip to the market in the morning before cooking our purchases in the afternoon. The dishes for today are shown in the photos. After cooking each dish, we all retired to the tables and tasted the results of our efforts. Monk thought that he and Nellie had done quite well and everything tasted authentically Thai. It was an awful lot of food to have to consume during the day though. Monk went on a fast in the evening and opted for just a couple of Chang beers. The course, at the 'Chiang Mai Thai ... read more

At 7am, the boat 'Pak Ou' cast off from the pier in Luang Prabang and headed upriver on its 330 kilometer journey which would take the next 2 full days, its destination, Houai Say on the Lao side of the river opposite Chiang Khong in Thailand. There are three popular ways to travel on the Mekong river between Houai Say and Luang Prabang, or vice versa. If you need to do the journey in one day, and you don't fear for your life, you can take the speedboat, also known as the 'jetboat'. These boats look more like a rowing boat with a car engine strapped to the back and propel up to 8 people at incredible speed and deafening noise. Passengers are supposed to don lifejackets and crash helmets, but during Monk's journey, he saw ... read more

Nellie and Monk decided to spend the day exploring Luang Prabang on a walk set out by Monk's trusted Lonely Planet guide. The walk was supposed to take 4-6 hours but, after 6 hours, Monk and Nellie had only completed half of it. There were so many intersting diversions. Luang Prabang has literally dozens of temples known as wats. Unlike wats in some other places, almost every one that Nellie and Monk visited was full of monks going about their business. That's not really so surprising because there are probably thousands of monks in this town. It's quite refreshing to be in a place where there are far more monks than there are tourists! While looking around the grounds of one wat, Monk was approached by a young monk who said he'd been learning English for ... read more

The flight taking Nellie and Monk to Bangkok left Dubai on time and, unlike before, Nellie's assistance was not needed on the flight deck. It arrived in Bangkok at 08:00 on a cool, 17 degree, foggy morning. Once again, Monk was very impressed with Emirates Airlines and has no hesitation in recommending them. Bangkok Airport Tip from Monk If you're coming in on an international flight and are transferring to another airline to go on another international flight, Bangkok Aiways (BA) to Luang Prabang in my case, baggage transfer can be a problem because the baggage carousels are beyond immigration and you don't want to have to get a visa or pay airport tax just to get your bags. Of course, none of the big international airlines will ticket you all the way through to a ... read more