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Published: October 7th 2010
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White Sands
The beach along from us. Having spent a week or so just relaxing and enjoying the comforts of our hotel, swimming in the pool and eating lots of nice Thai food, we decided that it was time to actually do something. In short order we had booked ourselves a days diving in Koh Rang National Marine Park and a day long Thai cookery course.
An 8 o’clock pick up meant an early start the next day, we just managed to eat breakfast before the pickup truck came for us at the hotel. The weather was looking ominous, and sure enough, it started to rain whilst on route, causing a scramble to close the rain covering on the back of the open truck. As soon as we arrived at the dive shop we were made to feel at home, our equipment was quickly sorted and put in to boxes, which they then loaded on to the boat for us. The boat itself was large and spacious, with an upper deck to chill out on for the hour and a half journey to Koh Rang. During the journey the weather got worse and worse, with driving rain forcing us to take shelter on the lower deck, and
visibility reduced to only 30m. When the boat started to turn we thought we were about to head back, but it was only the captain avoiding an island that we couldn’t see, good thing someone knew where we were going. As we approached the dive site the weather improved significantly, and we were left wondering what the visibility would be like below water.
Kit on, and we jumped into the 30 degree water of the Gulf of Thailand. Whilst not outstanding visibility for the area, it was still a respectable 10-15m and we settled in to enjoy the first dive. We were a little spoilt by having a dive leader to ourselves, always a luxury as you don’t have to compete with 5 other divers to see what is being pointed out. The highlights of the first dive were a huge school of fish, a small bamboo shark and a very large nudibranch. The school of yellow back fusiliers (we think) was very large (several hundred easily) and we swam into the middle of it. It was like being in the eye of a fish tornado as they circled around us several times until we swam out. The nudibranch
Bush Baby - we think
In the bar opposite our hotel. was special both for being Sheryl’s first and because it was very large and colourful (well 10cm is large for a nudibranch).
After a nice lunch of lovely Thai dishes served buffet style on the boat, we were ready for our second dive. This turned out to be an invertebrate spectacular. We saw all manner of undersea organisms, a large mantis shrimp defending it’s hole, small shrimp hiding in an anemone, worms on corals of all shapes and sizes, including one approximately a metre long, an octopus who, disturbed by us, let out a stream of black ink, and a teeny tiny nudibranch only 2cm long. It was also the longest dive we have ever logged at 71 minutes. All in all, a very enjoyable day, we would definitely recommend BB Divers on Koh Chang to everyone.
The next day we went to the Koh Chang Cooking school at the Blue Lagoon just down the road from our hotel. We were met with a drink and were introduced to Steve and Lisa, a couple from New Zealand also attending the class. At the start Yaa, our teacher, asked us what our favourite Thai dishes were and wrote them
all down on a whiteboard. We were introduced to the different types of rice and noodles, not just as food but also in a cultural context. Long grain rice is called royal rice in Thailand, because when it was introduced from India, it was originally eaten by the royal family. Pad Thai became the national dish after the second world war, as all the whole grain rice was shipped abroad to pay debts, and the broken grains were used to make noodles. We also learnt more about coconuts than there is space for in this blog and we sampled coconut seed for the first time.
Onto the food. We made (in order): tomato skin rose garnishes, sweet chilli sauce, spring rolls, stir fried noodles with soy sauce, four different types of curry (one each), hot basil leaves with chilli, fishcakes, garlic & pepper chicken, coconut sticky rice with mango and banana spring rolls.
Making the curry pastes from scratch was quite hard work with the pestle and mortar, but was interesting as we were introduced to the ingredients we previously hadn’t known, but found in restaurants. We also had a complete run down on the huge types of
Well...
we have to agree. ginger found in this part of the world. We all had a sniff at the shrimp paste which neither of us liked, Yaa called us monkies. Cheeky, until she explained that monkeys play with chickens like a little pet, but sometimes (they don't mean to) they kill it. So, to keep the chickens alive fish paste is spread over the chicken and the monkeys keep well clear. So in Thailand anyone who doesn't like shrimp paste is called a monkey.
And for dinner, we ate it all. What a feast, the best variety of dishes and the largest quantity of food we’d had since arriving. Whilst all the dishes were of a high standard (thanks mostly to excellent instruction, and a little bit of timely intervention) the fishcakes and the massaman curry were outstanding. Afterwards we could hardly walk, and we took most of the banana spring rolls back with us. Best of all, all the recipes we used and more were given to us in a book to take away. We will definitely be making a trip to our local asian supermarket when we come back and cooking more Thai food than ever.
Lots of love
S&S
xxxx
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YUM
That looks amazing! Banana spring rolls sound yummy. We'll have to do some negotiations about your spice collection when you return, although I've cleared you out cumin and tumeric from last year's "winter of dahl". I might do a cooking course in Delhi so maybe we can do a cultural exchange. BTW, the word nudibranch always makes me giggle. Because I am very childish.