Shelby's Travels

Okay, Day 3!! Everyday has to start with some caffeine obviously! Then off to a cooking class and market visit!

This is the third time I’ve done a cooking class in another country and now I will never not do it! Like I said before, you learn SO much about a country through its food. Taking these classes I’ve learned so much about different produce, cooking techniques, and why certain cultures add certain things to their food. Highly recommend you to try! It’s also helped me gain some confidence in the kitchen.

Anyways, so we started off in the market to pick up fresh produce and learn about the different produce we maybe have never seen before. I think my favorite one (which I don’t have a picture of, unfortunately) is bergamot. Never seen it before, but wow! It kind of looks like a large wrinkly lime but you can squeeze it and it mists like a perfume bottle and smells SO GOOD! so cool!

First dish is Tom Tum Goong – hot and sour prawn soup! So delicious and a good amount of spicy! This recipe required coconut milk and we actually got to make it ourselves form freshly ground coconut we got at the market.

We learned the larger the chili the less spicy it is. Green is more spicy than red chili. And the more you chop the chili the spicier it is. I gotta say, for this white girl from Nebraska, I’m doing pretty good with the spice! Actually impressing myself LOL

Recipe #3 is Panaeng gai – chicken curry. This one required us to make our own curry paste from all those fresh produce in the photo above. That’s the video below! 😂

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And of course this wouldn’t be complete without mango sticky rice! Our group was super awesome too. I love meeting new people and making new friends!

Next part of the day required us to hop on a tuk tuk to see the reclining Buddha. The complex is called Wat Pho. It’s full of these called ‘Stupa’. They are covered in tiny terracotta pieces that make up intricate patterns.

Wat Phra Chetuphon houses the largest reclining buggy’s at 46m / 150 feet long. I’ve never seen anything like it, it was huge!

After this temple we stopped to rest our feet and recharge with a drink… aka thai tea for me!

Then off to Chatuchak Market, as a recommendation from my Aunt Elena. And wow we are so glad we took that recommendation. This market has 15,000 stalls with a huge variety of items. We mostly gravitated towards the clothes and shoes 😅!

I really don’t go shopping on these kinds of trips but it was hard when the clothes are good quality and you can’t find them back home and are soooo cheap! This was me all happy I actually found stuff I liked! Like I got a jacket that would easily be $200 in New York, I got for $45. You just can’t beat that!

Another thing you just can’t feel guilty about paying for because it’s so cheap here! – massages, facials, pedicures, you name it! So we had went back to the hotel to drop our bags and then go get a facial. Again, only like a third of the price it would be in New York !

Then finally, a little dinner to close out the night! Just a simple stir fry from this night market near our hotel.