cooking and monks…

Many people love thailand because of how great the food is here and because of that, there are many places that offer one to five day cooking courses. thai food is one of my favorite kinds of food and i am totally down w/ cooking so i decided to try out the one day course. the course ran from 10am to 4:30 and during that time we cooked 6 different dishes.

the class was hella cool! they start by introducing most of the main ingredients used in thai food, tell you a little about chilis and stuff, and then get you started on making your own curry from scratch. we used a bunch of both dry and wet ingredients and then actually ground them up using an old-school mortar. once we all made our own curry paste we added the rest of the ingredients and made some super delicious food. seriously, most of the dishes that i cooked myself today were some of the best food i’ve eaten so far. cooking it all was a lot of fun, and surprisingly (other than making curry paste from scratch), it was actually really easy. turns out most of these great dishes only got flavor from like 3 or 4 main ingredients.

after making and eating 4 of the dishes, people were feeling way full. and yet there was still more to go. the fifth dish we made was this spicy glass noodle salad. our teacher told us that we could vary the spicyness by adding less or more chilis, and then said that most thai peole would use 10 chilis, but that we all should probably use between 3 and 5. well, the swedish couple i had been cooking w/ all day and i decided to try it thai style and we put all 10 chilis in there. oh my god. this stuff was sooooo hot. we were all dying pretty soon but ate the stuff anyways cause it was so good. the rest of the class was pretty impressed.

Later in the afternoon i decide to go see watt doi suthep. it’s a watt way up high on a mountain above the city. the road to the watt is about 16km and very very twisty. blazing up it (and back down) on my scooter was a blast. i got to the top a little before sunset, and watching from above as the sun went down over the city was really cool. the watt itself was really dope. you had to walk up 306 steps to get to it and at the top you could explore the watt, see many intricate statues, and ring any number of huge bells that were around.

there was a room at the center of the watt that was filled with probably a dozen different golden buddha images, and in the room there was a monk that would bless you if you wanted to. people would kneel in front of him one by one, he would tap you on the head, and then tie a piece of twine around your wrist. i dunno… there was something very special and spiritual about it all and even though i’m not buddhist, i definitely felt very moved to be up there being blessed by a monk on a mountain top.

i asked someone about the piece of twine and what it was for. it turns out that there is some special buddhist ceremony where the high level monks pray for many many hours while each of them holds on to a section of a very long cord. once this is finished, the cord is then cut up into small pieces, and each of these pieces becomes a bracelet to be handed out by a monk. the bracelet is supposed to give you good fortune and guard you from harm. also, you’re never supposed to take the bracelet off, instead you let it slowly deteriorate until it breaks and leaves you on it’s own accord. how cool! i dunno, i havent yet bought a single souvenir here in thailand, and although i’ll probably buy some at some point, i get the feeling hat this tiny piece of twine is gonna be my favorite thing of everything i bring back.

-v