The last day of our trip, and of our honeymoon! It ended up being one of our best days too, even though I seemed to have caught a stomach bug and can’t avoid frequent trips to the washroom. We booked the cooking class last night, however due to poor Wi-Fi reception we weren’t able to get a confirmation that we were enrolled in the afternoon course. To avoid any confusion, we got up early enough that we would be able to do the morning class if we didn’t hear back from the organizer. Luckily we heard back that the afternoon class was confirmed before we’d gotten too far along in our morning, which give us a bit of extra time to relax. We packed and went for a quick 30 minute walk along the moat before checking out, which was a nice way to say goodbye to the old city.
At 11 AM a songthaew picked us up and drove us to the cooking school, which was just the back half of a family house in the suburbs of Chiang Mai. We were the only people in the afternoon class, everyone else present had attended the full day class. We joined the party a little late. We started out doing a noodle dish; I learned to cook pad thai while Todd learned how to cook some other noodle dish (whose name we both forgot). After eating the pad thai (it was pretty good!) we moved onto making appetizers. I made a spicy mango salad, which I added too much spice too, while Todd made a spicy noodle dish. Both were alright, but far from the best part of the day. We next made a curry paste from scratch; then used it to cook a curry of our own. I made a panang curry while Todd made a massaman curry; both turned out to be delicious. We’re definitely going to have to try this again back in Waterloo, the only challenge will be adapting it to be cooked on an electric stovetop instead of gas. The gas provided much more heat much more quickly; we’ll need to adjust for that. Getting the ingredients may also be a bit challenging, but at the end of the class we were giving a recipe booklet so hopefully we’ll be able to figure things out. We got to chat with some of the other people attending the class; it was nice to chat with some new faces. After the curry we made a mango sticky rice, which was delicious, but at this point we were both too full to finish it.
The class wrapped up around 3:30 PM, and the entire class of 12 people was returned to their hotels in the same songthaew, so we got to take a bit of a tour of the city before being dropped off at the airport. By the time we got to the airport only an American couple we’d been chatting with was left with us in the songthaew. We made it with several hours to spare, so I started reading ‘A Game of Thrones’ while we waited to board. I’ve had the first 4 novels on the bookshelf for several years now; it is nice to finally start into the series. I found it a bit challenging to get engrossed in something that I’d already seen happen; maybe watching the shows spoiled the books for me. To be fair, I have found the books to be surprisingly similar to the shows. So few novel adaptations work well; Game of Thrones seems to be a success story.
My stomach had been feeling upset last night; we had to cut our visit to the night market short. I woke up feeling alright, but the feeling was quickly back, and I was not feeling great as we left for our walk. Luckily I was feeling better during the cooking class and I thought everything was fine; however, once we arrived at the Chiang Mai airport I started feeling unwell again. It didn’t take long before I decided that it would be best to take the travellers diarrhea medication I’d been prescribed before leaving for the trip. I was hoping this morning that they would be unnecessary, but the upcoming flights tipped my opinion in the other direction. Both the plane ride from CNX to DMK and our stopover in DMK were uncomfortable, but I was glad I had taken the medication while still in Chiang Mai. At the time I wrote this journal entry it had been several hours since I last felt ill, so I was optimistic that the next few flights would be smoother.
We decided against getting a hotel, so Todd and I spent the better part of the evening and early next morning chilling near the ANA baggage column at BKK, because we were unable to check in for our flight until 4 hours prior to flying. We planned on staying up until we got onto our first flight; we were hopeful that it would make it easier to get back onto EST that way.