This is Part 4 of our Thailand holiday updates. You can find Part 1 here , Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and some photos here and here.
The last few days on Koh Chang (the island where we've been staying for most of our time in Thailand) were quite action-packed - a few highlights below! As ever there are lots of photos but they'll come later once I'm home and I've had a chance to process them.
On Monday we spent most of the day at a Thai cooking course which was great fun. It was held at the Blue Lagoon resort, and is one of two such courses one can do on the island. We were in the capable hands of Ronnie and Chen, two friendly and experienced chefs, who taught us about some of the different ingredients used in Thai cooking and then walked us through cooking some different dishes. We also ate them as we went along which was good fun! By the end we were rather full...
The course was small - Liz and I were one of three young couples taking part - so was very friendly and there was plenty of 'hands-on' cooking. For the first set of dishes we focused on deep-fried stuff - wontons, spring rolls, prawns wrapped in egg noodles, and something called 'deep-fried black pearl'. The latter uses an egg that's been pickled with herbs to make it go completely black, but it tastes completely normal. It just takes a bit of bravery to try it! We also made some sweet chilli dipping sauce - yum.
The second lot of dishes were all noodle-based. We made the ubiquitous Phad Thai, as well as several others, and all were delicious. One of them, 'drunken noodles' is apparently a hangover dish, and is spicy. Also yum. Then the last lot of dishes were curries - red, green, and a clear soup curry called tom yum. Despite being warned not to get curry in my eye whilst pounding the paste, I managed to do so and it stung for a while... However the curries were lovely! Finally we had banana in coconut cream for dessert. It wasn't very necessary but tasted as great as everything else.
The next day we went over to White Sands on the other side of the island to spend the day with my old boss and her family, mostly at the pool at their hotel. Then we popped out for lunch at a Thai place that our hosts at Amber Sands had recommended.
Wednesday was our last full day on the island and we were very excited, as we finally did what we'd been looking forward to the most - elephant trekking. Liz had told me that she was going to have a bigger, faster, and better looking elephant than me, but in the end we shared one, who we named Ellie. We had an hour or so of walking through the jungle with a mahout (the person who is in charge of each elephant, and spends a long time training and getting used to them). He was an enthusiastic photographer, and borrowed my camera to take more than a 100 photos of us on the elephant! So we'll have plenty to choose from. We also each got to ride on her neck (like the mahout) which was really fun.
Later we fed the elephants bananas, and then led a couple of them down to the river where we had a chance to swim with them. The elephants were very well trained and did some squirting of water right on cue. Photogenic :-)
Yesterday we took the bus back to Bangkok which was again pleasant and uneventful. We were sad to leave Koh Chang as it's been lovely to stay there, but it was also good to see Rob and Jane again.
Today we've been out shopping and then met Rob and his friend for lunch at a fantastic Japanese restaurant. It's obviously much more expensive than street food, but compared to London prices it was a steal - about £6 for a great set of dishes including some amazingly fresh and tasty sushi.
Tonight the plan is to go see some muay thai boxing, and then tomorrow of course we fly home. I expect I'll probably put out Part 5 once we're back, which will have a bit about the boxing and also some general thoughts about Thailand and Thai culture...
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