Cooking School

I literally had hours to write on the plane, but instead I watched several movies and read parts of a thin New York Times. I'm not even sure I can name everything I saw, but I remember watching Sing, Manchester by the Sea, and an episode of Family Guy. Oh - of course the other movie was The Founder, which I should have remembered right off, considering I was thinking of it as I stood in line at McDonald's, the only restaurant option in the International Arrivals terminal. And there are two U.S. flags hanging above it. How intentionally and distinctly American!

The point being: now here I am blogging on a bus in stop-and-go Chicago traffic on the way back to Bloomington. The driver said there is WiFi but it appears he was wrong, so here I am typing slowly in my phone. It is unlikely I will be able to attach photos to the post. Too bad - I was looking forward to making good progress before getting home. Oh - the driver is also playing some really annoying music, so I hope I don't snap. I guess I should dig out the noise-cancelling ear buds I was wearing for the past 16 hours or so...

The last thing I wrote about was our visit to the mountaintop temple in Chiang Mai on Saturday. From there we drove north of the city to a more rural area to visit a family-run cooking school called Baanhongnual. They have a website, but apparently the Blogger app doesn't want me to create a link. There is a hyperlink icon ,but if you tap there it says you must first select text to link. If you select text, the entire interface changes and the hyperlink button disappears. Maybe you can check it out at http://baanghongnual.com.

It was a somewhat open-air space which reminded me a little of the little place we went for lunch Christmas Day 2015 in Mexico. Of course they grew some of their own ingredients on-site. We were seated at two large tables and when the time came we did our cooking, receiving instruction and did individual prep work in two large groups, then moved to the burners to cook the ingredients alone or in small groups. We made spring rolls to start (no cilantro!), and after eating them we got to work making hot and sour soup, Pad Thai, and mango sticky rice. By the time we were done we were worn out from a very long day, but full and quite satisfied wit our meal. It was a fun way to bind, and some students said that was a highlight of their trip. It was fun, except for when the student next to me dropped an egg in boiling grease that splattered on my arm. It was uncomfortable, but I'm confident the marks will go away soon.

It was a fairly quite ride back to Chiang Mai where we could finally check in to our hotel, the DusitD2. As we approached the city, we ran into a torrential downpour which lasted until after we checked in. By the time we arrived the streets were flooded and on the corner next to the hotel we saw a woman's entire electronics stand topped into the rushing water. We parked as close to the door as we could get and dashed in.  The hotel was trendy (orange is trendy, right?); check in was ready to go and easy, fortunately. Unfortunately, one student's bag seems to have fallen into the wet. She was upset, but the hotel offered to clean anything that a needed it. I got to my room and discovered that my bag was wet, too. I suspect water got in through the the bus Bay doors, but who knows. I emptied everything out of my bag and spread it around the room, then used the hairdryer to try out some of my clothes before crawling into bed.

Look at that - finished up this story right at the Indiana state line.