From Our Koh Chang Thai Cooking School Experience - part 1

Phad Thai – for 2 people

Sauce

1/3 cup coconut sugar or brown sugar

3 tablespoons fish sauce

3 tablespoons tamarind sauce (o 2 ½ white vinegar)

2 tablespoons chili sauce

Ingredients

5-6 tablespoons vegetable oil

5-6 tablespoons chopped shallot

4 tablespoons hard tofu

2 teaspoons dried shrimp

4 teaspoons chopped pickled white radish

8 fresh shrimp or 2 fresh chicken breasts chopped

2 eggs beaten well

Rice noodles or vermicelli

8-10 tablespoons Phad Thai sauce

½ cup Chinese chives

1 cup bean sprouts

Steps (tip- keep everything moving once in the pan over a medium to high temperature)

1. Heat oil in a wok until hot, add chopped shallot. Fry until fragrant
2. Add tofu, dried shrimp and white radish
3. Add meat, cook until done and set aside on pan
4. Add eggs (to empty side of pan) move all cooked ingredients on top of the egg, wait until egg gets firm and flip over
5. Add noodles
6. Add Phad Thai sauce and mix everything well
7. Add chili powder to own taste
8. Add bean sprouts and chives. Mix everything well
9. Serve with a lime wedge (if shrimp), crushed peanuts, fresh chives and trimmed bean sprouts

The night train.

The night train song is in my head as I type. Was that back from the Rocco days?
It was a compact space with bunks, a sink, a table and air-con.
I got the top bunk.
There was no wifi for our new toy!
The train left at 7.35pm and we were on board with a few bevies!
We chilled, had a few beer chang and brezzers and ate train food.
I took a sleeping tablet a slept like a log. The train was only an hour and a half late, so not too bad.

bangkok 2

So, Bangkok 2 was good. We found a nice guest house called Thara which is in a nice area and only five minutes from the night life.
We arrived in early evening and checked into the guest house which was 500 baht a night, which is about ten euro.
We headed to the Khao San for food and beverages and ended up hanging out with Sean from California, whose dad is from Cork, and the gang he had gathered.
The next day we went for a stroll to the grand palace and Wat po. We stopped at a map and were told by a tourist officer that we should consider hiring a tuk-tuk driver for 20 baht and head to Wat in for the tall Buddha, troyal, Wat saket and then back to the grand palace. So we hired a tuk-tuk driver and all was going well until we were mad go to a “tourist office” and then he tried to bring us to another “sponsors” house so we paid up at Wat saket and once again did not make it to the grand palace so we headed to MBK shopping centre, ate, bought a mini notebook and went to see Bangkok dangerous which is a shite film and a waste of everyone’s time and money. Once again Nicholas Cage is a baddie with soul or whatever.
The following day we sorted out the night train to Chiang Mai. We booked a first class sleeper cabin for 28 euro a night.
Then we went to see the reclining Buddha, emerald Buddha and the grand palace and we actually made it there, woohoo. I of course thought the emerald Buddha, which is actually jade, would be bigger. It was teeney but lovely.
All of the wats are so peaceful that it makes a nice change from the general pace of Bangkok.
We headed back to our accommodation and headed to the night train to Chiang Mai.

StarTer its a new kinda fish..

This pic needed its own post - its from the boat trip in boracay.

Ko Chiang

A 6 hour bus journey brought us to Trat bus station. i throughly enjoyed the journey watching Thai soap operas and depressing love song Karaoke.
We stopped at a rest stop on the way and i used a squat toilet successfully! Go me, Terry was very proud, as you can imagine.
we then had a one hour sawngthaew journey to the ferry port, followed by a one hour ferry journey followed by another one hour sawngthaew journey to Nature Resort on lonely beach. i was starving and a little cranky at this stage.
we stayed in one of nature beach huts that night and moved down the beach to siam huts for the rest of our trip. Nature Beach resort is more fun and has better food but had no air-con huts available and i was afraid of the possibility of cockroaches.
our current hut is 400 baht a night which works out at about 8 euro a night.
we rented a wee bike for 2 days which only cost 6 euro for the two days but cut out on steep hills, that i then had to walk up. lovely stuff.
we went spinning around the island the first day and got hit on the head by very large insects. especially poor terry. i am not sure his head will ever be the same again!
Terry chilled on the beach and enjoyed swimming while i had a nap. as he decided to air dry before reapplying sunscreen he now has a lovely red colour on his face and chest. he is lovely and warm.
yesterday afternoon we did a cookery course in one of the most stunning settings. i forgot the to bring the little booklet we got but we cooked pad thai, two kinds of soup, curry and sticky rice with mango and ate it overlooking a lagoon watching the sunset. i will put up the website for the school later but big thanks to Nam for such a lovely afternoon.
we have spent the evenings chilling with sue, Chrissie and Johannes at nature resort drinking big beer Chang and watching the fire show.
today we are chilling and catching up on e-mails and stuff.
some of my skin has gone blue from the sarong i was wearing yesterday. and i am having difficulty washing it off. also, i am not as prepared for roughing it as i was a few years ago, but apparently i have to get over it!
thats it really. it is a beautiful island. i am not sure about the rest of Thailand but Neasa and Laura would love Ko Chiang for the shopping and lovely resorts but would laura would hate all the cats and Neasa would hate all of the dogs.
Love ye all. talk soon.

Bangkok 1.

So we had two nights and one day in Bangkok. We decided not to stay too long as we figured we would be in and out a few times. We spent far too much money on our hotel but I do not care!
we went to the weekend market on the Saturday and spent most of the day wandering about and trying some of the food. It was lovely and well worth a visit.
click for more pics
We then tried to go to the grand palace on a tuk-tuk. This proved difficult as the tuk-tuk drivers always want to bring tourists to the places that they are linked to. So we gave up and wandered about Chinatown instead.
We had a couple of Sang Som Buckets on Th Khao San with a few people we met, Kit, Stephanie and Caitlin.
We got the bus and Ferry to Ko Chiang the next day.
I think everyone we know would like Bangkok, if only for the shopping. However, it seems quite difficult to get around as it is so vast. I am looking forward to seeing more of it.

Boracay-tis great.

so we have been in Boracay much longer than anticiapated but we have had a great time.
Boracay is this little island with great beaches, nightlife and water sports.
We are staying at a hotel called Alice, which is nice and insulating because it has air-con, a TV and an en-suite.
we spent the first few days sleeping and eating and barely saw anything, mainly because i was wrecked.
We started spending happy hour in a bar called nigi nigi noo noo's where we ended up meeting this gang of lovely people.
click for more pics
we hung out with them most nights, as you will see from the photos. we totally reccommend Nigi's and a nightcllub called Guillys.
i also totally reccommend, for food, Manana, Big Yellow Taxi, Villa Oro Mongolian Barbeque and a spanish place across from our hotel that i cannot reember the name of.
we also highly reccommend the two bar men, Nolly and Lito, in the bar.
so we rented quads and did a small tour of the island with this couple called jocelyn and Joel.
click for more pics
Jocelyn had never driven anything before so it was great that when her quad tipped over she just got right back on and kept on going. we went to a butterfly and bat farm where the other 3 held a bat. eurgh! and we wnet to a view point.
terry and i did a kite surfing lesson with Isla Kite surfing, which we really enjoyed but it was really hard.
click for more pics
we got no where near a board! the kite was really hard to control and we had to do the lesson over two days because of rain. Ter would hold me on the earth when i was learning how to control the kite and i was supposed to hold terry down. it really worked! i lost my grip on terry every time. he got some miner air.
click for more pics
Terry did his advanced open water diving course. this involved 5 particular areas with 5 dives. he did navigation, buoancy, deep dive, night dive and wreck diving i think. he can add a bit about that. he was delighted with it. he did it with Sue at Calypso diving.
i chilled while he was doing his dives. i went to the viewing point with some of the people we had met for sunset. it was cool there were about ten of us between 2 tricycles and at one stage we had to get off and walk so it would make it up the hill.
yesterday we went on an Island hopping tour with Marie and Mairead. they had the best seats in the house! they were soaked the entire time we were out. it was a nice tour with a good lunch and was good value for money except for the bogus environmental fee people were asked to pay if they went snorkelling at crocodile island.
Today Terry is at a cock fight with JC. JC's family has the best fighter cocl apprently but it is not fighting today.
i went in search of a leg wax and found instead a hygienically challenged ladyboy called Vanessa. suffice to say i am still a hairy lady. Unlike Vanessa.
i would totally reccommend Boracay, although haggeling is important.
Terry will put up the photos later and talk about the dives and the cock fight i am sure!
click for more pics
be sure to look at the photos of our new buds, we had a great time with them.

Cebu - Moalboal - and 2 new divers in the Padi club

We learned to dive @ http://www.savedra.com/

So, i was a bit panicked when we landed in Cebu and drove to Moalboal. partly because i was having a little bit of anxiety about the whole undertaking and partly because we were driving past a shanty town. But we got to Moalboal and signed up for an open water padi course. the course occupied all of our time in Maolboal. Terry loved it but i am a bit afraid of floating of into the deepblue yonder.
i only dived to 12 meters and terry went to the full 18.
the cool bits were seeing turtles and nemo. we also saw dolphins frolicking while we were having breakfast.
Our diving instructor was Dino and he was very very patient. we were lucky that it was just two of us doing the open water course. we also met a girl called grace from Devon and a mad irish girl called siobhan who was doing her rescue diver course.
in the evenings after diving one of the lads would buy beer and we would all have a few bevies together which was cool.
we were invited to stay for the opening of a new dive shop but decided i would not be able to handle the slaughtering of the goat.
we landed on the resort island of Boracay today and will probably spend a week here. not sure where we are moving to next. we have not done any videoke....yet! we promise the photos will be put on soon.


and here they are..
click on the pic for more