Dinner by the river

In another display of decadence, Lea and I enjoyed a private dinner for two in the privacy of our own Sala as the nights monsoonal rains cascaded around us. It's been quite a day of perfect timings for us. For the most of our journey we'd found that we would arrive late to every function and activity, or find that as we were arriving people were leaving. Either we were consistently fashionably late or we were too un-cool for school. However yesterday, we were busting all the right moves. It started when we arrived at the beach to find that the most prime piece of deck chair real-estate was waiting for us. It then continued that the sky was perfectly clear and the water as clean as a whistle. We felt that the rain might soon fall and so we sojourned to the Edge restaurant for beers and a light lunch. No sooner had we arrived than the sky collapsed and the rain drenched the beach and it's beach goers. Score one for Lea and Kain. Later as we went back to our room via the pool, we stopped off for a quick dip and another drink before we arrived at our apartment, just before the rain sky opened up again. Lastly, the rain continued to pour as we napped in our airconditioned delight, only stopping once we were ready for our private dinner for two under the cool night air. T'was the perfect end of the perfect day until i wondered to myself how hot the top of the table lantern might be. Scalding me fingers and then covering them with pain relieving cream, we sipped at our chardonnay and enjoyed the night together.

Today we were up at the crack of dawn, by which I mean we arose around 7am, had breakfast at 8am and was ready for our days adventure by 9am. Compared to our laxidaisical mornings of the past few days, this could easily be considered 'the crack of dawn'. At 9am we were met at the front of the Sarojin by Chai our driver and personal waiter. He was taking us on a 40 odd minute journey through the KaoLak National Park for a private cooking class in the jungle. This was our first time out of the compound in five days, so we were quite excited by our excursion. We were even more delighted to find that it was just Lea and I going on the 'cooking in the jungle adventure'.

First we made our way to the local markets where our guide talked us through all the different ingredients that make up a traditional Thai dish. He walked us through making curry pastes, the need for quality ingredients, where local produce came from, how one might use a miniature eggplant and more. The market was a simple open space crowned by a single corrugated iron roof. It was hot as hell and Lea and I found ourselves wiping the days sunscreen off onto the cuffs of our sleeves and shorts. It was fascinating to see how coconut milk was make fresh and the taste of the local fruits were at time bland through to surreally exotic. After half an hour or so we were back in airconditioned comfort and heading for jungle in our custom 4WD.

After many kilometres of winding roads and lush vegetation we made our way in to a clearning that saw us nestled at the bottom of a great jungle, with mountains roaring up to the sky and coconut palms everywhere. We turned off in to a weather beaten track and made our way slowly down to the river. When we arrived there were two local Sarojin staff waiting for us and had set up a table laden with pots, pans, fruit , vegetables and other cooking implements. As soon as we were out of the car we were offered beer and wine and a chance to settle down and enjoy the passing stream and jungle quiet. Within half an hour we were dressed in a complimentary apron, a paper chef's hat each, and with beer in hand we started our education in Thai cooking. First we created a Thai beef salad which took no time at all and will likely become a new addition to our 'stocko' meals at home in sydney. Next we made a green chicken curry and then finished with a spicy Tom 'Yum Gai which, as berlin might say, took my breath away - mostly due to the chillies. I made every attempt possible not to watch Lea chop up her vegetables for she is a 'shocker' with a knife and i'm always scared she is going to chop one of her fingers off. I've always fancied myself a whiz in the kitchen and it was very flattering to hear the chef suggest that i was a professional by the way i was wielding my knife and cooking skills.

Needless to say the meals were delicious and we were suprised that we had concocted these thai delights all by our lil' lonesome (with help from a professional thai chef of 15 years...). We sat down and consumed our home cooking, were sozzled by french wine and Singa beer, and at the end of lunch, we were awarded a certificate in Thai cooking. These will look great next to our marriage certificate, lea's university degree, my 'special achievement award' from primary school and my police records check certificate. All in all a great day.

Now i just have to wait for my digital photos to be ftp'd up to my mn8.com website. We bought a second SD card for our digital camera but it's dodgy as hell and causes the camera to crash, and at times, refuses to operate. So we're basically stuck with 128MB of memory and we have to FTP at every opportunity we get.

ciao