The views didn't disappoint from our balcony.
We attempted to sleep in, and almost got to 7am - I'm not sure I want to adjust at this point. The morning is calm, and almost cool.
We started with a walk the block to Ao Nang beach. Longboats were there to whisk you to wherever you were willing to pay. As we examined the signboard of destinations (a collection of islands across the bay), a girl asked where we were thinking of going. Turns out, she and her posse of three girlfriends from South Africa and a pair of dudes from Germany that they picked up along the way. We negotiated for a day trip among the islands for Sunday, and we had the rest of our Saturday to plan.
We began by walking down the row of shops along the beach... Always dangerous. Doing the math to figure out how much everything costs is hard - so we just ended up buying anything that seemed like it was reasonably priced. I had my little bit of fun bargaining (when only a dollar is on the line, it's pretty easy to have fun).
Lunch was a slow, hot walk up to Massaman Restaurant (a Trip Advisor recommendation). Alisa chose pad thai; I chose a dry curry. When the waitress asked if I wanted it spicy or not, I asked for "medium."
That Mai Thai? It didn't cut the heat at all. Halfway through my torturous curry, I had to order a banana shake to cool my mouth down. With the help of creamy goodness, I managed to finish it. I'll consider it an accomplishment.
On our list for Ao Nang was a Thai cooking class. We booked an afternoon class for Smart Cook Thai Cooking - well reviewed on Trip Advisor for good reason. A slightly belated pick-up in essentially a covered pick-up, and the two of us, a Chicagoan couple, and a German mechanical engineer were on our way to neighboring Krabi.
We made five delicious courses. First was using seven fresh ingredients (plus some salt and peppercorn) to make our curry paste. Everything that was spicy was "sexy" to our instructor, June. She had an incredibly dry sense of humor. I was tricked by her more times than I care to count. (I honestly thought I was making alligator curry until the chicken actually came out. Not a super crazy thing, since they have alligator farms, but...)
We then chopped all our fresh veggies and herbs. About half were recognizable. The Thai eggplant, the galanga (Thai ginger), lemongrass, and interesting varieties of mushrooms all went into our soup, curry, and stir fry. Our first three courses were ready to get exposed to the high heat of the wok.
One by one, our dishes lined up on the table. We had our first sitting while a monsooning thunderstorm bounced off the corrugated metal roof. Chicken in coconut broth, green curry, and cashew chicken for me; sweet and sour chicken soup, panaeng curry, and pad thai for Alisa.
Our second sitting was the salad, spring rolls, and dessert - an odd order, but it made sense as we chopped our way through fresh spring rolls, banana spring rolls, papaya salad, cucumber salad, mango sticky rice, and (how autumnal) pumpkin in coconut milk.
After eight hours of cooking, eating, and chatting with our fellow Americans, we were back to our comfy hotel and static-y tv.
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