photos from nikon d3100

It’s always fun for us to have guests come visit, especially when they visit us in our new home in Bangkok. We now have the ability to share some of these unique cultural experiences with our friends and family. This Christmas, my in-laws came to visit us for two weeks and we had everyday planned out for them so they could experience as much of Thailand as they could possibly handle.

Although I had the entire two weeks planned out, I had a friend suggested I take my in-laws to a cooking school in Sathorn. I thought it sounded great, much better than the riverboat dinner cruise we were planning on taking them on.  We offered the two options to the in-laws and they somewhat reluctantly agreed to go.  I understand their hesitance since they have never experienced real Thai cuisine.  We promised them that Thai food is wonderful and an opportunity to go to the cooking school will show them how it is made. I figured you can’t be afraid of something once you know how it is prepared!

Sompong Thai Cooking School, located on Silom Soi 13, is a family run business located in a very cozy Thai house with the school on the bottom and the family living upstairs. We arrived to BTS Chong Nonsi at 9:15am where a young Thai girl in a red apron greeted us.  With a pretty smile, she asked our names, checked us off her list, gave us a number, and pointed us to the cars waiting for us below to take us to the next destination.  After short drive, we arrive at the cooking school where we are offered coffee and homemade cookies.  Once everyone had arrived, we start our adventure to the local market. I was so excited about the market visit because I knew this would be a great experience for my in-laws.  I had already visited the Khlong Toie wet market with my photography class a few months ago and loved that cultural experience and I knew the cooking school would take us to a much cleaner market so it wouldn’t freak the in-laws out to much.

While at the market, our guide showed us all of the ingredients we would use during our cooking lesson.  We saw how they milk a coconut, learned about the local veggies (I had no idea there were so many different types of Basil), and about what goes into the different types of curry paste.  After our presentation of different Thai ingredients, we were given around 25 minutes to explore and purchase anything extra we would want to take home.

After the market, we arrive back to the cooking school to learn how to make delicious Thai cuisine.  When you go through this cooking school, you can look on their website and pick the day you would like to attend based on the different menu options.  Each day they offer something different and on the day that we choose we learned how to make mango with sticky rice, lemongrass salad with shrimp, yellow curry with chicken, yellow curry paste, and a noodle dish made with veggies and chicken.  The great part about this experience was the step-by-step instruction and the cookbook you were given to take home, where you could write additional notes.

After the meals were made we had the opportunity to sit in their cozy dining room and enjoy our creations and anything left over you were free to take home.  We had made so much food we took enough food home for each person to have another meal. This was a wonderful experience for our “tourist” family and for Chris and I, to understand what goes into Thai cuisine. After the in-laws were finished with the class, they couldn’t stop talking about how much they enjoyed the food, who they were going to make all of the dishes at home for and where they would find the different ingredients.  I would say that our cooking school adventure based on that alone was a huge success!

The cooking class lasted from 9am-130/2pm and was only 1000 baht, what a deal!! For around $30 USD you have an entire day of entertainment and a full stomach!   I highly recommend this cooking school and I will be taking anyone that comes to visit us or maybe I will just have a little adventure of my own and go learn how to cook some more sumptuous curry dishes!

Side note: My mother-in-law isn’t a huge fan of meat so we opted for her to have the vegetarian menu.  The school was so accommodating and reformatted her ingredients with vegetarian options and she loved it!

photos from iphone 5