Phuket Day 6: Pad Thai and Patong Nightlife
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2009
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12
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Trip End
Oct 30, 2009
Phuket, Thailand
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
After 3 busy days in a row, yesterday we slept in until late morning and didn't put anything on the agenda other than a visit to a spa for 3 hours of sauna, scrub and massage. It wouldn't be a honeymoon without a few days like that, right?
Now that we've recharged the batteries a bit, we signed up for another central slice of Thai culture...cooking! We were accompanied by Alan and Lynn, a retired Australian couple at the Phuket Cooking School. Situated on the beach, class began at 10:00 with Noi, our instructor, teaching us the finer points of carving a lotus plant, leaf and other garnishes with cucumber, tomato and other vegetables. She then moved to the outdoor kitchen and explained the 5 dishes that we would be learning, starting with Pad Thai.
Each dish would take about 15 minutes for Noi to prepare, while we watched and took notes on the recipe card. When she was done, the dish was passed around for each of us to sample. Then it was time to stop watching and to start doing. We moved to our cooking stations to replicate the same dish while the instructors watched over us and kept us on track. When the hard work in the kitchen was complete, we all sat down to taste our own culinary work. Everyone seemed to be pleased with the Pad Thai that they prepared. The breeze from the sea felt great after the heat of the kitchen. Over the next 3 hours, we prepared a spicy vermicelli (squid) salad, fish cakes, roast duck in red curry paste, and steamed banana cakes (cooked in banana leaf bowls) for dessert. Needless to say, all of us needed to have some of the food wrapped up to take home. Alan bought a round of beers for the table and we toasted to a great day and wished each other well on the remainder of our time in Phuket.
We hired a car for the evening in Patong Beach. First stop was the tailor shop. Dee tried on her dress while I declined the 19th & 20th requests for a new suit. Originally, we had planned on dinner at one of Patong's many great seafood restaurants. After the feast of food at the cooking school, neither of us had any room left, so we spent a few hours roaming the busy streets of Patong, bargaining for our last souvenir purchases in Thailand.
On our way back to our car, we got a glimpse of Patong's famous nightlife. There was no shortage of people trying to steer tourists with solicitations for shows or drink specials. It wasn't yet 10:00, so a lot of the bars were really just starting to get crowded. We passed a few bars with pole dancers perched on the 2nd floor, doing their best to attract eyeballs from the crowd at street level. No wonder the bars on the other side of the street were packed full of men of all ages. Deepti laughed and rolled her eyes as we made our way back to meet our driver. It was hard to believe that our week in Phuket was over tomorrow.
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