My time without chatterbox...

So this morning Dean departed for a 2 day and one night trek, which apparently includes bamboo rafting and something to do with elephants? He was quite excited about it, which is good and I'm sure he'll give you blow by blow detail about it upon his arrival back. Whilst Dean has been gallivanting in the hills for today I spent the day cooking! I got picked up from our guest house at 9:30 am and driven to the cooking school with some others whom were also picked up upon the way. The class went from 10:00 am to 4:00pm, commencing with a general lesson on chief Thai ingredients such as what shrimp paste is and substitutes we can use at home if not available. Our first dish was Tom Yum Soup, which was delicious. The instructor would demonstrate how to make each dish, we would taste it to adjust chili etc according to our own tastes, and then all go to the cooking room where ingredients had been laid out and we would cook this dish and eat it. This was the order for all dishes ie we did not cook ever single type of dish at once and have a banquet at the end. Second was Thai fish cakes with cucumber sauce, then green chicken curry followed by pad Thai. The green chicken curry and pad Thai we ate together and this was classified as our 'lunch', although I felt like i had already eating two lunches. Following 'lunch' we came back to the class room and made spicy chicken salad and dessert of water chestnuts and coconut cream. After we had devoured this (27 in the class) we were driven back to our guest houses etc. I went for a little wander round town this afternoon and have been reading my book. I may have a few beers at the guest house bar tonight, no dinner as I am still stuffed! Dean arrives back at 5:00pm tomorrow and our train back to Bangkok is 6:00pm. He will be back just in time, just his style. I may go to the Tribal Museum tomorrow and stuff like that. I have enjoyed Thailand a lot, and moreover so much more than I had anticipated. I am really pleased that we ended up coming here, but saying that I am ready to go to Vietnam on Sunday, which is the country out of our trip that I have been looking forward to most of all .