Not quite the typical American thanksgiving.

So it was Thanksgiving evening and I was planning to head out to the Mexican/Italian restaurant (the one that thinks you put parmesan cheese on fajitas?!) at the Tae Pae gate that was advertising turkey for Turkey day, when I stumbled into a little "celebration" in the works of the guesthouse (Kavil) lobby. I asked what was going on? "Celebration for american thanksgiving" Can I join? Sure! Alright! So I joined the odd collection of folks (some americans, some canadians, a brit and the thai family that runs the guesthouse), so some good old-fashioned thanksgiving BBQ chicken. I couldnt complain though, since I was intruding and eating their food for free.

After dinner, I got into a game of Rumikube with Andy (the brit), Ying (the trekking guide) and Moo Dang (the Thai kid who's name means "Red Pig"). Somehow, with Ying's help I even managed to win a round. Then when all the Sah-to was gone, the game ended and somehow I let Ying talk me into going dancing at "Nice Illusions". I had the whole club doing the "shower" and the "peter pan" dances. :) The band played a mixture of Thai and English pop, but the bass was turned up so high that I couldnt usually tell the difference. Despite the auditory assault, the experience was worth it.. if only to see two thugged out, skinny Thai guys covering MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This".

Friday, still lamenting that I hadnt had an Turkey, I showed up at Kanjana's cooking school at 1030am for a crash course in Thai cooking. First, her husband Tun took David and myself to the fresh market to buy a few supplies. But after that Kanjana put us to work mashing up our own curry pastes with a stone mortar and pestle. I was making sweet green curry chicken, fishcakes with cucumber sauce, shrimp fried rice and sticky rice w/ mango. The preparation took the longest, with Kanjana admonishing us to be careful and not cut ourselves with the huge knives, b/c most of Thai cooking is stir-fried and so extremely fast. Order in a restaurant and your stuff comes out in less than 10 minutes, whereas in the states anything less than 30-40 minutes is fast food. Then with all our ingredients prepared we moved into the kitchen. I hit my head (again) on the low doorway. I'm taking a beating over here. Under Kanjana's supervision, I deepfried some "beautiful" fishcakes. When we finished we had a veritable feast that we couldnt hope to finish all in one sitting. It was definitely the best Thai food I've had so far.. mostly because I left out of a lot of chilli and also alot of sketchy vegetables. One word of advice though... dont eat your reheated leftovers.