14 Sep – Cooking Day

We’re off to Cooking School today, which is very fortunate, as tropical typhoon has struck, and the weather is now a world away from what it was yesterday.   The maintenance men from the resort have just put a rope around the palm tree outside our villa, all the deck chairs have been moved off the beach and the resort must be cursing that today is the day that they decided to close their main restaurant for refurbishment and move all meals to the beachside pavilion while the renovation takes place.

I’ve just ducked outside to take a couple of photos of the monsoon, and both cameras I’ve used have given up the ghost on me.  Fortunately, I got one good photo out of one camera before they both packed up.  

We were picked up by our bus at 10:30 and driven to the outskirts of the pedestrian zone (which includes scooters) and then had to walk through what we thought was torrential rain (we were young in our education about what was torrential rain at this stage) and streets with rivers running down the middle of them to get to a small café where we were given a welcome drink.

Before we’d had time to finish the drink, we were whisked off to the markets to see all the types of produce that were going to be purchased for us to prepare, cook and consume as part of our cooking school experience. 

From the market, we were taken again by van to the cooking school.  Normally, you would go by boat, but the weather is so atrocious that they’ve decided that was too dangerous, so we’re taking the overland option.  At the cooking school, we received another welcome drink, and were then taken on a tour of the herb garden.  It was then that we learnt what torrential rain was, as we could absolutely drenched wandering the 20 or so metres between the entrance hall and the class room.

Another welcome drink

The cooking school was really fun, with the very witty hostess firstly demonstrating what we had to do, and then sending us all off to our cookers to make our own food.  It was all pretty easy, fail safe stuff, so even the least talented of us were sure to get a hearty nutritious lunch by the end of it.  We each made Hoi An pancakes, rice paper, and Vietnamese eggplant in a clay pot, as well as having fun doing food decoration with a cucumber and a tomato.  We got to eat the eggplant dish in the cooking schools restaurant, and could even buy a bottle of reasonably priced Australian chardonnay, which was the first in 3 weeks, and a very welcome change from beer.

We were an attentive bunch

Ready to cook - pancakes this time

Evan gets to assist

Food decorations - that's a cucumber and a tomato

 Clothing on this trip is taking on a theme, and all the women have bought elephant pants. Tonight was elephant pants night, so here's the group shot with Diep, our fantastic guide.  Diep is on the Lady Bus each day, and makes sure the people on the bus have a great time while the cyclists are off riding.