We’re on the road early this morning to go to our next home-away-from-home in Ao Nang, a resort town on the Andaman coast. We’ll travel on a songthaew, a passenger vehicle created from a larger truck or pick-up. Just climb in the back with your bags and wait until it’s full. It’s about a 40-minute ride to Ao Nang. Our room at P.K. Mansion (400 baht $12.50 a night) is deluxe; the third floor with a balcony, two twin beds, fan, TV, private bathroom and my first experience with a credit card type key that turns off the room electricity when you’re not there. Brilliant.
Before going to the beach, we check out a selection of travel brochures in our guesthouse lobby and decide to take a cooking class after we go for a swim in the Andaman Sea. At 1 pm the owner of the Thai Cooking School picked us up and drove us 20 minutes out of town into the mountains. The owner worked at a restaurant for four years, catered 12 years before opening this school in 2001. Her daughter is going to teach the 2.5-hour class to us. It’s just the two of us and we learn to make Fried Rice, Red Curry Chicken, Green Curry Soup, and Phad Thai. They were pretty heavy on the spices but I was able to lower the star value on a couple of items. I wouldn’t know if the spicy food was delicious but the food I had, was wonderful and flavorful. A very enjoyable experience. Being in the mountains was perfect. I’m so glad we decided to do this class. The leftover food was packed up for us. It was our “take-home” food bag.
When we get back to the guesthouse, we book a kayaking trip for tomorrow. Earlier today we had a blip with an ATM machine and after spending 475 baht ($15) calling our bank the problem was solved by saying, you can only get a limited amount of your account, even though you have no restrictions. So maddening!
For quite a while I thought of calling my blog, “Water bottles and ATM’s”. I think the development and convenience of water bottles and ATM machines revolutionized traveling. No water purification pills or filters needed to drink water. No Travelers’ cheques or large amounts of cash to carry around because ATM’s are so accessible. Even though the phone calls to the bank today were maddening, at the end of the day we can still use our card in an ATM machine to continue traveling.
