"Singin' hot, hot, hot..."

WARNING: Contents in picture are spicier than they appear.

As promised, my fifth and final blog post on Thailand is about a subject I'm very passionate about...

Food!

Even though a lot of it set my mouth on fire, it turns out I'm a fan of Thai cuisine. And I have a new love...

Mangoes served with white sticky rice in coconut sauce!!
Mmmmmm. Sooo delicious and not the least bit spicy.

Much to my delight, I ate fresh tropical fruit every. single. day. :D

A cup of pineapple or a plate of mangoes from a little stand cost only 20 Thai baht, which is not even 75 cents!

In addition to eating a lot of fruit, I also drank it. In fact, I've discovered the secret to eating spicy food. Are you ready for me to let you in on the secret?

It's simple: Drink milkshakes. I can handle any kind of spicy curry or whatever else as long as I have a milkshake or two to go with it. :)

Or in Oliver's case, fresh coconut milk...

I ordered a peach ice tea to drink with lunch {the spicy chicken curry pictured at the tippy top of this blog post}, and then I had to order a strawberry milkshake later to help put out the fire in my mouth.

I think this one is a pineapple milkshake. :) The best shake I had on the trip was a combination pineapple/coconut -- like a pina colada. YUM.

Just because the milkshakes were always so fantastic, I even ordered one to go with a not-one-single-bit-spicy breakfast...

Banana milkshake and super sweet banana pancakes. {Which were really more like crepes than pancakes. Which was really just fine with me :)}

While we were in Chiang Mai at the beginning of the trip, Oliver, Liz and I took a Thai cooking class! We began at the market, where we got a lesson on popular ingredients.

Many different kinds of vegetables are used in Thai dishes.

After a little orientation at the market, we rode to our classroom, where we were given step-by-step instructions on how to prepare three different foods.

Liz looking cute while slicin' and dicin'.

"It's gettin' hot in here..."

After 45 minutes of cooking, we had quite a feast!

Here's the meal:

• A noodle dish called pad thai on the left. It was slightly spicy, but absolutely delicious. (If I do say so myself, haha.)
• Rice in the middle. The rice is Thailand is very similar to the white sticky rice in Japan, only the grains are a tad bit longer. Like in Japan, rice is a staple at each meal.
• Green curry on the right. Usually it's very spicy, but I made mine only a little spicy.
• A little bowl of mango & coconut rice for dessert. This was my introduction to this delightful combination.
  We also made vegetable soup, but it's not pictured since we ate that as an appetizer, in the middle of cooking.

Well, I'm officially hungry now! I'm off to eat dinner...

without a pineapple/coconut milkshake to go with it, unfortunately.