Reverend Ken's Blog: #2217: Wednesday, January 23: Boy Blues Club and a cooking class

Post 2217

- 8 years and 23 days since I started this blog -

Journal
(written 1/23/19)

Read this once (it won't change for the rest of the trip(s): I'll be linking this post to Facebook. If that's how you got here, here's some background: About 8 years ago I started this blog as a food journal. I had a medical situation and needed to lose weight. Initially, that's all I did here: Journal my food intake and my weight. It contributed to helping me lose 20+% of my body weight in 6 months, and continuing has kept me on track since then. I started adding commentary after a while, but lately it has become infrequent.

While I'm traveling, I let go of the weight-tracking and food journaling, except for the occasional food shot when I've eaten something interesting. And that's where we find ourselves now.

I've removed the request to leave a comment at the top of the posts, since more than a few people have trouble, due to the software, in doing so - and I sensed some kind of guilt about it. In compensation, as a reward for reading my blog, I'm going to give you some insights that (probably) won't appear on Facebook and (definitely not on) Instagram.

First, a reminder, which I posted at one point last year: You are not getting the whole story here. There are things I'm not comfortable discussing in a public forum. There are things I self-edit, as uninteresting or unnecessary. Yes, you get the story I want to tell, possibly without the full context.

A lot of people compliment my photographs. You should know that they are not meant to be documentary. They are always impressionistic. Here's the story on that, untold to anyone until now.

I edit every photograph I take. At a minimum, I crop for composition or clarity. While I compose each shot when I take it, I will sometimes leave extra room to correct5 when I can't exclude extraneous stuff real-time. Very, very few of the pictures I share escape the knife.

Last year, when I first came to Thailand, I brought a Windows computer (hated it - I've grown completely used to the Apple universe of common apps). I wasn't particularly happy with the photo editors I put on it (that's on me, I cheaped out and got free and ultra low-cost software that I had on hand). On my first day there, by cosmic coincidence, there was an upgrade to Camera+, my on-phone editor of choice. This upgrade brought with it a new, single editing control, AI Clarity, which itself had only two adjustments: the AI, and Vibrance.

Virtually every shot I've made with my iPhone while traveling gets this single editing filter. To a degree, this is where the super-saturated colors in my photos come from, the subject typically colorful to begin with. Why? Because this is how I see the world, or, how I want to see the world. I have always been attracted to bright, contrasting colors.

So, there you have it - that's my entire course on phone photography: crop your pictures, make them suit your vision.

Now, back to recent events here in Chiang Mai.

Counting the day I arrived (which should be counted: It was awesome), today, as I write this makes a week in Chiang Mai. I have three weeks and five days left - yes, I'm counting. Actually, one of the reasons I'm counting is to keep tabs on my expenses, and compare them to the budget I allow myself. Chiang Mai is cheap - but a year later, it has gotten more expensive. I, on the other hand, don't have more money.

This is not a burden, nor have I budgeted myself into having jto .

Monday, I spent my daytime in a nearby cafe writing a blog post. I liked its name: The Coffee Addict. The food was good and the coffee excellent.

The whole thing about Monday, for me, is that it is open mic night at Boy Blues Club.

This is where, a year ago, I connected with the Chiang Mai music community. I had already run into Boy my first night in town. As I was going into the Siam Tulip, he was leafing to go to work at the club. He recognized me, or pretended to - hard to know, no matter, I reintroduced myself, just in case. Big smiles, and he was gone.

The club was packed. A few people I had seen over the last few days were there, in particular, Roddie, the trumpet player I had befriended at the birthday party Saturday night. We hung out together.

I was called up early, and allowed to stay three sets, although not given a chance to lead. Still, I believe I acquitted myself well, and when it was time to go and Boy announced me, I got applause, and everybody I'd played with came over and shook my hand.

The hosts of the Siam Tulip jam were there, and asked if I'd like to be house bass for a jam Sunday afternoon. I texted David, who told me he had bowed out of the gig, but had no problem lending me his bass for that, and so I nearly immediately agreed. Life is good.

One problem with Boy's: They serve beer and drinks, but they don't have a toilet - you have to use the ones in the Kalare Night Market below. Which isn't really a problem, they are well-marked and close by. But, when I finished my business, I decided to go back to my room, sensing the repeat of a problem I'd been having with Grab, the local taxi-hailing app that had supplanted Uber in Chiang Mai.

This bit of vexation is that I have to resubmit my booking request many times before the app finds me a cab. The app unhelpfully informs me that there are no cabs available, but if I were somewhere else, there might be. In the past, it has taken me upwards of twenty minutes of constantly resubmitting my booking before a drive accepted.

I was right, although I didn't want to be. Consequently, I decided to take one of the readily available tuk-tuks, which I don't prefer because they're (slightly) more expensive and (much) less comfortable.

But they get the job done when Grab lets me down.

For Tuesday morning, I had booked a Thai cooking class. I'd been advised, last year, to do this - not for the new cooking skills involved, but for the insight I'd get into Thai food.

In that, I was definitely satisfied. I was picked up on time, by a van bringing one coterie of students, mostly couples, and a couple of pairs of friends.

We were taken to the school, near the old market (where the Thai shop for stuff), introduced to our English-speaking Thai teacher, Kat, given aprons, and participated in a traditional welcoming snack after we all introduced ourselves. There were Brits, Germans, Chinese, French, Californians and me.

Then, with some help and explanation from the teacher, we selected the menu we would prepare. Because I was in the morning half-day class, I wouldn't get to prepare a papaya salad, which I had been looking forward to. But I would get to prepare my favorite, khao soi, a dish I tried for the first time and fell in love with last year.

We will all be making spring rolls, a soup (tom yun in my case) and a curry (khoa soi, me), which would involve also making a dish-matching chili paste.

We were given aprons and towels, then hats, and taken for a short walk to the nearby market. At the market, Kat introduced us to the different kinds of rice, noodles, and dry spices, describing the differences in preparation between the different types of rice and noodles, and explaining the important differences between them and how that affected their usage.

She demonstrated how coconut cream was made, and how it sometimes needed to be diluted, making coconut milk.

We were given a few minutes to wander about on our own, and then we were very efficiently rounded up for the walk back, and I realized why we had the hats - they were for easy identification.

When we were back at the cooking school, we were led to the herb and vegetable garden from which all the non-dry herbs and vegetables we were using were gotten. Every single thing was described and samples to taste or smell of each were handed around. At this point, I admit something went wrong - something I tasted or smelled gave me a hysterine reaction, and my nose started running. There were so many things - none completely new to me - I have no idea what did it.

But it wasn't a big problem. The Thai, I knew from last year, used toilet-paper consistency napkins. I took a bunch, and kept my nose clean the rest of the class. No problem.

The first thing we made was vegetable spring rolls. We were given a nine-inch square wheat-based wrapper and the fillings. We were shown how to roll them up. I instantly recognized a similarity to rolling a good joint, and my immediate result was praised by the teacher and given admiring comments from the other classmates. When I looked around at the variety of the students, I felt I should explain. "It's like rolling a joint," I said, with a smile. My comment was met with silence. Only the teacher laughed, presumably to be polite. Oh, well.

I deep-fried my spring roll - perfectly done, easily - and it was delicious.

Next, we were separated into three teams, and given the raw ingredients (in the right quantities) to make chili paste. This involved the heaviest mortar and pestle I'd ever used (when it was my turn - my three-person team took turns at the labor, with ingredient-chopping for the two not grinding.\

We then circulated around the prep table to smell - and, for the brave, to taste - each different paste. Two of the pastes were divided in half, with ingredients added for the specific curry they'd be used in, for a total of five pastes. I can testify that every single one was excellent (yes, I was one of the mad tasters).

We then prepped the ingredients for the soup, but didn't immediately use them - instead, we were back at the woks to cook up our curries. I think this was my favorite part. I especially liked the way the teacher helped us adjust the balance of the different tastes, so that it came out exactly to our individual liking. In this matter, at least, I made myself some of the best khao soi I had yet eaten in Chiang Mai. Right here, I felt the class went beyond my expectations.

The soup was pretty easy - it was simply a matter of adding the ingredients to the boiling water in the right order (chilis, dry ingredients, chicken, vegetables, and noodles, reserving some a lime section and crisp-fried noodles for adding to the bowl at the end).

Time to eat. I'm not particularly thrilled with the soup - almost all the Thai soups I've had suffer from the problem that the un-chewable flavoring ingredients are not separated after cooking. Thai people have no problem with this; I do. It isn't my preparation that is at fault, though. I try my best to pick out the chicken and mushrooms, and drink the broth. That part is definitely good, picking the inedibles that inevitably end up in my mouth, not so much.

But the khao soi is another story. I like it better than any other I've tasted, which probably means it wouldn't work for your average Thai, but there it is - the best-balanced version of the dish I've ever had. I won't stop ordering it at restaurants, buy my enjoyment will forever be informed by the version I made for myself. The class is over, we are given cookbooks that come very close to covering the exact course I've just had, and I'm driven back to my room.

David sends me a text reminding me that Tuesday night is open mic night at the North Gate Jazz Co-op. He isn't going because he has a gig at Boy's in Chart's band - Chart being one of the guitarist's I gigged with at Annie's Sunday night. I go over to David's, proud of myself for finding my way to his place without getting lost for the first time ever.

His gig starts earlier than the open mic at the North Gate, so I decide to ride down with him and hang on an 'off-night' at Boy's, something I haven't experienced before, only going there one time that didn't involve the uber-popular open mic.

Chart is there, I haven't seen him in a leader role, and while he plays blues standards, his phrasing on the vocals, and his guitar work in general, are much more creative than other cover bands I've heard doing similar stuff in Chiang Mai.

I'm hungry for dinner by nine o'clock, and, after sending my appreciation to the band, go downstairs to the famous food court at the night market. There's an absolute amazing variety of foods from various geographies and specialties. I decide on eggs with seafood, attracted by the promise of squid, octopus, oysters and fish all in a single dish. Mostly good, but some of the octopus is a little chewy. Ate it all, nonetheless. I don't waste protein, LOL.

About 1/3 of the food court at Kalare Night Market.

The display in front of the stall I got dinner from.

Once again, Grab fails to deliver a cab, and I get a particularly foul tuk-tuk, the motor is noisy and I feel like I'm breathing exhaust until we really get moving. But I am very efficiently delivered to the club, which is so over-filled that the audience spills outside into the street. I make my way inside to sign up, and stand around for the end of the house band set (excellent, by the way), when a slight between acts pause opens up a seat.

Soon enough, I'm called to the stage. Weirdly, everybody sits on their hands while a pan drum player does a long solo bit. He's interrupted by the drummer, impatiently tries to play along, but it's not good - the pan player (who, by the way, is fabulous) stops, turns around, and tells the drummer not to play until he has finished. Awkward. At the end of the solo, the band leader leads everyone into a funky riff in the pan's key (C-minor - really), but the pan player just packs up and leaves.

We jam and the audience is digging it, I'm in the pocket with the drummer. Then a singer is called up and and she wants to do Stevie Wonder's 4th of July, which I can approximate. It also turns out well. Then, unaccountably, whe wants to do an AC/DC song I've never heard of (I'm not big on that era/kind of rock). So, the leader asks me to hand back the bass to the house bass player. I acquiesce, only to find out that they've switched songs to 'What's Up?' a song I could have definitely played. I get to talk about that with the open mic leader, who asks me to come back, and promises a better session.

I walk back to my room, almost alone on the streets for fifteen minutes, and reflect on how safe I feel here. I'm not taking this for granted, although insecurity walking alone late at night is something I've really only felt in the US. And, I admit, I may be naive. Nonetheless, there are no incidents.

I'm back, still grateful for all my experiences today, and for the amazing time I'm having - really for the amazing life I have. But my nose is still running.

Food Comment