Today we had to be ready by 8:30 in the morning to go and tour one of the top rated hotel groups in the world. The hotel is called the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and it was a very cool hotel and resort that they have tucked away from Chiang Mai. We entered and we were in a courtyard with old Mercedes Bends limos that were waiting to take the guests to destinations around the city. We were taken into a large room where we listened to one of the main people from the hotel tell us about what Mandarin Hotels do and what they are trying to accomplish as a hotel group. After the hour or so presentation we were given a tour of the hotel where we got to tour rooms that were priced at just over $500 dollars a night to one room that was priced at $1500 per night. We asked a question about what the most expensive room in the hotel was and they told us it was a set of 6 separate bungalows that could sleep up to 10 people for just over $6000 dollars a night. This hotel has four restaurants including a traditional Thai, Chinese, Malaysian, and French restaurants all scattered around the hotel. There were two themes to the hotel and they were oriental and colonial so as a result there were two different themed rooms at this hotel. Comparing this to the Ritz Carlton in California that I have been to, I would say this hotel has a much more resort feel to it compared to the Ritz that I was at because it was spread out over 60 acres and you didn’t feel like you were at a hotel. We then had a light lunch at the hotel and left to return back to the International Center to change out of our school uniforms and into some more comfortable ones for our traditional Thai cooking class.
We got into some vans and left to go to a market to pick up all of the fresh ingredients to learn how to make our dishes. We had to barter with the people selling the vegetables and we bought all of our stuff that was on our list for 60 baht when we could have spent 200 so we felt good about ourselves. We then got to the cooking kitchen where everyone had their own Wok and cooking station which was really cool and hands on. We learned how to prepare and cook Pad-Thai, Shrimp tom-yum, chicken red curry with noodles, and sweet sticky rice with mango. It was a great learning experience and I look forward to cooking Pad-Thai for friends and family when I get home to the States.
We then got home and all passed out from being so tired at about 7 at night to sleep all night till 7 the next morning where we had to do it all over again.
My camera was dead so... I don't have any pics yet...
Friday, June 11, 2010
June 3rd.... Finally Friday!
Today we had class like normal and then it was the opening day of the shop where we all showed off our new stands and the products that we were going to sell. Our smoothie stand was one of the most popular stands there and we were very busy selling smoothies and not French fries. We thought the French fries would sell very well here but Thais do not like to branch out of their comfort zone and we only sold 9 plates of fries for the day which was only 90 baht. We sold out of some flavors of smoothies by the middle of the day and we found out which smoothies sold the best and which sold the worst and we eliminated those flavors from our menu as a result. We closed at 4 with total revenue for the day of 2100 baht which is not bad at all for our first day! (Other teams did not even sell 1000). I think we were one of the best selling stands for the day and I think that we will be able to make a very good profit for the two weeks that we are working and get some of our money back in our pockets to spend in at other occasions.
Once we got home we had about 5 hours of down time that we had available to us to do something for ourselves for a change. I desperately needed a haircut so I walked down the main road and found a salon that was doing haircuts for 300baht (kinda pricey right?) but I figured that in the states I would have paid about 15 for a good haircut and so I walked in and received a very good haircut and they washed and conditioned my hair so that was pretty nice all for only 300 baht. I left and came back to the international center where we all decided to go to the Italian restaurant to have some pizza and beer to start the night off right. I had a nice 8 inch pizza and a large beer for just over 7 dollars US and then we went to the club called the warm up where we preceded to drink, get hammered, and then attempt to dance on the stage where we got kicked off. It was a great night and definitely one to remember.
Oasis Spa Tour
Oasis Spa tour
This is the second week of school and we all look very tired today not wanting to get up and out of bed. We had the usual classes and then for the small business class we had the opportunity to see a world class spa that was started here in Chang-Mai. We got to the spa and were greeted by some beautiful women who gave us some water and we waited to meet the CEO of the Oasis spa. We met with the owner and asked him many questions about how his business runs and functions being so high class and expensive on Thai standards. He explained to us everything that we wanted to know and gave us a tour of all of the facilities where the massages and treatments are given to the guests. We then were told that the best three questions get a free massage and that we all were going to get 50% off of any spa treatment at the end of the tour so that gave more incentive for the girls to start firing off questions. Ironically two guys asked some of the best questions and they were awarded the free spa treatments. We then gave our thanks to the owner and got back in the taxi's to return back to the international center to do homework for the remaining night.
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