June 4th... Mandarin Oriental Resort

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...