Trouvez-vous que la liste des choses à faire en tant que famille à Bangkok est limitée? Parents nous sentons ta douleur! La Thaïlande est peut-être une destination de rêve, mais il peut être particulièrement difficile de trouver des activités amusantes avec vos enfants au-delà des visites touristiques. Même parmi les cours de cuisine à Bangkok, très peu autorisent les enfants. Nous savons qu’il peut être décevant de découvrir l’un des meilleurs moyens de voir et d’apprendre sur la culture thaïlandaise, et peut être limité à certains membres de la famille en fonction de restrictions d’âge ou de taille.
Les enfants profitant de notre cours de cuisine à Bangkok, alors que leurs parents participent à proximité.
Si vous ne trouvez pas de cours axés sur la famille à Bangkok, c’est parce que la façon dont les cours de cuisine sont organisés est trop centrée sur les affaires. Les Thaïlandais admettent tous que la cuisine est le centre de la maison asiatique, mais lorsqu’il s’agit de capter l’argent du tourisme, de nombreuses entreprises obligeront autant de personnes à suivre un «cours de cuisine» que possible. Pour les groupes de touristes en particulier, opérer dans les délais et pouvoir accueillir de grands groupes a usurpé l’importance d’être accessible et accueillant pour tous les âges.
Du plaisir pour tous les âges, y compris Miss Teen Puerto Rico et sa famille.
Plus tôt cette année, nous avons pris à cœur les commentaires de nos clients qui souhaitaient y assister avec leurs enfants. Après tout, Courageous Kitchen est une organisation caritative fondée sur la conviction que la cuisine est une excellente salle de classe pour les personnes de tout âge, et en particulier pour les enfants. Ainsi, au lieu de faire de la place pour les parents avec des enfants, nous avons organisé un cours dédié aux familles qui souhaitent cuisiner ensemble.
Joyeux Noël de la part de l’équipe Courageous Kitchen, à vous et à tous nos visiteurs amusants!
Nous avons beaucoup appris en organisant ces nouvelles classes cette année. Avoir des enfants à cuisiner avec leurs parents a été particulièrement amusant à regarder, et le fait d’avoir trois générations d’une famille visitant notre cuisine a laissé des souvenirs qui dureront beaucoup plus longtemps que notre pad thai fait maison. La beauté de toute cette mémoire de vacances, c’est qu’elle nous aidera à maintenir et à compléter autant de familles dans le besoin. Nous remercions tous nos invités et sympathisants d’avoir rendu notre travail possible, et encourageons tout le monde où que vous soyez à entrer dans la cuisine en famille pendant ces vacances!
Are you finding the list of things to do as a family in Bangkok limiting? Parents we feel your pain! Thailand may be a dream destination, but finding fun activities to do with your kids beyond sightseeing, can be especially difficult. Even among cooking classes in Bangkok, very few allow children. We know it can be disappointing to find out one of the best ways to see and learn about Thai culture, may be limited to certain family members based on age or height restrictions.
Kids enjoying our cooking class in Bangkok, as their parents participate nearby.
The reason you don’t find family oriented classes in Bangkok, is because the way cooking classes are organized is too business centric. Thais all admit the kitchen is the center of the asian household, but when it comes to capturing the tourist dollar, many companies will force as many people into a ‘cooking class’ as they can. For tour groups especially, operating on schedule and being able to accommodate large groups has usurped the importance of being accessible and welcoming to all ages.
Fun for all ages, including Miss Teen Puerto Rico and family.
Earlier this year, we took the feedback from our customers requesting to attend with their children to heart. After all, Courageous Kitchen is a charity founded on the belief that the kitchen is a great classroom for people of all ages, and especially children. So instead of just making room for parents with kids, we carved out a class dedicated to families who want to cook together.
Merry Christmas from the Courageous Kitchen team to you and all of our fun visitors!
We’ve learned a lot from hosting these new classes this past year. Having kids cooking with their parents has been especially fun to watch, and having three generations of a family visit our kitchen has made memories that will last a lot longer than our homemade pad thai. The beauty of all this holiday memory making, is it will help us to sustain and supplement so many families who are in need. We appreciate all of our guests and supporters for making our work possible, and encourage everyone wherever you are to get into the kitchen with family this holiday!
Bangkok is the world’s hot spot for delicious street food. While street food in other cities around the world may be constrained to a few areas of a given city, Bangkok’s food scene stretches across the limits of the city itself. Vendors range from people setting up blankets along the roadside, to funky and very cluttered shop houses, where generations of a family may have been hawking the same dish for decades.
If you’ve never been here before it’s easy to underestimate how much there really is to try. Each week we help visitors navigate the streets, introducing them to everything from exotic tropical fruit, to deciphering the different types of meat in a specialty bowl of street-side noodles.
We are approaching the one year anniversary of our Street Food 101 Tour and wanted to offer some tips on identifying the qualities of outstanding street food tours in Bangkok. Whether you roam the streets snacking with us, on your own, or decide to take another tour, we hope the following tips will help you have an adventurous, fun, and delicious street food adventure!
1) Off the Beaten Path, Dense Street Food
Let’s face it, Bangkok often tops the list of most visited cities in the world. With hotels and luxury condos occupying prime real estate, how can we also expect to find the best food in the city’s central business district? In fact, many of these areas (Sukhumvit, Silom, Chinatown, Khaosan Rd., and similar areas) were the topic of controversy when Bangkok’s city authorities began to crack down on illegal street food vendors in the past few years.
So there’s no coincidence that the further you are from your hotel, the better the street food is likely to become. Outside of the main downtown areas, street food still thrives, and large communities of the city’s working class people are dependent upon it. This is why it’s important to choose a tour that takes you to places you wouldn’t consider visiting on your own.
Great guides are never afraid to get lost, or wander with you into the labyrinth like shophouse alleys of old town, or graffiti’d streets in parts of the city you’ve never heard of before. Often the payoff for such misadventures is finding neighborhoods where the street food is not only delicious, but dense— meaning you have a great selection of dishes to try in a small area. Bring your camera, an adventurous appetite so you’re prepared to try something new, and be extra friendly incase people are curious to know how you found their local hotspot.
2) Interaction with Street Food Vendors
The ugly truth about street food is that it’s difficult, unstable work. The expectation that food is cheap, is at odds with constantly rising food prices, unpredictable monsoon weather, and inflation. Unfortunately in our enthusiasm for $1 goodies, we tend to glaze over the struggles of people who provide this awesome cuisine for us to enjoy.
For example, there is a woman in our nearby market who sells a flavor gushing betel leaf wrap (a Thai snack called miang kham). Often when we meet her on our tour she’s still wearing her maid uniform, meaning she’s worked all day before coming to the market to sell her delectables for another 4 hours, before she can rest. We love stopping by to support her, but want to go beyond just snacking and taking pictures alone. Each time we bring guests we include a tip, reminding her we aren’t only paying for the few bites of food, but for the opportunity to interact with her and experience one of Thai cuisine’s most unique dishes.
We should note that tipping is not normal in Thai culture and can lead to tension. A vendor may initially refuse your money, or think you’ve left it at the stall accidentally. This is where tour guides who have an ongoing relationship with the vendors is important, so they understand you love their food, and that you value them as well. We would all be wise to remember that lack of support for street food vendors locally, can also exacerbate the forces depreciating the quality of food on offer in Bangkok as well.
3) Wandering Bangkok’s Dizzying Local Markets
Bangkok has her eyes fixed on cosmopolitan grandeur, but her feet remain firmly rooted in the rich merchant heritage of the past. This is a contradiction found in the types of restaurants on offer, but also embodied by Thais raised in the city themselves. You could argue that the aforementioned ‘off the beaten path’ parts of Bangkok, are merely a network of wet markets, each the epicenter of local communities sprawling in every direction around them.
People depend on the wet markets to supply them with a constant supply of affordable fruit and vegetables grown in the neighboring provinces (often called Thailand’s bread basket). Other goods, such as fresh meat and seafood, coconut milk pressed before your eyes, and even factory fresh rice noodles that are mass produced and cut to order, are indispensable in each community. Without a doubt, the wealth of ingredients available in the local markets are the backbone of the incredible street food available in Bangkok, and you shouldn’t miss the chance to explore a market with this in mind.
Proximity to the market makes it easier for vendors who push their carts up and down busy streets, but is also important for larger operations of restauranteurs, and street food vendors who’ve evolved from push carts to open air shophouses. On our tour you may spot the uncle who owns the Southern Thai curry cart praying in front of the market for good sales, just as the evening rush begins. Nearby in another corner of the market, an auntie is single handedly frying, steaming, mixing up 3-5 dishes to sale at her small rice and curry stall. We stop by to get advance access to a few sample nibbles before she loads everything on her cart to sell. On our next stop we may plop down on flimsy plastic stools in a shop house
These experiences give you a wider cultural perspective on street food, tell why it’s invaluable to people of Bangkok, and will aid you in discovering and enjoying Bangkok’s best street food on a tour, or on your own.
Happy exploring, consider joining our tour, or helping spread the transformative power of food to more youth in Bangkok by making a donation to Courageous Kitchen.
We’re launching our first Thai cooking class in Bangkok and you’re invited!
If you’re looking for things to do in Bangkok, you can finally join a Courageous Kitchen cooking class with us! We’re taking our experiences doing community outreach, feeding and educating people, into hosting people looking for unique cultural experiences in Bangkok.
We hosted our first official class this week and everything went better than expected. Now we can confidently extend our invite to other friends, supporters, and even tourists visiting Bangkok. Cooking classes are already a popular activity for tourists visiting Thailand to do when they’re not battling the sun visiting famous temples or passed out at a Thai massage. We hope to tap into the enthusiasm and curiosity people have about Thai food, while having some fun, and sharing the story of Courageous Kitchen.
We’ll be keeping the classes very small and pumping the funds generated by bookings back into our work with children in need. As a matter of fact, you will even have a chance to learn some of our students favorite recipes!
Here’s what you’d do in a typical cooking class:
– Visit a local fresh market and be introduced to unique Thai ingredients
– Browse different street food stalls and a stop for coffee
– Hear from our team and volunteers about Courageous Kitchen
– Be introduced to locally grown and organic Thai ingredients we use frequently
– Cook up a storm making up to three of your favorite Thai dishes (requests welcome)
– Enjoy eating your pad thai and other dishes together, with a traditional Thai dessert
We’re excited to invite you to join us and to kindly ask that you would help spread the word about this latest initiative. If you or friends are visiting Thailand you can join us in Bangkok, meet some of our volunteers, and support our project while having fun and getting fed!
