Chiang Mai on an apron string

By Peter Janssen Jun 22, 2010, 10:52 GMT

Chiang Mai, Thailand - Chiang Mai, Thailand's cultural capital, is also a classic example of Thailand's business culture at work. If something makes money, repeat it ad-nauseam.

Three decades ago, Chiang Mai was still famed for its ancient Buddhist temples and its cultural inheritance from Lanna, as the northern kingdom 'of a million rice fields' was known in the 13th to 18th centuries.

Nowadays the temples are hidden behind a plethora of guesthouses, hotels, massage parlours, spas, bars and the latest tourist-catching fad - fish-nibbling-feet-cleaning shops. Lanna culture has been largely replaced by mass tourism culture.

The guest houses and hotels offer a similar list of tourist attractions - trekking among the hill tribes, rope rides through the jungles, elephant rides, river rafting and one of the more recent fads, Thai cooking courses.

One could, of course, study Thai cuisine in Bangkok, but Bangkok (which is only 224-years-old) never claims to be the country's cultural capital and the city's traffic is enough to discourage most tourists from leaving their hotels for anything but the bare necessities.

Meanwhile, over the past two decades some 20-30 Thai cooking schools have popped up in Chiang Mai.

The first was started by Sompon Nabnian, a native of Payao province who migrated to Chiang Mai as a teenager to study at a Buddhist temple school.

Sompon, 42, graduated from school proficient in English so he joined the growth-industry of the late 1980s, leading tourists on treks to the hill tribe villages and poppy fields of the North.

On one such trek he met his English wife, Elizabeth.

'After working as a tour guide for seven years I went to England, where my wife and I came up with the idea of opening a cooking school in Chiang Mai,' Sompon said.

The Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School was established in 1993 and claims to be the first.

'When you start something new you don't get much support,' Sompon said. 'But after six months I could see it was going to work and after a couple of years I started to get phone calls on how I did it.'

Now there are more than 20 Thai cooking schools to choose from in Chiang Mai.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Chiang Mai office recommends the following, alphabetically: A Lot of Thai Home Cooking Class, Baan Thai Cooking course, Chinag Mai Thai Cookery School, Gap's Culinary Art School, Mae Sa Craft Village, Sompet Thai Cookery School, Thai Chocolate (go figure?) and The Chilli Club Cooking Academy.

Most of them follow Sompon's business model of offering a set of six well-known Thai dishes on one to five-day courses.

Most tourists opt for one to two days of culinary study.

'For us this is just part of the cultural experience,' said Bob, a tourist from Missouri, who had enrolled in a day-course at Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School with his four daughters. 'Tomorrow we're going to an elephant park.'

For those who stick it out for all five days, one is rewarded with a certificate signed by Sompon at the end of the ordeal. Be warned, after five days your blood turns to coconut milk and fish sauce, two of the main ingredients in just about every Thai dish.

Sompon's Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School also offers a Master's Class for professional chefs that costs 2,700 baht (84 dollars) a day. The price for a normal cooking class is 900 baht (28 dollars) a day.

His school, situated about six kilometres outside Chiang Mai city, is one of the biggest. During peak season, classes can reach up to 60 students, but the average number is closer to 20.

Other schools may be more personal, but Sompon has made a point of keeping his up to a certain standard and regularly improving the recipes.

'Northern people don't like to improve things but aim at quick money,' Sompon said. 'They are not focused on doing things for a living.'

That, alas, used to be part of the charm of Lanna.