Baan Thai cookery school

Had an enjoyable day yesterday at cooking school, only 5 of us there; 2 Ozzie couples so it was great to finally have a conversation with someone.
started off with a market tour, with baskets, to buy ingredients. Boom (means dimples in Thai!) explained all the different ingredients and food that was on offer in the market. all of which we'd previously walked past thinking what on earth is that. she explained all the different kinds of rice and noodles (lots).
we started off by cooking fried cashew nuts with chicken, which was lovely, then prepared spicy noodle salad (all this sat on the ground, of course i can't bend my knee so things were very uncomfortable) and chicken in cocnut milk. we then ate this - oh my gosh it was very spicy indeed. after this we prepared red curry paste by cutting and grinding lots of ingredients up by hand, including lots of red chillis. we used the paste to make red curry - despite me only putting a small amount of paste in it was still too spicy! we also made fried fish cakes to have with it. these were very nice actually, didn't taste like fish at all.
i think i must have drunk litres and litres of water yesterday to cool my mouth down, we all found it a bit too spicy. still we have a beautifully bound recipe book to take awway so now we can make it as mild as we like.
stumbled away at about 3pm after eating 5 dishes since 11pm - very full and only had a salad for dinner last night!