Richard, must have been a long long time ago when you lived in Pattaya and there were no bars. When was that? Back in the 1960s?

As for Thai cooking classes. I did one in Perth Australia a couple years ago, with TAFE in the evenings, teacher was a very nice Thai lady, her parents run a restaurant in Phuket, so she grew up with cooking as her profession. One of the advantages of doing the course at home was the teacher knew all the best places to get the various ingredients (not really a problem in Australia these days) also she was able to suggest easy alternatives and substitutes for anything that was hard to find.

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The Truly Wise Man Never Plays Leapfrog With A Unicorn