Food Tours · Tour

Boat, Don Wai Market and a Cooking Class with Chef Aoy

Six hours, private, and most of it outside Bangkok. Aoy picks you up at Bang Wa BTS in her own car and drives to a wholesale market, where the produce, seafood and noodle makers supply the city, with Thai snacks and coffee while you look. Then Don Wai market, which sells to the region rather than to visitors: you will not see many foreigners in it. From the pier nearby, a boat down the Tha Chin river, half an hour of it, to her house on the bank. The garden runs down to the water and the kitchen is a proper studio rather than a domestic one. A drink first, then the cooking: two Thai dishes from scratch, with the herbs and spices explained as you go. Lunch is what you made, eaten looking at the river, and it may be pad thai, red curry with roast duck, or her somtam lood. Beer can be bought there. Aoy won Iron Chef Thailand, and she plates food with flowers and herbs cut from her own garden. She also runs a restaurant from the house, so there may be other diners in the room at lunchtime. On days she is away, one of her chefs takes the class. Up to nine people, in English. Vegetarian menus, dietary restrictions and allergies can all be handled with notice. Hotel transfers are an option: give your hotel name and address when booking.