Arriving in Krabi with not a clue what to do, we stumbled across “Ya’s Cooking School” in a collection of dusty flyers at our guest house reception. Having spent the first month of our trip fantasising about being taught how to cook Thai food properly and seeing the pictures of Gordon Ramsey attending Ya’s on the leaflet, we decided to take the £30 hit to our already depleted bank balances and booked a lesson… It was the best decision we could have made!
Being based in Ao Nang (a 30 minute drive from Krabi) the free transfer from hotel to the school and back did not apply to us, however a mere 200 Baht (£4.58) fee for collection and drop off for me and my girlfriend was hardly an annoyance and much cheaper than a taxi. Not really knowing what to expect, we arrived. We soon realised that we weren’t actually being taught by grand master Ya herself, but two of her disciples, who would be giving us one to one tutelage as we noticed we were the only students there.
The school offers four course options, which can be seen here; we went for programme C, being one of the cheapest and including the dishes we were most excited about cooking. Being allowed to pick three of the dishes available, I opted to be taught: chicken thai basil, chicken in coconut milk soup (a surprisingly delicious one) and green curry. My girlfriend opted for: pad thai, penang curry and tom yum soup. We were also both taught how to make a curry paste and mango sticky rice.
The cooking process was extremely straightforward as we learnt on the go, being guided through each step with our respective disciple over our shoulder, telling us what every herb was as they are not readily available in the UK. Instead of boring you with the details of every item we chopped, fried and boiled, I have left an example recipe at the bottom of this article should you be interested. I will tell you however, that Thai spicy and English spicy aren’t even on the same scale, both instructors put ten chillies in their own green curries!*
After cooking came the taste test. We got to sit down and eat our creations with cheap beer and coke on sale to complement the meal. The food was unbelievably tasty, if I do say so myself, but obviously we couldn’t eat it all, so had it packaged up to take back to our guest house along with a cookbook. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of booking the course on our last day in Krabi and had to throw away most of our food because of our flight the next day. As a result, I would recommend booking Ya’s school for the first day of your stay so you can enjoy the fruits of your labour for longer; if you have even more advanced planning skills, you should look for accommodation with a fridge, meaning you have free meals for at least two days!
Despite the added benefits of a free cookbook and takeaway food, Ya’s Cooking School is still dear. I would have liked to learn how to cook a fried rice dish, available on programme A in the form of pineapple fried rice, but unfortunately this programme is too costly for us. However I wouldn’t like to dwell on the negatives, but rather add to the already saturated good reviews on the internet and say our overall experience was wonderful and both me and my girlfriend came away more knowledgeable and better cooks.
A Cooking class is a must in Thailand but all of them come at a healthy sum. If you have the money to spare, Ya's Cooking School in Krabi is a great place to spend it.
Recipe Sample
*if you are frequenting Thailand as an English wimp who can’t hack spice (like me) then this phrase will save the day: “Mai-ped” (not spicy)