I am a master Thai chef

I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand's second largest city which is located in the Northwest of the country for 5 days. Some of the attractions are treks through the wilderness with visits to hilltribe people, elephant rides, bamboo rafting down the river, and pretty much anything outdoors. I was feeling too lazy for this sort of thing, but luckily one of the other highly recommended attractions is to take a Thai cooking course, so I signed up for one of those. I don't cook much at home so I wasn't sure how capable I'd be of all of a sudden making Thai food no less, but I figured a day full of food sounded like I should try anyways.

My class turned out to be just me and 2 girls from my dorm, so we had lots of attention from our 2 teachers. We started the day by going to the market where we were each responsible for picking up a few ingredients. I had to get mint, spring onions, and pea eggplant (which I'd never heard of, but is eggplant that looks like big peas). Then we had some free time to look around the market. There were some stinky areas with meat just sitting around in the heat, lots of vegetables, flowers, and bowls full of live fish which I got splashed by as one was being taken out to be cut up for a buyer.

We went back to the school and watched the instructor prepare the first meal of the day, fried noodles with pork. It took very little time to make, then we got to try some. It was really tasty and I wanted more than just one bite, but it was time for us to make it ourselves. I was a bit slow in doing everything and my stove didn't turn on very well, but I managed everything okay. We then got to try out what we'd just made, and mine was just as good as the instructor's but a lot less spicy. I ate the whole thing and wanted more, but it was time for the next dish. The next 3 dishes we'd prepare and set aside, then stop for a lunch break and eat them all. First we made steamed fish in banana leaves with lots of different spices, then yellow curry with chicken and potatoes, then chicken with cashew nuts (my favourite Thai dish). I wasn't really into the fish because I didn't like the spices, but the chicken and the curry were fantastic and I hardly had room to eat both of them. I was very surprised by my ability to cook something so tasty, and I even like what I'd made better than any food I'd eaten at a restaurant here so far. After lunch we still had 2 more dishes to cook which I really couldn't even imagine because I was so full and lazy already after 4 courses. The next thing we made, a spicy prawn salad, I wasn't interested in because I don't like prawns and it involved lots of cilantro, so I don't know how I did with that one. For dessert we made bananas in coconut milk and that was good.

Some things I was surprised about were what went into the sauces. Just about everything had oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sugar in it. Even the non-dessert dishes all had lots of sugar, both palm sugar and white sugar. That must be how everything was so extra tasty. One of the dishes even had a sauce base made by boiling vinegar and dissolving lots of sugar into it. I'd like to try to make this stuff at home because it was really tasty and it was actually me that made it, but I'm not sure I'd be able to find all the ingredients (do they sell palm sugar in Canada?).