Tomorrow evening I am off on a five week trip to S. E. Asia.  This is a follow up to one I did about 3 or 4 years ago to take cooking classes in Thailand and Cambodia.  This trip will start by landing in Bangkok and transferring to another plane to Chiang Mai which is in the north of Thailand.

I attended my first S. E. Asian cooking class in Chiang Mai over a decade ago, and that's where I'll start my cooking adventure on this trip.  From there I'll hopefully head to Laos next, although an internet search for classes in Vientiane and Luang Prabang  hasn't turned up much.  Maybe I should try to find a French chef instead of a Laotian one.

My travel plans as always are fluid.  By fluid I mean I book my first night's hotel, and that's the sum total of my detailed advance planning.  I do have a general idea for the trip.  From Laos I'll head to southern Thailand to revisit a great cooking school I spent several days at last time.

From there I'll head to Malaysia.  This is the main reason for my trip.  I'm off to both northern and southern Malaysia to experience Nyonya cuisine.  It is an outgrowth from the Peranakan culture which, as I understand it, is a marriage of Malay and Chinese cultures and represents a unique style of 'fusion' cooking.

Having laid out the above general travel plan, as always in my life as my kids and others close to me will attest, my plans can change at the drop of a pot.