… did things like attending cooking class, fruit carving class, and 1:1 personal training with Ken. Yes, Ken, a fitting name for a fitness instructor, no? Now THIS is an inspiring story…
Ken’s from Bangalore, India, where he had worked in the IT division of an investment bank. Well, he had had enough of the shitty corporate life working night shifts, so he started looking on the internet for yoga instructor jobs abroad, and lo and behold, he landed his gig at the Layana after a couple of phone interviews. What a lucky guy. AND, guess what? He had never left India before. Wow. And you could tell he was both scared and super psyched. We think he’s going to do just fine. Anyway, Ken was a great trainer and we wished we could have had him help us work off our Argentina fat.
In other news, we also signed up for a cooking class. We served up some chicken in red curry, spicy seafood salad with glass noodles, and tom yum goong (spicy prawn soup).
Daaaang, look at those knife skills!!!
Yes, we made that:
Proud chefs with our mentor, Nimit:
Then, I tried my hand at fruit carving, which brought me back down to earth. It was hard – you have to be really good with an exacto knife and have a good sense of 3D geometry. Or risk butchering the fruit or worse, your own fingers! Here’s my instructor, Tui, making a carrot flower.
Can you guess which rose is mine and which one’s Tui’s below? They were carved out of pumpkin rind!
Yeah that was hard <sarcasm>, the one on the left is mine. And it vaguely resembles a rose only because Tui went over it with some corrective cuts. And even then, she could barely salvage it.
But, the other things we carved were a bit easier and made for a nice display. There were leaves made out of carrots, curled spring onions, red pepper flowers, carrot flowers, tomato skin roses.
We didn’t just do fun stuff. We had to do laundry, too… in the bathtub. Yes, Layana was perfect in just about every way. If our room had a kitchen and laundry machine, we’d probably just move in and you’d be coming out to visit us in Thailand. Just kidding. Here’s Lisa doing a big load – we were down to our last outfits!
Now for a random note: I think this is the first praying mantis I’ve seen live. It was hanging out on the table cloth getting ready to climb up to the table. A waiter picked it up by its neck to show other people, but eventually got nicked by those sharp front legs. Yowza.
… back to what we did. On another day, we took a taxi in to Saladan town to see what’s up.
Well, not much unfortunately. It was a ghost town because of low season. BUT, I did get the BEST HAIRCUT I’ve ever gotten for $3. I know, I know – how hard can it be, shaving one’s head? Well, trust me, one can miss hairs and not trim the edges well.
The other thing was, it was HOT. So hot, you have to adapt… like this dog. Sleeping on a cold stone bench in the shade. Smart dog. But he doesn’t look very comfortable…
The best thing to do in the heat was get out of it. So after 1.5 hours, including lunch, we high-tailed it back to the hotel to jump in the pool.
Alas, it had to come to an end…
We were sad to leave the Layana. The staff had started to remember how we liked our mixed drinks and what food we liked at what spiciness level. Yes, we were pampered. And we will be back again. You should go too. Seriously.
Here’s a slideshow of our photos:
[flickrslideshow acct_name=”tony-chen” id=”72157624725835161″]
Up next, we’ll post some photos from our diving at Koh Haa which was near Koh Lanta.