Cooking is good exercise, and a way to share culture

TAMBOL BANGMAUNG, Thailand — As a 7-year-old growing up along the canal villages a few miles from Bangkok, Pip Fragrajang didn't walk to school. She rowed her own boat one hour each way.

Today, an eight-lane highway connects the village of Tambol Bangmaung to modern Bangkok just 15 miles away, but Pip still prefers that her guests come by boat to the Thai House, a bed-and-breakfast inn with seven rooms and a cooking school nestled among the mango trees and gardens of her family compound.

If you have just a few days in Bangkok, you don't have to give up on experiencing tropical Thailand. Within minutes of leaving the Chao Phraya river on a long-tail water taxi, the city gives way to the countryside along the network of waterways, called klongs, east of the river.

Tin-roofed shacks, bungalows with picket fences perched on stilts and elaborate Buddhist temples front the waterways.

Want coffee? Blow a horn, and the local coffee boat will deliver. There's a noodle boat that serves a terrific Phat Thai and a Seven-Eleven boat stocked with soft drinks and snacks.

It took us about an hour to reach the Thai House by water for one of Pip's cooking classes and an overnight stay.

She had cutting boards ready and a platter of vegetables and herbs set out on a table in her outdoor kitchen when we arrived.

Behind a row of earthen jugs used for collecting rainwater was the villa her family built 16 years ago on a rice and mango farm started by her grandfather 80 years ago.

It resembled a temple, incorporating wing-shaped roofs thought to be a means of transporting people to heaven. Constructed entirely of golden teakwood, the house was built in a style popular around the Ayutthaya region in central Thailand 150 years ago.

Our second-floor room opened onto a tile courtyard and was decorated in traditional style with two twin beds on the floor and bolsters for sitting.

Pip, 55, hosts up to 10 students at a time at her late-morning and early afternoon cooking sessions, but today there were just two of us, a woman from Australia and me.

We set to work on a lunch of sour and spicy prawn soup, Thai noodles and a cold chicken salad.

"They teach me English, I teach them how to cook," Pip said of her students as she began explaining the differences among various chili peppers, herbs and vegetables on the platter.

We practiced new techniques such as tearing the stems from the leaves of kaffir limes and cutting a chili pepper, leaving the stalk and seeds in one piece.

While we worked, Pip passed on tips such as how to counteract the burn of too much chili (chew on palm sugar or a piece of chocolate) and how to say "less spicy" in Thai (Ped-Nid-Noi).

Later that afternoon, after the Australian woman left to catch a plane, I gained a new appreciation for the convenience of buying red curry paste in Seattle when I sat down on the floor with Pip and she taught me how to grind the peppers, garlic and spices from scratch with a mortar and pestle.

"Cooking is good exercise," she said. I'd never thought of it that way.

Eating all of this on her outdoor veranda, of course, was the highlight, but the cooking was only one reason to come.

Almost more interesting was the chance to learn a bit more about life in the klong villages. After dinner that night, I sat and talked to Pla, one of Pip's 28-year-old twin daughters.

Don't expect a quiet morning, she warned. With three temples nearby, the monks start chanting at 5 a.m. At 6 a.m., someone puts the radio near the temple's loudspeaker and broadcasts the news for the farmers and others who don't have time to read the paper before they go to work.

The begging monk floats by around 6:30 a.m. in his canoe. People line the canals with donations of fruit and rice, which he brings back to the other monks for breakfast.

"Things are changing," Pla said. More people from Bangkok are buying up the farmland to build houses and escape the city.

My guess is that the Fragrajang family could have sold their land for a good price.

Instead they've built a business out of sharing traditional Thai life with outsiders. Accessible Asia. This is what it's all about.