Soap Carving in Bangkok. My Last Thai Story

Bangkok, Thailand

February 2013

Soap Carving

New designs of Malisa school

At the last day of my staying in BKK, I had soap classes at Malisa school. After a week training I was confident about serious designs (better to say, my teachers felt OK to teach me the serious designs :))    I passed the carving test and was allowed to carve the new designs).

All my soap carvings were made in pink because soap bars of other colors were not soft enough for that carving style. I was given with some of  the special tools to work on soap.

Details, work of mine

Beautiful carving style, new design of Malisa school
work of mine

Each soap took two hours of concentrated work. 

Go deeper inside the soap when carve this design

Malisa school can teach any level students, from beginners to professionals. At the class I had a seat between two teachers from Osaka and Tokyo, they came to Malisa to learn new things of high level.  

having a lunch with  Ellie from Tokyo, and her friends.
Pity that was my last day in Bangkok

this cat was watching us while our lunch

The last evening in BKK I spent at Arab Market across Sukhumvit Road.  The district has a name Little Arabia and looks like a big market with street restaurants, fruit shops and jewelry/bags/clothes/gifts/massage saloons, freak beggars/transvestites/tourists and no cats. It is crowdy till night. If you pass through the market you will get Terminal 21, a modern trading center at Sukhumvit Road. 

I just wonder how all the things can exist together at one place :) That's Bangkok!

This is my last story from BKK. Read all articles about my trip to Thailand here.

Flying back home to Sakhalin,
the picture is taken between HongKong and Russia.

Few statistic data: 

For the week trip to Thailand I experienced 7 flights, 1 train, 3 hotels, 3 taxi, 5 airports, metro, 1 motobike, 1 cycling taxi, 1 cable car and walking barefoot.

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Let's Paint Your Sandwich. Cute Salami, Tomato and Cucumber Garnishes

More posts about sandwich art:

Mukimono - The Japanese Method of Food Garnishing

Culinary Art Every Day

Gnome Sandwiches

Sandwiches with Cucumber Garnish

'Carrot' Sandwich with Caviar

Sandwich Art

Let's paint your sandwich.
Tomato flower, cucumber garnish, salami butterfly

Cute Sandwiches Method:

Easy and quick garnishes out of tomato cherry, cucumber and olives to paint a sandwich with bright colors.
Salami and smoke sausage for calories.

Smoke sausage and cucmber,
a small copy of the sausage bouquet

Olive, tomato and cucumber
Tomato win!

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Taro Vase and Pumpkin Flowers. Evening Bangkok Sightseeing

Bangkok, Thailand
February 2013

Carving lessons at Malisa school

Chiang Mai-Bangkok train had a late arrival to the city. I had no time for seeing China Town in the morning as planned, I run to the carving school (jumped to my hotel for quick freshening after train). 

At the lesson I had a Taro root for carving. I have never seen it before, it was a new material to carve. Taro is good for sculpting. Here is a small vase with rose carving on it.

Shaping a vase out of Taro.  It was a small root

Completed vase carved of Taro

Taro root

Pumpkin flower

I wanted to share pictures of Bangkok suburbs made through the train window, but couldn't take good photographs because of the concrete pillars along the railway.

impossible to take good pictures of Bangkok suburbs because of the  pillars

These pillars are parts of a big construction of a new line for Sky Train in Bangkok. The line was canceled by the goverment, and the construction will be removed shortly (or not). Citizens call it 'Thai Stonehenge'.

Thai Stonehenge, the picture shared by Taweesak, a train companion of mine

I had good companions in the train, Thai guys, bicyclists, coming back from Chiang Mai cycling trip.
I have never been alone while my Thailand trip :) Of couse we are connected on Facebook now :)

with Taweesak, the train companion. Thank you, my friend! Good to know you.

Oh, I have one picture, it's Monkey Town 

After my lessons at Malisa school I went to the city. Got China Town in the evening about 6 p.m. when its streets got empty already, only mad cats walking.

in China Town

Retro car in China Town  (?)

I was not in mood to go ahead with the district sightseeing, I turned myself to Siam Paragon, a huge complex with shops, entertaining spots, food courts, Siam Ocean World and Imax cineplex (that was my aim).
Have I mentioned cinema is my passion? I booked 'Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters' 4DX (the effects were  good, they had a few scary bloody scenes brrr).

cool car show in Siam Paragon center

Siam Paragon in lighting

Next post will show up the soap carving of new Malisa's design, new carving friends of mine and.. cats in Bangkok. Read all my Thai stories here.

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Thai Food. Chiang Mai Sightseeing

Chiang Mai, Thailand
February 2013

We had a dinner for 4 persons in a Thai restaurant.
Picked up the popular thai dishes, I don't remember its names. There were fried fish, a salad, tasty something looking like a white soup and fried chicken in leaf wraps.

Deep-fried fish with a sauce

Fried chicken wrapped in leaves

The fried chicken dish was garnished with a simple carrot flower. No carvings. Food first :) Don't you think the chicken in leaf wraps looks decorative?

The next day I found a recipe of the fried chicken in a guide magazine at my hotel.

Click the photo to enlarge

Fried chicken wrapped in leaf

Wrapping how-to

If you want to learn thai cooking, visit the Food Store at TempleofThai.com. There is plenty of asian products and cookware, some articles have a video about cooking/using the products.

Chiang Mai Sightseeng

Red Songtail taxi 

Laundry in Chiang Mai

Frangipani flowers what we carved in soap with Khun

Chiang Mai veiw from a hill

with Karla (TempleofThai.com)

In a Budhist temple, a sacred place on the hill

in the temple

God statues

Little thai girls dancing on the flower petals

Pagoda
walk the temple area barefoot

Take your time walking the Buddhist temple. Watch the local people doing rituals. You can do the same. We donated to the birth day's god to get the upper spirit support, got a strength from a Buddhist monk and picked out a fortune prediction (it was similar to O-mikuji in Japan). 

I had evening train to Bangkok that day. Well that was time to go back to the city, toward new carving lessons and new meetings!

Khun, Karla, Rob, see you on Facebook! :-)

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Papillion Method For Making Fruit Sculptures. Dragon and Snake Out of Oranges

I am writing this post to share some news in the world fruit carving industry. 

Mr.Paolo Pachetti introduces his fruit sculpting style named Papillion Method.
Paolo has DVDs for sale at his website. Now he is looking for students for his course on cocktail fruit decoration.

I purchased his DVDs in December 2012. I have 3 video tutorials on making a fruit dragon, a lion and cocktail garnishes. Paolo uses pomelo fruit for the big sculptures and small citrus fruits for cocktails.

As far as pomelo is a rare fruit in my place I used grapefruits and oranges for the sculpting.

The dragon on the picture below was made for the male's 60th birhtday party (the birthday guy was the Dragon according to the Chinese astrology) in 2012.
Material: grapefruits.

Fruit Dragon for 60th birthday party

Fruit Dragon sculpture, Papillion method

I found this method interesting and alternative to watermelon carving in winter (say 'no-watermelon-season'). The method allows to create various fruit models.

I did the Snake, a host of the year 2013, out of oranges for New Year exhibition.

Snake sculpture out of oranges

Paolo's website http://www.fruitsculpture.it/

The info about cocktail garnish course:

Enjoy carving art all the year round!

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Flower Festival in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Meeting carving friends.

Chiang Mai is a beautiful city and an ancient capital located in the north, a motherland of all kind of carving in Thailand (wood, stone, fruit and vegetable carving art and other)

I came to the city to meet my carving friends Karla (a president of TempleofThai.com) and Khun Narata (a carving artist and teacher). TempleofThai was a sponsor of the Fall Carving Contest 2012. My trip was a perfect occasion to meet the people in person.

I was lucky to get Chiang Mai at the day of Flower Festival. It was a Flower Parade with orchestra, costumed people and big flower sculptures moving the city streets. Apart from flowers we noticed vegetable carving flowers and watermelons.

Dragons made of flowers are the copies of dragon sculptures in Thai temples 

flower sculptures

A Thai girl sits between flower sculptures.
We noticed vegetable flower bouquets  there!

Flowers carved of vegetables 

Watermelon and pumpkin carving

The Zero kilometer. Thailand starts from here

After watching the parade we went to Wat Prasingh Temple to see Khun Narata carving. Khun is a well known carving artist and teacher. That day she had a carving class at the temple area in the shadow of  the  buddhist garden trees. What a great idea of having classes in a such pleasant place! I was invited to try myself in carving frangipani flowers out of soap.  

With Khun Narata 

Girls carving soap flowers

Frangipani soap carving in a process, carved with the thai knife

Frangipani flowers in person and in soap

I left the girls at the carving and went for a cultural dose. The temple was beautiful with lot of dragon sculptures (we saw its copy at the Flower Parade). I did some things for good luck in the temple, took some pictures, had a talk with a buddhist monk (he started it, not me :)), tried local food with delicious fried stuff. 

Dragon statues in the Chiang Mai temple

Buddhists care for flora and fauna

After the carving lesson Khun gave me a lift to a Thai restaraunt, we had a dinner for 4 friends there. The food, a   famous thai recipe and more pictures will come up in my next post!

Khun's motobike. It was my first ride on a motobike! Was scary at first :)

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