Cookies on tour @Pak Chong

What do you gift for New Year? Since 2010, I came up with my own gift box of homemade treat. The gift from each year also gives memory of its time, as baking timeline and whom it was for . My first gift box was few years after graduation. In early 20s, having plenty of energy, I could bake from dusk till dawn, making 4 different sweets overnight. Memoir of my first gift box looks like this:

Lemon Tart, White Chocolate Cheesecake, Banana Muffin, Chocolate Cake

I tried to make the first impression of the box with vibrant color of 4 sweets. The one from this year is mostly cookies, tiny ones, all kind of our own favorite. My boyfriend chipped in his homemade vanillekipferl and Christmas Cookies, which made our gift box fancy and presentable. There were 4 from me : Mini Pistachio Cake, Apple Cake, Rugelach, Granola Bar. And... my family doesn't receive the box but a jar.... 

Family-sized jar with variety of homemade cookies!

This jar almost didn't make its way home, since the trip was 3 days and everyone kept sneaking in the jar and try to sample all 6 different ones. Anyway, let's see what we saw in Pak Chong...

The first day we went to "Jim Thompson Farm" where it's only opened for visitors only from 5 Dec - 10  Jan of each year to remain its beauty. 

The entrance fee for weekday is THB180/person and for weekend THB220. Be prepared that you will run into a lot of kids on school trip. The food inside the farm is better and more interesting than the one at entrance. 

We jumped on shuttle bus and started off with the first drop-off point:

Very impressive flower garden and creative setting of traditional North-Eastern Thai Architecture and the show of local lifestyle in the past. This gave me the feeling of cultural amusement park. 

   Sorry, I didn't make picture of the traditional house from this attraction point. We walked from here through the rice field, where black sticky rice, jasmine rice and several other rice are grown. This was my first time seeing cultivation of so many rice, especially black sticky rice. The whole stem and leave was all black.

   However, we were walking and enjoying the setting until we reached "Silk Village" where they show you all the procedure from cocoon to a piece of fine silk and how they were used as decoration.

    Not far from the silk village, you can try milling your own rice (which I couldn't figure out how it worked) stalls with traditional food from rice; Grilled Rice Cake, Rice and Sesame sweet, Pop Rice, Rice Cookies and my favorite "Rice Berry ice-cream" This is definitely a must. I even regret I didn't go back for 3 more scoops :(  Not even a picture of it.

This place is so amazing and will keep you walking all day with energy like when you were a kid. 

Here's the view until "Jim Thomson Market" Nice and serene time we spent...

So, what do they have in "Jim Thomson Market" ?

Not only Hydroponic Salad... but place to dine with a view.

Organic Produces - This is a feel-good market. There's also a lot of fancy-looking fruit and vegetable I have never seen before, definitely not in market or department store in Bangkok.

I kind of wish there would be such a market in my location. 

After the market, we're filled-up and ready to go again.

Done walking for today...

Day 2 : PB Valley

I'd recommend having a nice meal here, in the middle of beautiful wine yard. We had only wine and snack here but the food was looking so good! 

Their souvenir shop offers homemade grape jelly, mango jelly, lime jelly, grape seed oil, grape puff (which is nice warm and delicious), organic water melon, homemade sausage and skewers, passion fruit and of course, grape, wine. We had a bottle of Chenin Blanc 2013 for THB799, the taste was not special but quite fine for locally-produced wine and reasonable price.

There's also winery tour for THB300 per person with 1.15 hr duration with wine tasting. 

Today, we also had a delicious meal to finish the trip, at a really cool antique-shop restaurant (Baan Mai Chai Nam, means wooden house by the river). This is my second visit and everything we ordered was good, but keep them informed if you like your food real hot and spicy!

Ambience? Imagine having dinner in a cool museum... I'm gonna let the pictures explain itself...

Wooden Pawn Shop

I really like this one, Kentucky and Thai breakfast table!!!

 The first few piggy banks. 

The model from famous picture of King Rama 5, disguising himself as villager.

Or Barbie and Ken in Thai traditional costume

 

And Thank you very much for reading

I'm trying to figure out how to make my blog bilingual, so another Thai version comes later.