Learning Thai Cuisine at Le Cordon Bleu Bangkok — The Gap Year Choice in My 30s

After many years of feeling burned out at work, I decided to spend my gap year learning “Thai cuisine” at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School in Bangkok.

Why Thai cuisine?

The overwhelming negativity I experienced at my job in Shanghai made me crave something healing to escape to. Since I’ve always enjoyed cooking and have loved Thai food since childhood, this option seemed to be the perfect fit.

Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School in Bangkok is a joint venture with a local hotel group and is probably the only Le Cordon Bleu campus in the world that offers courses in local cuisine.

You have to enroll for a full 9 months, which consists of three terms. The second term, which focuses on regional Thai cuisine, was truly eye-opening — it’s completely different from the Thai food we’re familiar with!

Our chefs were two highly experienced Thai professionals. Despite the fact that out of the 25 students in the class, only 8 of us were foreigners and the rest were Thai, the entire course was taught in English, with the chefs demonstrating everything fluently in English.

During the demonstration classes, there was also a Thai-English interpreter who would translate what the chef said for the Thai students. However, when the Thai students had questions, they would ask the chef directly in Thai. After the chef answered in Thai, the interpreter would then translate the…