This year I joined #brunchclub – a Facebook community for bloggers with monthly brunch meet ups in Auckland and Wellington. The February meet up in Auckland was a Contiki hosted event at Sachies Kitchen ‘A taste of Asia with Contiki’. Contiki offer cooking classes in Chiang Mai, Hoi An, Tokyo and Yangshou on their Asian itineraries.
We were put into teams and given cute outfits to wear as aprons before the cooking demonstration began. My team (team Bonzai) aka the vegetarian/vegan/gluten free team was a lovely bunch of welcoming ladies. It’s funny meeting people in real life who you recognise from their blogs but realise gushing about it might sound stalkerish.
Sachie and her crew showed us how to make Dumplings (steamed, fried and deep fried). Sachie was hilarious as well as patient and an excellent teacher. Her staff were equally amazing and it was awesome how all the ingredients were magially pre-prepared and someone does the dishes for you! Cooking is so much easier this way.
Our dumplings turned out great – I almost had the folding pattern down and our deep fried cheese dumplings were the bomb. We were judged on our origami skills and ingredient knowledge as well as the quality of our dumplings and sauces.
The winning team (not us!) received medals and a bottle of something to share as we ate and chatted with the team from Contiki about their business and how they work with influencers.
Contiki used to split their trips by accommodation type (the Road to Rome tour I did almost five years ago was a Hotels tour) but now split them by eight traveller types. This is such a great move as I don’t think I could hack the pace of the more full on tours at this stage of my life!
I am DESPERATE to travel Asia this year and Contiki’s Asian Adventure which takes in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia would suit me down to a tee. I only hope dumplings as good as Sachie’s recipe are available en route.
That looks like so much fun. I would love to get something like that happening locally.
Author
Do it! Bloggers are so much fun to meet up with and it’s been a great forum to share ideas and solve problems. There must be a heap of great bloggers in Melbourne.
Oh there are and I’ve organised a couple of meetups but would particular like to be doing stuff like the set up Contiki provided for you guys.
Tea and cakes at a cafe repeatedly is all a bit dull
Looks like you had so much fun. When you travel Asia you should definitely document it on here 🙂
Author
Promise I will! I certainly have high expectations for future #brunchclub events (which I am sure they will live up to!).