Raw Chicken in Cooking School
 

Husband Vince and I had a visit with the Travel Medicine Doc yesterday. Checked that all our shots are up to date and we got ambien for sleeping on the flight, cipro (just in case) and imodium. He asked us not to eat any chicken /fowl or eggs and when he heard we were doing a cooking school in Chiang Mai was very strong in his advice NOT to even touch any raw chicken..... We leave next week and are curious if anyone has been to any Thai cooking schools recently and, are they omitting chicken from the menus?

We went to the Chaing Mai cookery school in Nov. We used raw chicken in one of the dishes (with no ill effects)
However if you are concerned i would suggest emailing the school you are booked with to check!
BTW the Chiang Mai cookery school list the menu you will be doing so maybe you could pick a day without chicken if you haven't already booked?
Just a thought.

Enjoy CM

We did a custom cooking class with Yui www.alotofthai.com that was excellent. My trip report has details of what we did. (click on my name and you'll find all my posts including the trip report). A custom class would guarantee you no chicken. A vegetarian menu would as well.

sounds like the doctor subscribes to the overkill theory....

You might want to read up on Avian flu. I always recommend the cdc website, www.cdc.gov which has regular updates.

Frankly, I find your doctor's recommendation rather odd. Transmission thus far has been from direct contact with dead or diseased birds or their droppings. There is one case thought to have been transmitted by eating a traditional VN soup that has fresh (uncooked) duck blood added just before serving. There has not been any transmission via eating cooked (or even undercooked) poultry or eggs. We do know that the virus that causes avian flu is killed at normal cooking temperatures.

Unless you are immunocomprimised, I have to agree with Bob that these precautions seem like overkill. If you are immunocomprimised, the concern would more likely be about samonella than about the avian flu virus.

You don't have to cook anything you don't want to at the cookery school. Most will be happy to substitute a vegetarian alternative - I've seen this happen when I have taken classes. Alternatively, the menus are normally published in advance - could you pick a day when the meat is not poultry?

We flew to BKK from LAX (LV @ 0900) on Korean Air. We arrived in BKK at 0000 the "next" night.

So, the trick for us was to stay up as long as possible(ideally until we got to our hotel room at the Marriott) before sleeping. Provigil (non-amphetamine) helped us stay up and we got some Rozerem (supposed to have few/no side effects) for sleep. Both worked like a charm.

If you have a similar flight schedule, you might talk to your travel clinic and see if they'll give you a few of each.