SINGAPORE -- At 9 a.m., a guide leads a group of cooking students through the spice garden at Fort Canning Park. She points out the lemongrass patches, pandan leaves, vanilla plants, and nutmeg trees, and notes that there are more than 100 herbs and spices in the garden.
Along the path, which winds through an area the size of two football fields, students try to touch and sniff as much as possible. Later, they'll return to at-sunrice, the Singapore Culinary Academy and Spice Garden, to grind the spices into pastes and incorporate the flavors in Singapore laksa and mee rebus, dishes other tourists encounter only on a restaurant menu.
As travel to Southeast Asia grows, so does interest in the cuisines of the region. Travelers are discovering that popular destinations are home to many cooking schools teaching in English. Schools employ a hands-on approach, and often include extras such as market excursions and spice garden tours.
''We try to get our students to feel comfortable with the raw product rather than something from the supermarket," said Kwan Lui, founder and director of at-sunrice. She hopes that students will leave with a good foundation of what ingredients and techniques go with which cuisine. In addition to the class on Singaporean, or Nonya, food, there are others on Chinese, Indian, Malay, and Thai cuisines, to reflect Singapore's multicultural makeup.
Thailand has seen huge growth in its number of recreational cooking schools. There are more than 100 registered both in the cities and in more remote areas.
At the Blue Elephant Cooking School in Bangkok, chefs teach their methods of preparing dishes such as massaman curry, prawn cakes with pineapple sauce, and tamarind duck. Students spend the morning preparing a four-course meal, then feast on their creations at the elegant Blue Elephant Restaurant downstairs. In the Yannawa neighborhood outside the city center, the Baipai Thai Cooking School offers similar courses in a residential setting. Classes are kept small, so each student has his own work station; the school also offers free transfers to and from hotels in central Bangkok.
The island of Koh Samui, an hour flight from Bangkok, is home to the Samui Institute of Thai Culinary Arts. Classes are centered on specific ingredients or techniques, such as green curry on Monday and stir frying on Saturday. There are also three-day courses on fruit and vegetable carving and garnishing skills, both considered central to Thai cuisine.
In Hoi An, Vietnam, the Red Bridge Cooking School takes advantage of its location on the river by starting every class with a boat tour to the outdoor market. Students get to meet local sellers and help select ingredients to be used back in the classroom.
India on the Menu offers a five-day course on the island of Goa, an hour from Mumbai by plane. Judy Cardozo, a chef-instructor at the school, believes the length of the course allows students to understand the philosophy behind her country's cuisine. ''Indian food is not just about throwing a couple of spices into a saucepan and proceeding," Cardozo said. Students learn various dishes in the North Indian, South Indian, and Goan styles.
Returning from travel will inevitably make you long for perfectly seasoned curry or pungent lemongrass broth. Learning to correctly prepare those dishes can alleviate that hunger for authenticity, until your next trip to the Far East.
Contact Diana Kuan, a freelance writer in New York, at diana_kuan@yahoo.com. 
