One of the wonderful things about Thailand is that you can get food anywhere at any time of day. When I came here 2 years ago for Marisa's wedding, she told me that Thai people eat all the time, which kind of makes you wonder why they are all so skinny. It must have to do with the fact that the food they eat is fresh and desert is usually fruit or bean based, not cream and butter based... just a guess. Anyway, since I arrived in Thailand last Wednesday night, Mrs. Vatana, Marisa's mother, who's known me since I was 6 years old, has made it her mission to introduce me to as many strange looking foods as she possibly can. When she's not around, Marisa has been doing a pretty good job of filling in for her mother.
My first day in Thailand we went to a park called Muang Boran, which is on the outskirts of Bangkok. Visiting this park was like seeing all of the major historical sites in all of Thailand in 1 day. We had lunch at a floating market. This is Mrs. Vatana ordering some things for lunch at the floating market in Muang Boran.
This was our meal for 3 people, which cost us less than $5.
Snack time consists of fruit a lot of the time, and the fruit here is typically very good because it's not picked off the tree until it is ripe. The juices are also fresh, and will often spoil after a day because there are no preservatives used. In the picture below (going roughly from left to right) is a bowl of fruit sauce (fish sauce, hot peppers and maybe some other stuff), some pineapple, fruit in a pod that I don't know the name of, a green mango (which tastes more like a pear or an apple than the mangos I'm used to), the jar for the fruit sauce, and some dry stuff to dip your fruit in consisting of salt, sugar, and hot pepper. It sounds disgusting at first, but dipping fruit in salt, sugar and hot pepper is really tasty. It kind of brings out flavors in the fruit. I like it.
I'm actually finding that there's not much I don't like to eat. I have a bit of a reputation as a picky eater because I can't stand onions. To those people, I'd like to say: I'd like to see you eat eyball soup!
OK, this isn't eyeball soup. It's a desert actually - sweet sesame balls in ginger tea. I'm a ginger-holic, so this was oh so good. Why eat onions when you can eat sesame ginger balls. Below is another desert that tastes better than onions. It's coconut ice with a pink fruit/nut thing.
Here's some more fruit - something prickly on the outside, soft on the inside, with a black pit at the center (reminds me of an x-boyfirend). You only eat the soft part, the other parts aren't too good for you (also like an x-boyfriend). Next to it, is a black and white chunk of the inside of a dragon fruit.
Marisa's inlaws actually have a dragon fruit plant in their yard. This is what the plant looks like. The fruit comes from those white flowers. None of these are ripe. When the dragon fruit is ripe, it turns into a really bright shade of red. It's really pretty, but I don't have a picture of the ripe fruit right now.
Eating all this crazy food that Marisa and her mother are introducing me to isn't nearly as adventurous as trying to order it myself. Today at lunch, there was some fresh guava available and Marisa suggested I try it as a desert. She suggested I order it myself, so I asked her what the Thai word for guava was. She told me that is was the same as the what Thai people call me, "farong", which is basically an affectionate term Thai people use for a clueless foriegner... So I went up to the vendor with the straightes face I could muster and said, "Neung farong, Ca" - "One clueless forienger, please." It took 3 different people to finally understand that I wanted a guava. I got back to the table and Marisa was complimenting me on my successful communication. I asked her if she saw that it took 3 people to understand me. Then she told me that they probably don't speak Thai very well - they were farong.I haven't spent my whole trip to Thailand eating. I have plenty of other good stories, but I'll save those for a different blog.
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