An American in Asia: His Quest for Cosmic Truth (or at least a Decent Espresso)

 

Isaan Food

Tonight I was treated to Isaan food. Isaan is the vast country area Northeast of Bangkok. There is basically nothing there and it's a big blank spot in most guide books. But if you like farming, boy, that's the place to be. Among Thais, Isaan is famous for its food. Kind of like really spicy down home cooking.

A friend and I stopped by a street vendor and he kindly threw some peppers, tomatoes, whole baby crabs and I don't know what else into a mortar and mashed it to pieces with a pestel for us. Or maybe he threw it into a pestel and mashed it with a mortar. Into the resulting sauce he added handfuls of shredded young papaya and stuffed it all into a plastic bag. Next stop was the skewered meat vendor who supplied us with chicken livers, pork sausage and chewy pieces of some other animal. He bagged these and threw in a couple of chewy cakes of cooked rice. Chewy was kind of an ongoing theme. We took it all home and dug in with our fingers, in which I was instructed that it's polite to eat with only the thumb and index finger of your right hand. It was all pretty great, if a tad spicy. I'm not a big Coca-Cola fan, but I was assured that that would be the beverage of choice to wash it all down and it was. Somehow Coke really cuts through the burning. I guess that makes sense when you consider that Coke can also be used to take out stains, clean engines and turn an old penny into a shiny new one.

Last night's dinner was pretty memorable too. I was treated at a groovy Thai cafe by a couple of my Japanese students and their Thai friend. The friend could speak a little Japanese and English, I can speak Japanese but almost no Thai, and the Japanese couple could speak a lot of English and a good bit of Thai. We all wanted to practice the languages we were studying. It was pretty hilarious to watch the face of the taxi driver as we chatted in three languages on the way over.

Later we ended up in that den of scum and villainy and hippies, Khao San road. We waded through the wandering crowds of people with bad tattoos and baggy clothes and the swarms of Thais trying to sell ridiculous crap to them. Touts and tuk-tuk drivers cruised around like barracuda through schools of drunk and stoned fish. The Thai friend walked us behind a few buildings to a cafe where despite all the foreigners on the street, the clientelle was almost all Thai. There we drank the most watery drinks I've ever had. In a moment of fruity inspiration I ordered a Tequila Sunrise and I think I was healthier when I finished it.

A tuk-tuk. Enter at your own risk, and probably end up at a bad gem shop or a massage parlor for more than a massage.

Jim Thompson House

I hopped in a canal boat and went to Jim Thompson House yesterday. Jim Thompson is kind of an illustrious figure here. During WWII he joined the army but was too late to see any action in Thailand. After the war he was recruited by the OSS and served here as a secret agent. He was a great admirer of Thai art and not a bad hand at dying silks, so after his service he stayed on and was a major force in making the beautiful Thai silks famous around the world. In the process he built a traditional Thai mansion out of teak and populated it with antiques. Now it's something of a museum. I took a tour of it, and since I was with a friend who doesn't speak much English, we took the Thai tour. The guide knew pretty fair Japanese so she translated all of her speeches into Japanese for me, much to the amusement of the Japanese folks on another tour.

I get to use my Japanese a lot here as there are tons of Japanese companies that do their production work in Thailand. So most of the students I teach for a living are Japanese. I have even gotten students by helping some Japanese residents with directions on the train. They're always pretty surprised that someone took the trouble to learn their language. It's a great language and totally different from English in most every way, which is why I like it. Learning Japanese gave me a completely new way to look at the world, new words for things with different etymologies and a new syntax for expressing thoughts. Learning Thai ought to really twist my noodle.

 

There's more rain than actual air out there tonight and my little street is now technically a river, so I guess the rainy season has started in earnest. The rivers flood and I'll ruin my good shoes, but at least here they can call it a 'season'. In Seattle it's pretty much the whole damn year.