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| A trip to the market - March 25, 2006 | | About a mile from AIT is Dalat Thai, which literally means "Thai Market," but this is not just any Thai market: It is the wholesale vegetable, fruit and flower market for all the restaurants and groceries in the greater Bangkok area. Much of it is wholesale, and you'll go into one whole warehouse building that is devoted to nothing but oranges. In other buildings, there will be a place the size of a Wal-Mart store that has nothing but garlic or chilies or pumpkins. There is a a whole community built around the market to house the people who work there, and interestingly the main places of business that surround the market are banks -- as deals are done in cash. As in any Thai center of population, there are massage parlors, although only one seems to offer only massages. There are retail areas of the market, as well as food stalls to feed the workers. So it's possible to buy the freshest vegetables and fruits at very low prices. Unfortunately, however, Bangkok's supply of parsley does not go through Dalat Thai, and the main goal for our trip there could not be attained: We postponed for a day our meal of chicken scalloppini. I get the feeling from the smells of the cooking I've had in the rest of the building that we're the only ones who were planning such a dish, and it makes me wonder what my neighbors will think when they smell steak au poivre this weekend. The aroma of Pine Club onions rings we made last week, incidentally, drew a few curious neighbors. Alas, my repertoire of meals I can cook with nothing but a single-burner stove is reaching its limit. Baked Alaska is going to prove a particular challenge. At any rate, to make the mile journey to Dalat Thai is rather an experience in itself. I have walked there once, but only at great risk of bodily injury, as the route is along the main divided highway that goes in front of AIT. Prae, being Thai and not much of a believer in bipedal transport of any sort, has insisted she will never walk there. So, we rode our bikes to the bus stop in front of AIT, waited for the open-air bus (which costs only 8 baht, or 20 cents, per person), caught the No. 39 and rode it about a mile north on the highway, past the market, to the U-turn, and then back to the market. Here are the pics of our jaunt. | | Date Created: Mar 25, 2006, 06:44 PM |
Prae rides her new Gary Fisher mountain bike down 4th Avenue N.W. near our building, which is called ST-9 and whose architectural appeal is commensurate with its name.
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The krapow rod-may, or literally "bus's purse," a woman who collects your bus fare, collects tolls from passengers. They have an uncanny ability to remember faces, even during the peak of rush hour, although since I'm typically one of the only Westerners -- or farlangs -- it's typically easy to remember me, and my 8-baht fare never is forgotten.
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Prae with a pear -- actually it's a pear-shaped pomelo, in the pomelo section of the market.
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Men cart dollys loaded with jackfruit.
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In the chilies section of the market, there is so much spice in the air, your eyes begin to water. Workers sort them into smaller bags by hand, and all I could think of is the pain that must result if they wipe their eyes absent-mindedly.
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Prae admires pumpkins that to me look like they'd make lousy jack-o-lanterns.
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I call these torpedo fruit, and Prae calls them delicious. I'm not sure what they are, but they're big, and they have a lot of them.
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Who's up for heads-on chicken tonight?
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... or heads-off pork? I thought I recognized this pig, but then, silly me, I realized it only resembled a pig I knew from the Nebraska State Fair.
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The fish area of themarket is for die-hard seafood lovers only. The smells are fairly intense in the 90-degree heat.
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At one of the food stalls, we had Isaan food. Prae is from the northern Isaan area of Thailand, where the food is very much like food from Laos. Here we had fried beef with Thai basil, a papaya and noodle salad with fermented fish sauce (just that term makes the hypochondriac in me think I have botulism), barbecued chicken and beef and sticky rice with chili sauce. Our whole meal cost less than $2 and was -- as Prae calls a good meal -- "gorgeous."
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I give the noodles with fermented fish sauce a try, and I was not smiling so broadly affter my first taste. Did I mention that none of the trousers I had made for me in December fit anymore and I have to take them into the tailor's to be taken in in the waist? I wonder how much money there is to be made in marketing the fermented fish sauce diet in the U.S.
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