Tales from the East - Episode 2: Thai Cuisine

Thai cuisine is a topic explored in great length at many different places and probably more seriously than here. Nevertheless here we go with an insightful experience which probably takes off at a different level than the usually lofty and grandiloquent food critics.

Here's the deal - Thai cuisine goes along the same scale as the seasons: Hot, Hotter and Hottest. The reason is that food hygiene is a relatively uncommon term in this part of the world and so chilli is added to kill bacteria. Or so my philosophy goes (at least until someone gives me reason to re-evaluate it). 

So don't go to Thailand if your stomach is not attuned to horrendous amounts of chilli! I know you're going to argue that the thai-food dealer down-town makes excellent meals, spicy but not too spicy and with just that touch of chilli that enhance the other tastes. Well, as mentioned elsewhere Thai food here is nothing like Thai food in Thailand. I guess the principle might theoretically be the same in Thailand with the important footnote that their level of chilli imbibing is far out of a normal Caucasians scale resulting in the amount of chilli necessary in the food to 'enhance' (/annihilate) other tastes is far higher. I love it - once your stomach adjusts its acid level and your taste buds recalibrates (or grows out again after being burned to cinders in the first try) Thai food definitely has its upsides.

When you walk around in Bangkok there is hawker stalls everywhere selling fresh fruit. This is great news for those looking for alternatives to chilli-drenched meals - if you can sustain your existence on fruit of course, which most people cant for prolonged periods (such as e.g. a month, which was how long we stayed ;-). And it's actually very nice to always have fresh-cut fruit within reach to refresh you in the hot and humid weather.

Also displayed en masse is small side-walk restaurants. If there's room for a few tables and chairs and a 'kitchen' of sorts why not have a restaurant. They have a decent amount of dishes at an extremely affordable price and if you have gone through the effort of learning Thai you even know what you order. If you don't - like me - you simply point at something and hope for the best. And I must add that this method is shaky at best. Most of the time it doesn't really matter where you point, what you ask for (in the vain hope that even the most rudimentary English skills are present at the other side of the desk) or what the price labels indicates since you will inevitably get something different at a seemingly random price (sometimes also cheaper than expected). 

Ok, says the smart reader, you were in a class with 50% Thai's, so you should have a chance to befriend some of them enough to help you order. True. And I did. We were on several occasions hanging out with them after classes and also going out for dinner. Sometimes a lot of us, sometimes just a few. At one such occasion I was having absolutely the best seafood experience of my life - I guess we were about 20 sitting at one of the better side-walk restaurants and the Thai's just ordered seafood galore: Several kinds of fish, whole crabs, crab claws, sea snails, clams, squids, cuttlefish, lobster, fish soup, shrimps etc. - very delicious! However, the chilli level calibration issue still remains. So when one of the Thai's tell me that this particular fish dish is sweet, actually almost sugared, my mouth still explodes in a fireball leaving the impression that it wasn't in fact a dish but rather a Molotov cocktail and left me feeling like a exceptionally poor fire-eater. While I don't see this as an especially nasty joke played on me it illustrates all too well the problems of getting local advise - the common Thai's definition of spicy was not even comparable to mine at the time. But given some time you'll adjust and Thai cuisine really grows on you - to this day I'm still a big fan of chilli :-)

Last thing on the menu today is Thai desserts. If at all possible stay well clear! At the classes we were treated with all kinds of Thai desserts, sweets and other afters so I believe I am well versed in that area. They can roughly be split into 2 categories: Fresh-fruit dipped in a sugar-salt-chilli mix and the ever popular lukewarm-coconut rice-starch combo. Need I say more...

Tales from the East - Episode 1: Bangkok inside out

There's one thing I haven't told you yet: In my younger days (newer thought I would ever say that but it sounds kinda cool - and I do have the beard to go with these kind of sayings ;-). Well, in my younger days I spend about 6 month doing a research study in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Lot's of stuff happens in 6 month, especially when living in another culture. I swear I'm telling the truth when I tell you that most of what happened in Malaysia fits perfectly under the header 'bizarre' - thus fitting perfectly for my blog :-)

Here goes the first episode in what hopefully becomes a long series of Tales from the East:

Me, a good friend, 3 cd's and a new laptop set out for Malaysia to conduct a research study as part of our masters' degree. Our professor insisted we took a so-called '3-week course' in Bangkok before the real project started, which was fine by us even though we had no fucking clue with regards to the topic (Environmental Management and Waste Water Treatment) - but it seemed like we were doing him a favour for using his contacts in Malaysia and fair is fair, you help each other out, one hand wash the other etc. And hey, who can't spend 1 month in Bangkok for free.

The course was a test-run with a mixed unit of Danish Engineer students and Thai's from the local University of Mahidol, Faculty of Public Health - it already sounds like a cool cocktail right. You probably all heard about Bangkok - read the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand, saw The Beach or whatever (you American's might even know that it's not on Hawaii :-p) - so I'll just quickly go through the basics myths:

- Thai's are shy: Wrong. They are indeed VERY 'forthcoming' - at least those trying to rip-off tourists. 

- Thai's are extremely polite: Partly true. Admittedly they do what they can not to offend you - as long as they think you'll buy something.

- A paradise city: Well, don't trust commercials unless your idea of paradise is heavy pollution, sex-pushers in every level of society and a pedestrians definition of hell. 

- Nice climate: They have a humidity close to 100 through all 3 seasons which is Hot - Hotter - Hottest. Result: Extreme air-con in all buildings (except open air markets) to a degree were you have to put on extra clothes to when you go inside.

- Generally good at English: No - but very good at Tenglish (the local mix of English and Thai). But I'll give them credit for the language, they have their own alphabet and it must be kinda hard to not even know the letters when learning a 2nd language.

- Thai cuisine are great: True - if you have a stomach for chilli. Otherwise you're in over your head (travellers advice - (most) 'western' Thai food is adapted to our local taste. It is only a pale replica of real Thai-food!). More in a later episode.

But those Thai's not related to the tourist industry (i.e. those who doesn't want your money) are actually quite nice and friendly, rather polite and extremely afraid of confrontations. The latter which I will elaborate on in a later episode. I even got some good friends on the course which I had contact with for years... Another cool guy we meet on the course was Slavic of some small village outside Kiev - probably the only guy on the face of Earth who swears more than he blinks. Very nice combo in 'polite country' and it did earn him more than a few anxious looks. 

And yes! Russians (as in ex-soviet union country citizens) do drink a shit load of vodka, but hell - who wouldn't when you can buy a good bottle of it for less than the same amount of water would cost you (which was roughly 2 $ at the time)?

Well, it's getting late. Cheers.