10-30-10: Learning How To Eat

Today when we left the guest house, we had one mission: to eat.
Yesterday we failed at this, so today it was fairly important. Many
places were closed and after some wandering, we ended up at the day
market. It was just opening, but at least we had a few options. We
wandered around more, making loop after loop of the same food stalls,
looking for tasty bits. Eventually we got frustrated with our indecisiveness and ordered some barbecued meat bits. They at least looked familiar. Language was definitely a challenge, but pointing works great when buying something. The only problem is: everything you buy has to be "no questions asked!"

We were definitely still hungry so we wandered some more. We found some places selling soup, but these places had a menu and you can't point unless you truly want to blindly pick your food. So I went with a different tactic - I walked up to a clean looking stall and pointed to some people eating their food already and ordered the people. "I want...(point, point)." They unfortunately had ordered their food from the dirty looking stall around the corner. Thankfully, the clean stall owner was willing to present a lot of different options and eventually we succeeded in ordering soup. We were getting the hang of this eating thing!

Next, I wanted some fruit to round out our fairly strange meal. I had my eye on these small, green, spherical fruits that I had seen cut open to show an orange-like inside. I bought several and was proud of my purchase until I smelled them. I bought four very tasty looking LIMES. Yum! Without a knife limes are hard to eat, but I peeled one in spite - couldn't make myself eat it though. Maybe we weren't going to be able to feed ourselves after all.

We got a hand-drawn map from our guest house and spent most of the day wandering and looking for places on the map, with mixed success.
Notable successes included many other guest houses (ours was still the
best, I think), a touristy coffee place where Robert got his espresso
fix - twice today, a supermarket where we got antibacterial soap, an
internet cafe where I was able to use my thumb drive to upload and
complete my UMich grad school application, a bookstore that had a
depressingly non-existent selection of english-thai phrases and a
restaurant where we realized we didn't have to eat at the market.
Shops keep strange hours here it seems and when they are closed, they
pull down garage doors that turn them into walls instead of shops, so
we hadn't seem many restaurants in our previous wanderings. I was
quite glad that we wouldn't have to feed ourselves on market food
alone.

Sidebar: Robert wants me to mention that we saw a GIANT snake today
too. He said it was a king cobra, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a clue what they actually look like. Regardless, it was pretty long and
scary looking. It was crossing the street in a jungly section of town
and slithered off into the bushes before we could get a better look at
it. We did amuse a passing motorbiker, who grinned when she saw us
jump at the snake. We make quite a scene here, getting stares from
everyone, but the motor bikers are most amusing, I'm surprised they
don't crash because of all their gawking!

We recruited help on feeding ourselves for dinner. We asked Frenchman
at the bookstore/hubby of our guesthouse owner where to go. He
suggested a Mongolian BBQ place nearby. He mentioned you have to cook
your own food, but I was up for the adventure. He said it was cheap
for a lot of food. Robert didn't understand him through his thick
French accent and was thoroughly surprised that we had to work for our
own dinner. It seemed like a cool place though - open air teak
structure, jammed with locals. We helped ourselves to a cross-legged
floor table and eventually the waitress found us. Her accent was crazy
thick, but eventually we conveyed - we want Korean food (not Thai,
which was apparently an option) - big, seafood, water to drink-big.
She took the menus, so we were done ordering. As they brought more
things to our table it became clear that we were in over our heads,
neither of us had done this before and we wouldn't be getting detailed
instructions from our waitress! I stared down a few nearby tables and
we guessed and eventually we had made ourselves dinner. The best part
was the spicy sauce. The biggest problem with dinner was the
mosquitos. Open air restaurant + by the river = too many skeeters. I
slapped and wiggled my way through dinner, imagining each bite as a
malaria sentence (we decided against the malaria pills for now). We
tried to order our check, but when she ignored us for 15 min
afterwards, opting instead to serve ice cream, we couldn't tell if she
was busy or had no idea what we wanted. Check was 170 baht, or less
than seven dollars for both of us.

Walked home and procured more water to stave off the swollen ankles,
which we are assuming are from dehydration or too much seated travel.
Fun times!

Attached are two pics. Me in the day market standing next to the pigheads (and TAILS) on sale and Robert cooking our dinner at the Korean
BBQ place.