11-09-10: Rest Day In Trat

I am writing this a day late so I will keep it short and sweet.

We stayed at Ban Jai Dee last night, same place we stayed when we were
last in Trat because the rooms and the people there are very nice. I
thoroughly enjoyed the hot shower and free wi-fi as well.

Last night though we ran into a bit of trouble feeding ourselves
because we know so few thai words and Trat is wonderfully not Western
oriented, but thus we couldnt eat. Eventually, we jsut committed to a
place and presented ourselves to be fed. We lucked out and they had a
picture menu for oafs that didnt speak the language. The story of the
dinner was definitely the complementary and unexpected salad. We were
given two plates, two forks cleverly wrapped in tissue, two dishes of
salad dressing and a collander full of uncut greens. It looked very
much like the woman had gone to the back yard with her shears and
picked some leaves for us. When in Rome I decided and started tearing
the leaves into bits. Then I nibbled one and it was decidedly leafy on
taste, making me a bit more judicious in my leaf consumption. There
was a bit of romaine on the bottom of the pile and basil and mint and
a few other not so leafy bits that we ate, but the bulk of the greens
were left for the compost bin. The collander's appearance very much
looked like we had pickily tossed through it and decided to eat very
little. I was a little embarrassed, but equally unwilling to eat it as
i was to toss it over the patio railing. Dinner was tasty enough and
we cleaned our plates there.

We were determined to get rice soup for breakfast, what we had learned
was the norm for Thais on Koh Chang and Koh Wai. We meticulously
learned the words for pork rice soup and vegetable rice soup so we
could order at a place that didn't have an English menu. Kow Tom muu.
Kow Tom pak. Now we had to get up the courage to use our phrases. We
went to a place that we saw locals frequenting as we frequented the
coffee shop next door and shakily spoke our phrases to the woman
cooking. She said no to my phrase, offering muu or gai (chicken or
pork) instead, but that is about as much detail as we were able to
convey. We sat down at a table and left ourselves to her mercy.
Eventually we got a plates of hot rice with tepid meat on top, a dish
of some tasty sauce, and then a bowl of clear soup with a giant hunk
of ginger(?) in it. Not quite what we had imagined, but very tasty
indeed.

Next we endeavored to get some laundry done. We were down to our last
pairs of unders; it was time. One place wanted to charge by the item,
but we declined after a rough estimate put their service as
considerably more expensive than the places we had seen on Koh Chang.
As we were walking down the street, arms full of laundry, a man called
out to us, offering to help. Usually this is a bag idea, but we didn't
want to carry it around anymore and he seemed legitimate as he was
also running a guest house. He said it would be ready around six pm
and we could pay then. So off we trundled, free of our load, but
unsure if we would ever see our clothes again. It made me think about
how much traveling requires trust. I don't know what I will be served,
I just have to order and trust it will be tasty. I don't know if I
have checked adequately for cars/motorbikes/bikes/share taxis before
crossing a street, I just have to look both ways and then step off the
curb. At times I think of this aspect of traveling as exciting and
other times it annoys me, but today I just hope to see my clothes
again.

We wandered for a while. Ate lunch at a place that seemed to be
serving noodle soup, mumbled incomprehensible things to a waiter and
ended up with noodle soup! I was overjoyed and it was so ridiculously
cheap. We are always far under budget when we can manage to eat like a
local. We also spent time at Pop Guesthouse for coffee and later a
disappointingly warm beer and cards. There is a woman who runs the
place and she sits behind this giant desk in the middle of the
restaurant and she scares me. She is clearly successful, but I also
think she would be successful at any entrepreneurial endeavor. I can't
explain it, she just makes me uneasy - even after she told us a sad
story about her dog being poisoned and someone giving her a puppy so
she wouldn't be sad anymore and watching her play games with the
adorable puppy - she still scares me. Ask Robert, I don't know how to
explain it.

Note to self, and you if you are interested, look at TratMap.com.
Someone is keeping a blog about life in Trat, but the website was
acting finicky on my pad.

We were able to retrieve our laundry without incident. We even got to
meet a Swede and a Frankfurter while we waited for the proprietor to
return. The Swede was eating sweet chili sauce with his beer given to
him by a Thai woman for that purpose. Strange indeed. The Frank told
of a time when he visited the US and only had enough money to eat fast
food, giving him the impression that the US has horrific food.
Eventually the man returned though and we collected our three kilos of
clothes and a bag of roasted, salted peanuts to boot. Very tasty -
Robert let me beg his bag from him so I got two!!

Short? This post has grown. And I thought nothing happened yesterday!

One last story. We ate at the market!! It was a triumph. We got to the
market at about 4, right when all the school kids were getting out.
This was key. It was still daylight and the food was fresh, apparently
the vendors cater to the after school crowd as opposed to the dinner
diners. We only were going for a snack, but ended up getting spring
rolls, pineapple and salt/sugar/chili topping, curry and rice. A
bounty. We carried it back to the guest house all in little bags, just
as the locals do. You would be surprised how many things can be
carried in a rubber-banded bag. I will have to document it at the next
market we patron. We enjoyed our bounty with silverware and plates
from the guesthouse and it was a surprising and stunning success.

Sometimes we do well feeding ourselves and sometimes we don't, but
today was a good food day. (Bernie, We haven't quite shaken our eating
problem as you can see. I am realizing that almost all of my blog
posts are once again centered on food!)