At seven am we hit an appointment market near Koi and Cotton’s house. They had everything there. Clothes for your traditional and modern needs. Shoes. Fruit. Soup. Live turtles in baskets. French fries. DVDs. Vegetables. Beats by Dre. Live fish flopping around. Candy. Sweets. Crepes. Diapers. Fermented fish. A baby elephant. People everywhere. It was nuts.
Yes, I said baby elephant.
We wondered through several aisles of stalls and carts in front of a temple, asking questions about Thai fruit that we had never seen, or surprise treats wrapped in banana leaves. We tasted some green candy/jello stuff, some tiny grilled balls of coconut-y goodness (I have been on a search for them ever since, haven’t been able to find them yet!), some skewered things – and we bought much more for breakfast.
We stopped to feed a baby elephant, which I had some qualms about. You aren’t supposed to encourage this sort of behavior and it feeds into a vicious cycle of possible abuse or poverty-driven neglect. But when you are standing next to a baby elephant, with somebody telling you this is how these teenage boys make money to feed the elephant and themselves, it’s hard to say no.
After the elephant, we moved on to durian.
http://youtu.be/-o_1qillkJs?t=2m38s
(Skip to 2:38 for durian-specifics, although I’ve tried fish maw soup and horseshoe crab roe salad, and now kind of think Andrew Zimmern might be a wuss.)
As we were waiting in line for the vendor (a little old lady with two oven mitts on one hand to handle the prickly fruit), I thought to myself – this doesn’t smell so bad. As we stood there a little longer, a terrible smell gradually took over. “A-ha! I get it now,” I thought. Just as I began to inwardly hype myself up to taste this famed smelly fruit, Cotton told us he wanted to show us something Thai people really liked that he just could not develop a taste for in all his years in Thailand. We turned around and walked a few feet, and there was a vendor selling fermented fish.
Durian doesn’t have anything but a mildly fruity smell, y’all. Twelve buckets of various blends of rotting fish three feet behind you, however, does. Thai people use it for seasoning, and Cotton and Koi keep a bucket of it in their kitchen. I just can’t. Durian, however, tastes pretty good. It’s kind of a weird texture, but it smells fine.
Some fruit, soups, curries, sticky rice and fried pork were on the breakfast menu that morning. People in Asia don’t really seem to differentiate breakfast food from other food, so even though the pork soup or noodles with beef sounds good for lunch or dinner, it simply doesn’t appeal to me at eight am. Maybe that’s just me? I did get down on some fried pork.
We headed back to Bangkok after breakfast, stopping along the way to check out a Tesco Lotus – the Thai version of a super Target, just to see what’s going on. Generally, Thai people prefer the fresh market, but you could get some imported stuff – cheese! most importantly to Cotton. Asian people don’t really eat cheese (except, of course, royal cheese). I hadn’t noticed it before, but since then I have not seen anything with cheese that wasn’t Western food.
We went back to the Bourbon Street Hotel, got checked back in and resettled. “Who feels like a rub?” Cotton asked, as he explained that he and Koi haven’t really found a place they like out near where they live. So we went down the street, to the same massage place as earlier that week. This time we opted for the two hour Thai massage. Having barely conquered the pants last time, I did some asking around and was feeling confident in my ability to dress myself. Which is great, except this time my pants didn’t have drawstrings. I just pulled them on and laid down, and it worked out fine. Until I got up to use the restroom (gotta release those toxins somehow!) and my pants fell down. The masseuses closest to me and I all started giggling, and I’m sure we disrupted a few relaxed people. Eh, what are you gonna do?
The massage was intense, and I seriously thought about tapping out at one point (I was on my stomach, she was crouching on the back of my thighs, pressing her knees into my lower back and hands full force into my shoulder blades), but I figured I must have needed it. Besides, by the time I thought all that through, it was over and I was alive. My mom and I both felt awesome the next day, although both of us had a few more bruises to show for it.
After our massages, we went to eat at a delicious little Italian restaurant that Koi and Cotton like to get their foie gras fix when they’re in Bangkok (ah I’ve been missing you, carbs!). After some joking, wait, are you serious, I’m serious if you’re serious discussion, we decided to return to the massage place next to our hotel (yes, the one we just left) and all get another one hour foot massage. I didn’t realize reflexology was a part of a Thai foot massage, so I was very confused when she started poking the bottoms of my feet with a stick. For massage newbies: foot massages also included your calves, arms, shoulders, neck and head. Quite nice for a fraction of the price of a traditional massage.
So far, I am thinking there is no such thing as too much massage – especially when they come this cheap! Judge me if you want, but I hope the other countries we are visiting have a vibrant (and not-sketchy) massage culture. :)
Trip Massage Total: 4 hours
Meredith R. Allen 