Mangosteen smiles

Last night I had dinner at Inter, a favorite restaurant of mine near my house. I like it because it is cheap like street vendor food (US$ .75-1.50), but it is very clean and air-conditioned too. Inter serves basic one-dish Thai meals, like pad thai, beef with rice, Thai noodle soups and green papaya salads (a.k.a. Som Tam), and they’re delicious!

I am very partial to iced Thai coffee and iced Thai lemon tea, but you have to be careful not to drink too many too often, because they are loaded with sweetened condensed milk (read: calories!)

Just when you’re feeling a little low, those happy Thais will go and do something to pick you right back up again. At dinner, I was exchanging smiles with a nice older couple a few tables away from me. Just before I left, they handed the waitress a pile of mangosteens on a plate and made her take it over to me. I couldn’t really communicate with them other than with smiles and bows, but I said thank you in Thai on my way out, and we had a lot of laughs. I love mangosteens! They are fun to peel, and their little fleshy white sections (similar to the shape of a peeled tangerine, but much smaller and of a different consistency) are really sweet and tangy.

Something I love about the Thais is their sense of humor. They can truly be goofy and really enjoy laughing. One taxi driver who stands outside my guest house every day to wait for customers used to ask me, “Taxi?” every time I passed by, and every time I’d tell him no thank you. Now we have a running joke that goes a little differently every time. Sometimes he says, “Taxi? No thank you!!! Exercise today please!!!!” and then doubles over guffawing at his own joke until he’s red in the face. Sometimes he’ll say, “Taxi? No thank you. Tuk-tuk? No thank you. Bicycle? No thank you. Helicopter?!?!?!!” and then we both bust our guts laughing.

By the way: “Soi”, pronounced SOY, is a Thai word that sort of means little street, alley, or mini neighborhood community, all in one. I love the soi I live on, because everyone recognizes me now and says hi or waves to me. The same things happen every day in the same way, which is comforting somehow: at 5:00 AM, the fish soup lady starts cooking for the day, at 6:45 AM my guest house owner lets her tiny twin fluffy white dogs into the street with their tinkling collars of bells, and they run around grinning maniacally with tongues hanging out to one side. At 7:00 AM I have breakfast and watch the Thai kids walk to the bus stop in their school uniforms. At 9:00 AM the Thai massage lady puts her sign out on the street. Around 5:00 PM the pancake lady starts frying batter. At 6:30 PM the fruit man starts slicing papaya and flicking watermelon seeds onto the pavement with his knife. And at 9:15 PM the barefoot man from the ice block truck unloads massive square chunks of ice onto banana leaves inside the ice vendor’s garage. There it sits in hot dark of the Bangkok night, steam rising up from it under the light of the streetlamps. It’s fun to pretend that Soi Kamesan 1 is my own little neighborhood.

Did you know that other than playing the national anthem in movie theaters before the main feature starts, Thais also play the anthem twice per day in any public location that has an intercom? This includes public parks and shopping malls! Lately I’ve been in the outdoor mall shopping areas around my house or at beautiful Lumphini Park when the anthem comes on over the loudspeaker at 6:00 PM. I stop in my tracks to listen, as the Thais do. But other unknowing Western tourists will keep on walking, and they’ll look around puzzled about why everyone else isn’t moving. I silently smirk at them. It’s as though the world freezes for just one eerie minute.

Very unfortunately, I accidentally deleted all of the pictures from my digital camera. I’m pretty bummed out about it, because the photos included the Buddha festival, a dog sleeping while wearing a man’s dress shirt, the monk bus, and many more.

Among the funny things I’ve seen recently include a street vendor selling pink hotdogs (Thais sure do like things that are pink!) and a monk who secured his robes with big black metal binder clips.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and I’m going to the Chatuchak Weekend Market again with some UNESCO friends who haven’t been yet (Ahmed from Canada and Marie from the Philippines). Later tomorrow night, I’m invited to a party.

Have a great weekend!