Eating in Thailand has had its ups and downs for me.
It started off with a Pho type soup near the guesthouse in Chiang Mai which I really enjoyed.
The next day we were off to the Botanical Gardens and stopped at a roadside spot and had quite a local feast. All good, though the soup and the “salad” were pretty spicy.
That night I got violently sick and I’ve been been very hesitant ever since. We ate in an American-English type place several times in Mae Hong Son. Not being a fish person means that the smells sometimes make me queasy. I will totally confess that I stocked up on crackers, peanuts and granola bars to tide me over while at Tee’s village.
But I wanted to post some photos of the kitchen experience here.
I stuck pretty close to eating just rice, the things I brought, and mostly not eating at all. This morning Tee came back with two bats which will go on the BBQ. I’m sticking to crackers. : )
Tacked onto the end of the main house is the kitchen area. This is the pantry...veggies, garlic, rice, plus there is an enclosed glass cupboard with some other things, probably to keep away from critters.
Tee and Indira doing the supper vegetable prep.
The stove at the end of the kitchen. The walls surrounding it have open slats so the smoke can get out. The very large kettle is used to boil water, that then cools and is put in a large 5 gallon jug to use for drinking. They may be doing that just for us.
The dish washing area. There’s a dish drainer to the right. Tee’s mom won’t let us help with dishes...we’re the guests. She’s very adamant!
Indira is stir frying garlic as part of the supper prep. She’s sitting on a little low stool that allows her to be up off the floor enough to reach into the stove area. At Tee’s aunts, she has both an electric two burner stove top and this more traditional one. She was using the traditional one when we visited. : )
Tee and his uncle found a very long bamboo pole with a knife attached and went off to cut down some coconuts. So we all had a nice drink of coconut water. I’ve learned that coconut water is sterile and has the same PH as human blood. Apparently, when needed, it can be used as a blood transfusion. The coconut milk I buy is squeezed out of the coconut meat. If you wait until the coconuts are brown, the water has dried up.
Tee chopped off the green outer husk and then made a hole to pour the coconut water out into our mugs. Light coconut flavor and refreshing.
I had a hilarious moment with a coconut.
Tee and his uncle had cut down three coconuts and then opened up two of them. The other one was sitting on the edge of the table. Everyone else had gone to pick peppers and I sat at the table enjoying the quiet, the mother hens/chicks and blogging offline. (So pleased with the battery life of this little Chromebook!) At some point I got up and picked up something that knocked the coconut from the table and it landed right in the middle of one of the log stools, but before I could grab it, it rolled off the stool onto the last level of the porch steps landing where a momma hen and her chicks were wandering. That landing sloped to the edge and the coconut started rolling... chicks scattering...finally off the edge to the ground. By this time I was scrambling after it, but it had momentum and the ground sloped toward the road. It rolled through the stems of some bushes, dropped down a foot or more to the road which, you might remember, sloped down the hill to the creek. The coconut rolled all the way across the road, up a little embankment and hit a rock which sent it back into the road and down it went, around the curve and it was gone!
The road down the hill.
By then I was to the road, but all I could do was stand there and laugh. The best pinball experience ever!! I decided not to go down and check on its fate and hope nobody asked where the other coconut had gotten to. A couple hours later a woman and her two young children came walking up the road past the porch area carrying a coconut!! Glad she received a blessing from my little mishap!
At some point today, this hunk of sugarcane showed up on the table...Martha pretending to eat it!
Family members of a number of villagers are arriving from other places. Tee was enlisted to do a hair cut for this man.
People gathered round and chatted while he cut. An open air barber shop!
I’ve been trying to get a good photo of this fellow all day, but he skips away into the shadows. He’s definitely running the roost at this end of the village!
And one of his competition, but definitely 2nd man down.
Not something you see every day! This pig had been killed and they were pouring boiling water over it so they could scrape the hair off the skin. I grew up with pig butchering, but we always had a huge tub that was over the fire and pig was hoisted up and dipped in the boiling water all at once. Hadn’t thought of this way of doing it, but it works! The village folks killed three pigs to celebrate the New Year.
This evening, we had the privilege of attending a vespers mass. The church bell rings around 6 in the morning and evening, and I heard the evening bells. But then a little while later the bells rang again and longer. Tee said a priest had come to hold services for New Year’s Eve. As you can see the men sat on one side and the women on the other. Of course the service was in the language of the Village or Thai, so I couldn’t follow much of what was being said...maybe “Thanks be to God” and the Lord’s Prayer. Communion was offered, but only the bread. After the service I went in to speak to the priest, Brother Peter, who spoke a little English and was very happy to greet us. I told him that I was a Christian and so appreciated the communion of spirit with him in this land surrounded by Buddha worship. He shook my hand and heartily agreed. So glad for this short contact. There were about 50+ folks attending.
One evening that we were there, Tee's mom came up and called to him...we had all gone to bed already. (It gets dark about 6 p.m. and not light until 7 a.m.) Someone in his Grandma's village had killed a deer and they were all going to enjoy the fresh meat. They loaded into the truck and were gone! This is the kind of deer-a red muntjac (barking deer)...(googled for a photo)
We ended up leaving a day earlier than planned. Martha was still trying to get well and it seemed better to be back in the city. It was hard for Tee's parents to say goodbye-and hard for Tee to leave.
I woke up before 4 a.m. that last morning and got up and sat on the step with my headlamp and read. About 5:00, Tee came barreling down the stairs and into the house where his mom had been up and sweeping and generally cleaning. They chatted a while and then he left in the truck. When we went down for morning tea about 6:30, his grandma was there! He had seen her at the deer feast the night before, but knew she would want to see Martha (and us), so he had gone to fetch her. So special to meet her.
She had been Buddhist most of her life, but became a Christian about 10 years ago. Very precious lady. When I took the photo, she wanted me to wait so she could open her jacket, so it shows she's wearing the traditional woven clothes of the jungle villages.
After breakfast we packed up the car (the cement had hardened and the car was then driven right to the house) and said our goodbyes.
The family gathered for a photo: Tee, his grandma, Martha, Indira, an aunt, his mom, a cousin, his dad, an aunt. The traditional woven shirts and skirts are really beautiful and practical.
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