Food

I'm not sure why I'm having such difficulty with food these days. It's not like I'm not trying. Thai food can be some of my favorite in the world so am finding myself continually surprised at how boring some of it seems to be. I guess when the Thai waitress sees how white I really am (by just looking at my american fanny pack and noticing I can only say "hello" and "rice" and "thank you") she tells the cook to make my dish milder than my moms homemade Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. Sorry Mom. Phad Thai, red curry and noodles, green curry and rice, yellow curry and shrimp...all sounding mouthwateringly delicious and above all HOT. But... close my eyes, forget the consistancy, and I can hear my mom calling me to the table with "soups on!" And if she were here, I'd ask her to pass the Wonder Bread and "I can't believe it's not butter" spreadable margerine to spice it up a bit. But it's not just the subtle flavors and hot spices I miss from the "authentic Thai food" from the U.S., I also want to explore all the options of "real" Thai food that are available to a vegetarian...both of them. It can be difficult to find, and most of the time I don't worry about the things that at home would have me calling the waiter over to the table faster than you can say "organic, non-GMO, locally grown, free-range tofu". Things like fish sauce or oyster sauce... or even fish or oysters! Shrimp is now once again a staple and even though I love it and it tastes just as good as I remember it 25 years ago, I prefer to eat more simply ( like Snickers bars and corn chips). So I guess it isn't that strange when I freaked out half way through my banana pancakes this morning upon finding they weren't totally vegetarian. If you consider that the ants I had been chewing on are actually some form of meat that is. The pancake arrived on the plate looking beautiful, fluffy and rich, with bananas on top cooked to perfection. And if you look closely at a banana, you'll see little seeds throughout just about the size of tiny ants, won't you. So I didn't really notice that the specks were ants until I put a second helping of honey on my plate. The honey came out of the bottle kind of chunky style and sure enough full of ants. Breakfast was done for the day as the thought of how many I had actually eaten destroyed my appetite.
The rest of the day was awesome fun with a beautiful swim in the Andaman Sea under a 300 foot cliff face, swimming into caves, taking a long-tail boat ride and soaking up some sun with friends. And I actually forgot about the bug breakfast for most of the day until I crawled into bed and sat there for a while relaxing. A small black bug walked across the sheets and I flicked it off like a booger as I lay down. Another one came my way and I flicked it off as well. Looking up at the ceiling while on my back I felt a bite on my leg and noticed another small black insect burrowing into my skin. As one who leans toward Buddhist beliefs I usually try not to kill anything. Bugs included. As the welt started to form on my calf, I ground that bug into just another stain on the dirty sheets and noticed with alarm the number of small moving spots that were now crawling toward my body from the head of the bed.
I am no fan of bugs (recall the leeches story) and actually have of a phobia of them. Spiders are OK (as they eat other insects) but I have to catch them in a glass to let them outside when I find them in the house. The other night in Bangkok while eating at a food stall I looked down at my feet for some stupid reason and noticed the ground wriggling with cockroaches...not just one or two but ground wriggling numbers of cockroaches! I looked really stupid eating my soup with my feet up on my chair but I was wearing flip flops...and the bugs were everywhere! Over here the roaches grow really big and the thought of them all around me on my feet wrecked my dinner as I crammed down my food in record time. But last night was even worse. The number of little black bugs kept increasing until I looked inside the pillow case and saw a writhing mass of bedbugs. Pushing back the thought that my head had recently been on that pillow I let out a kind of girly squeek and threw pillows out the bedroom door. More bugs kept coming from under the sheets and from between the mattresses and I was lamenting the fact that the guest-house management had left for the night. I was exhausted and wanted to sleep more than anything after a long day in the sun. But by 3:00am I gave up the battle, after the slaughter left hundreds dead, and went out in search of another hotel. I found one for twice as much and happily paid the $7.00 (US dollars I'll have you know) for a bug-bite free nights sleep. It was too late to see the humor in the fact that I had started this day eating bugs and ended it being eaten by them.