Food With a Helping of People

Looking back on it, I realize that I've dropped the ball on a couple things with the blogs so far. One, I've spent an inordinate amount of time discussing bathrooms. That needs to go. Two, bathroom talk has limited the amount of food talk. That needs to happen. Three, I haven't provided any details about the people I'm adventuring with. If this was the Travel Channel, they would've kicked me off and given Samantha Brown another show. Without further ado...

The cast of characters:

Karen:
draft combine stats: Female, 5'8", blonde, mid 40s, Scottish, 5.4 40 time, 25 inch vertical...
The volunteer coordinator here at Andaman Discoveries. A young at heart type with an outgoing personality to boot, Karen hails from the land of bagpipes and kilts. She's the high-energy one of the group, the Joakim Noah type. Not excessively flashy, puts in work day in and day, and total team player. Gotta like her. Since she's Scottish, the locals here joke that they've had to adjust to learning English and Karen's English.

Bodhi:
combine stats: Male, 6' something, brown hair, Berkeley grad, newly married, late 20s or early 30s, first round status
One of the head honcos at Andaman Discoveries. He's been out of the area for most of my first week here. Just had a chance for us to introduce, but definitely has that good-guy vibe to him, really chill.

Laura:
combine stats: Female, the 23-year old Frenchie, black hair, 5'5"
She's been here since February as part of this European program that allows young people to assimilate themselves into different cultures to gain tools and experiences that they can take back home. As part of her learning experience, she's been taking Thai cooking lessons from Bodhi's wife every Tuesday. Word around the campfire is that she can make a killer fish curry. She heads back in October.

Nan:
combine stats: Female, Thai, 5'5", black hair, mid to late 20s, sat out her workouts due to an injured wrist and is listed as day-to-day.
She's one of the locals and is Laura's roommate. This is kinda neat, because it turns out that all of these people live on the same street. I think that's another really cool part about the people here in Thailand, that sense of "together-ness" with everyone and wantinng to be close to one another. Ubuntu! Maybe it's because of the air here in Thailand that causes people to behave like this. I'm starting to think any problem can be solved if people went to Thailand: healthcare, Bloods vs Crips, North vs South Korea, Snooki vs any normal human being. Also, Nan has a motorbike and, like many of the Thais here, uses it for any and all situations. Need to go 13 miles to the beach. Motorbike. Need to go back home. Motorbike. Need to go to the store one block over. Motorbike. Commitment to a cause.

Peanut:
combine stats: Female, Thai, 5'6", black hair usually tied in a bun, limited tolerance to spicy food.
Another local Thai. She's super sweet, and I love how she goes by Peanut.

Tui:
combine stats: Female, Thai, 5'6", long black hair usually in a ponytail, late 20s or early 30s.
She's been working with Andaman Discoveries for several years now. Again, she's very nice and has been our translator when need be. Can't be said enough about how nice people here are. Everywhere you go, people are greeting you and smiling like they actually mean it. None of this "hey, I don't really want to talk to you and I have to be somewhere" greeting that LA has a patent over.

Judith:
combine stats: Female, Austrian, 5'7", blonde, early 30s.
She's one of the interns with Andaman Discoveries who will be with them for the next two months. Then she'll head back to Europe to get her master's in sustainable tourism, but for right now she lives in the room across from me at the apartment. Lots of neat facts about her. For example, she helped run her mom's hotel back in Austria with her sister before deciding she didn't want to do this for the rest of her life, selling the place, and spending months at a time traveling and getting world experiences. From working with an animal group in Bolivia, traveling through Indonesia, and being a waitress in Barcelona, the girl needs to be profiled in some travel magazine. Or get a shout-out here.
Another fun fact, Judith tells me that while Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks English in a German accent, he also speaks German with an American accent. That puts him at 0-2 with 2 strikeouts in the language department and a clean up spot on any Giants lineup from the past 4 years.

Janice:
combine stats: Female, American, 5'9", wife, mother, student, early 40s.
Looking for a career change and wanting to explore new interests, Janice is back in school studying about the environment at UCLA. She'll be my buddy on all of my adventures and it's been great. Been here a week and she wants to see if she can get a place for retirement.

Wanda:
combine stats: Thai, 2", blue, fish.
Bought a betta fish for 10 cents at the market the other day. Judith thinks it won't live very long. I'll prove her wrong. I'll be an awesome fish daddy.

Okay, let's talk about food!

The food here has been nothing short of explosions of tastes and flavors. Here are some of the noteworthy dishes:

Pork balls on a stick: Name says it all, but this get the Karate Kid (2010) Award for things that are better than it looks. Side note, this may get replaced as the Avatar: Last Airbender Award. These white marble-sized balls on a skewer are sneaky delicious. Looking rather plain and appearing to be void of flavor, I was expecting something boring and obvious on par with Ricky Martin coming out of the closet. I was pleasantly surprised. Served with a small chili paste sauce, the pork balls are one of the most snackable foods out there.

Chicken or pork fried rice: I'm a big rice guy, and Thailand does not disappoint. All of the places where I've ordered fried rice have been great, but this one place right next to the apartment is the Manny Pacquiao of fried rice. The golden plate-full of rice contains fried egg, fried pieces of pork (real pieces of pork, not the lame completely processed type aka US pork), leafy green to keep me health and a refreshing side of diced cucumbers for when I'm done. It's absolutely fantastic.

Tom yum: One of the popular soups here. Has a bunch of vegetables, glass noodles, a meat, and liver. It's usually pretty spicy. I'm not a big soup person - they don't really fill me up - so I'll just leave it at that.

Burmese grilled chicken: This is one of the dishes they served to us at the school. Tasty, but a tad salty.

Fried chicken bits: Basically like a popcorn chicken type of deal that has a Popeye's Chicken times 5 level of spiciness to it. Really good, although definitely wasn't expecting that kind of zip to it. My dad would've loved it, though.

Yellow curry: Surprisingly, this was the most mild thing I've had here. Beautiful stuff. Only hiccup was that it didn't come with rice.

Fish: Karen's boyfriend Pet made an awesome fish dish with this sweet chili sauce. I don't know my fish, but I do know that it was good.

Sugar: This isn't about my personal experience tasting sugar sweets here, but more about the diet of the kids at the Burmese Learning Center where Janice and I were teaching English this past week. The kids, whether because of their poor living circumstances or some other reason, eat sweets and candy all the time. For "breakfast" right before classes start, take out packages of candy or go to the store nearby and purchase frozen juices pumped with sugar. Some of them I wouldn't even call candy. Instead, they are literally pellets of pure sugar. They look like something you would feed to a horse. These sugar pellets are made from the Coca Cola Company, which can be tacked on to the large list of bad things that the corporation does. Exploitation of people, destruction of the environment, the reinforcement of the divide between the have and have-nots. Eff you Coca Cola man. The children's food choices carry on throughout the morning and then the afternoon. Lunch is a little better, because the kids bring boxes that have rice and several side dishes. Besides that, though, they are without a paddle. As a result, their teeth are rotting; some have only little bits that barely manage to hang to their gums. My parents had me bring over toothbrushes for the students, and it was definitely something that they needed. Whether they are able to use them or not, it's important to reinforce the need for some kind of oral care. Seeing their excitement in receiving such a small thing as a toothbrush made me realize how easy it is to make a difference. Throughout all the problems going on out there in the world, we all want to try and change things. We have these lofty, ambitious dreams of having an impact. But in reality, through what I've seen since I've been here, it's the little triumphs that set in motion the mechanisms of change. Giving someone a pencil or a toothbrush. I never realized.

Grilled frog: This requires a bit of a story. Last Saturday night, Janice, Judith, and I went to the local bar for some live music, food, and World Cup action. We got our own table in the open air tiki hut style set-up in the place, the only foreigners. We were enjoying ourselves and the warm atmosphere, but there were curious eyes glancing over from time to time. At one point, a man got up in front oft he band area and gave a speech in Thai to the patrons. When he was done, everyone stood up and broke out in a Happy Birthday song for the man. We joined them.
We were in. That must've been an initiation for us, because for the rest of the night, people sent us food and drinks, while we all danced, laughed, and had a good time. One of the dishes was a big serving of diced up meat. I thought it was some type of beef. Later, we learnd it was frog.
Stay away from the frog. It was the spiciest thing I've had. I can't describe it any other way. The only person I can think of who can do it justice is Randy Jackson:

"Yo dawg', ya know that wasn't your best performance. I wasn't feeling it, got kinda pitchy. It wasn't really your thing. All this time I'm thinking your chicken or beef, but you come out with this ya know? That whole chili mixed with the frog. You made it this far and you just can't be doing that yo. But you know, I still love you."

And so it goes.