where cider meets condensed milk: Demented airline employee returns to BKK

where cider meets condensed milk

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Demented airline employee returns to BKK

Back to Bangkok... again. Mr V (Deenaree) and I both had to jet out of Cambodia with expiring visas in order to stay longer, so we went to spend a long weekend with her extended family. Of all places in the world, her mother is from Beloit (!), but her father is Thai. Her aunts and grandmother and cousins and the maids took excellent care of us, and we came back to Phnom Penh after 5 days relaxed with nicely ironed clothes. Leaving was a disaster, as we had to work all morning, move out of the hotel, drag all our stuff to the office, arrange a new lease, and get to the airport in time. Our students probably think we're crazy bag people.

Below is a spirit house outside her grandmother's restaurant, which is for protection and respect. We ate so much good food, mostly Chinese-Thai style. It was right across from Lumpini Boxing Stadium, and is *famous* for Half-Century Barbecued Chicken Satay. Couldn't try it, but it did smell tasty. And famous!

Instead of satay, how about large seafood? Yeah, we ate these giant crabs for one meal, along with prawns the size of your foot for another, and smoky tofu with broccoli and rices and all sorts of noodles. Did I mention the mochi dumplings filled with kurogoma (black sesame), in a sweet-spicy ginger sauce?

And in true Bangkok style, we did a lot of shopping. And in true will-work-for-sticky-rice- and-free-drinking-water volunteer style, we couldn't really buy much of anything. Ah well. It didn't stop us from spending 3 solid afternoons at MBK and finding multiple excuses to drink bubble tea while we were there. We spent most of a Sunday at the weekend market, in search of not much of anything in particular, but found cowboys! (Deenaree said it didn't make her miss her apartment in Houston. Secretly, I think she ran back and bought a bootleg bluegrass CD.) We had iced coffee back at the house with Bizen Betsy, who was in town for master's research, and we had some natsukashii moments. (Remember that time we were all in a huge article in the paper for no reason? Remember how lame and yet fun Okayama was after OD'ing on karaoke and chu-hai? Yeah...)

And at the risk of this becoming food porn.... this is so beautiful. Hello, my love. The Oishi Grand is a fancy J-buffet and it's freaking amazing. Deenaree's aunts took us and her brother out for a sayonara dinner, and I think I've stashed enough tempura calories to outlast any bout of Camborexia. So. So. Good. See you again, dear sashimi, when I'm in another sufficiently developed country.

posted by Raychaa @ 10:19 AM

1 comments:

At 7:14 AM, Anonymous said…

i have been to that buffet. i hope you wore elastic waist trousers.