October 26th, 2009 It’s More Than Cooking in Bangkok
I’m back in Bangkok for only a few days to prepare for Myanamar and then on to India. You’d think I would be scrambling for some last minute supplies, trade in my useless guide books and in all prepare to leave for Southeast Asia. Well I should, but I decided to do a less conventional preparation, which was to learn Thai cooking!
May Sangie runs this food stall in Banglampu, which is a very popular tourist area. Her food is ranked among the best on my list of best foods during my journey and what’s even better is it’s all vegetarian. I’m seriously now thinking of all the food I’ll be able to cook when I get back home. I became so hooked on her spicy and sweet Massaman Curry. I tried it the first time I came through Bangkok and I came back many times. So, with the little time I have left, I will take a Thai cooking class.
I left my 5 star hotel Bangkok has and met with May then next morning and we went to the market to get supplies. As we passed other street food hawkers, May received a lot of yells, which I can’t help think was all about her walking with a geeky white guy from America, especially since they were all smiling and pointing at me. I asked her what they said, and she only replied that they wanted her to pick up some goods at the market. I’m sure they were saying something more along the lines of ‘He’s going to burn your stall down’.
She bought huge amounts of vegetables and four live catfish, it was all more than we both could carry and left them there to be delivered to her stall, all except one live catfish, which she gave me to carry. She lead me down an alleyway that seemed to lead to nothing but a canal. She then explained to me that she was going to give the fish back to the river as a part of her religious practice, or belief, a belief that if one takes something from nature, one must give something back. She said a short prayer and cast the fish into the canal and we headed back to her stall. That gesture made me realize that I was going to not only learn cooking today.
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