We hail from a dairy farming nation.
Monday, December 22nd, 2008by a satisfied tummy
Bangkok, Thailand
Today we ate a block of cheese.
The End.
OK, so that’s not particularly satisfactory. For a few weeks we have been really hanging out for some cheese. NZ colby taunted us from Luang Prabang, but you just don’t spend $50 on one block of cheese!! Grandpa Bear taunted us further through a video hook-up….he had the audacity to walk away from the computer and return from the fridge to hold up a whole yellow block in front of the camera. But all is forgiven….he sent another with the Hs. Of course, this means it sat in transit for 48 hours unrefrigerated and looked a bit on the melty side when it arrived, but a night in front of the blasting aircon hardened it up considerably! Sprinkled on top of pasta sheets sandwiched between tomato-y meat sauce with a fresh salad from the garden, would have been good, but we really don’t have the facilities to bake lasagne (we can’t even boil water!) So sliced on crackers it had to be. And it was newsworthy.
PS Stepping out from The Train Inn and crossing the road was all it took to have the H’s saying “WOW, oooh already it’s different.” By the time we had finished our breakfast of sticky rice, BBQed pork and fried chicken, they were ready to hit the river taxi and Chinatown. It was just like last time, only different! We couldn’t find the noodle soup man, the main road had even more stalls lining the sidewalk and there was weekday traffic traffic traffic everywhere. The Hs could not imagine how anyone gets anywhere along roads in the city…..so after a nap, we piled into tuktuks to find out. We went from wondering two days ago how Brunei could feel so far away, to wondering today how Bangkok could feel so big. Two of our tuktuks managed to successfully navigate around – but the H’s one, well, that was another story! Suffice to say it took an hour to all meet at our agreed destination, a place that had taken us half the time to walk to yesterday. The drivers had agreed to wait for half an hour before ferrying us on, but they got cold feet and drove off! We walked. It got dark. The lights of central Bangkok pre-Christmas were spectacular. The car lights of rush-hour traffic added even more miracle. We got hungry and started the trek home. Enterprising tuktuk drivers offered their services for 150 baht (we had originally agreed on 40 baht for “go and come back”). We walked. About a kilometre from home (as the crow flies, and more or less as we would have walked, sneaking through back alleys) two more tuktuks pulled up…..they agreed to take us all for 40 baht per vehicle. Bargain! And what a ride we had. Can you imagine nine people in one tuktuk? Can you imagine two big men and two strapping young lads in another (remember one of those men is very broad!!!)? We both had impatient drivers who could not wait for Bangkok traffic to take its natural course. So both of us arrived home with driving-up-the-wrong-side-of-the-road-into-oncoming-traffic-stories to tell. If I didn’t have the more pressing need of packing as we leave for Cambodia at 5 in the morning, I would take you on the ride of your life and let you live it with us. But it’s almost tomorrow already, I *do* need to pack and and this post is actually about cheese with crackers and mango. 😉
(But I will add some broad-man-in-tuktuk photos and Bangkok lights too when we get to Cambodia – no time now)
rayres