Baht bus, food and more food

Saturday, after we returned from our snorkeling and fishing island adventure, we weren’t yet finished with the day’s adventure. We wanted to see more than just our touristy hotel area. “Baht buses,” actually small pickup trucks with covered beds converted to bench seating, run continuously up and down the main roads and cost 10 baht (about 35 cents) no matter how far you ride. We just waved one down that had open seats, hopped on, and rode to another beach about two miles away. That second beach was one where local Thai families go to relax. More food vendor carts near that beach. We rode the baht bus back to our hotel area where we met Miriam’s nephew for dinner.

En route to our 40 baht noodle soup dinner, we stopped at a small fruit market where Miriam and David introduced us to more exotic fruits. We tried durian, a sweet fruit that smells bad, so bad that the hotels all have signs saying no durian fruit in the rooms. It was OK, but not our favorite. Our favorite of this evening’s fruit encounter was the center one in the picture, the one that looks like a roma tomato. It is apple-ish in flavor and very, very juicy with a crisp texture.

As we waited at the hotel in Pattaya for our van to the airport, I noticed this candle on the table in the library. I’ve already mentioned the family fondness for mangos and sticky rice. This candle is a wax version of it. There’s a family story of how Phillip’s dad, Eddie, thought he got candy from Thailand, but it was really soap carved to look like candy. Eddie has also been known to eat whipped butter, thinking it was whipped cream. We all thought of Eddie when we saw this candle and knew that he’d find a spoon and try this “dessert” if he were here!

Our Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai was easy. The plane was not full, so the four of us had six seats. We were met at the airport by Miriam’s family, several brothers and assorted nieces, nephews, and cousins. We rode with Miriam’s cousin who is a police inspector. David helped us talk with him about Tasers, gangs, and other police topics.

The big event for the day wasn’t the plane ride, it was the dinner that Miriam and David had arranged for the family. Sixteen of us went to this huge covered pavilion where about 3500 people were eating. In the center of the open-sided building, tables contained the raw vegetables and all kinds of raw meat and seafood. You picked your items and carried them on plates back to your table where a grill was waiting. The staff loaded hot coals under the grill and you cooked your own food. Around the edge of the grill top was a reservoir filled with water that cooked your vegetables and fish balls. Here’s the grill loaded at the beginning of our meal. Our tables had one of these for every four people, and as the food cooked, we just took it off and ate it, adding more food. And more food. The center tables also had the various Thai sauces we used to flavor the meat or add to the soup that was created by the boiling water around the edge. I loved the soup part, spooning out the vegetables with the broth. It was an all-you-can-eat affair, so we did. This was a “dining experience” that we enjoyed, although we did eat too much! And desserts… Tables of Thai fruit, desserts and pastries (we didn’t have to cook those). I tried some of the desserts and I think Phillip tried all of them! Miriam’s family, although we had to communicate thru David and Miriam, are a great group of people. Laughter is a cross-cultural activity.

After we waddled away from the restaurant, the family stopped at the Sunday Night Bazaar. Although there is a night bazaar that operates every night, within the past two or three years, a special Sunday bazaar developed. The streets thru this area are closed and vendors set up all along the streets for many blocks. We planned to only be there for an hour, but just walking thru took us almost two hours. All kinds of handmade items, soap carvings, jewelry, craft work, burlwood and teak candleholders, and much more. I’m not sure what idea Miriam and I were trying to get across to David in this picture, but there was a point where we passed a particular vendor and I wanted to go back with Miriam to talk to this vendor about her wares. I was probably saying she was somewhere nearby…(and she was, we did find her). And food… this bazaar had food vendors selling fruit shakes to noodle soup, to grilled meats on a stick, to sacks of peeled and sectioned fruit, to sushi (5 baht per piece = 17 cents). For the first time on our trip, we actually passed by all the food vendors without stopping, we were that full from dinner! 

We made it back to our hotel and said goodbye to Miriam’s family. We will see several of them again during our stay here in Chiang Mai. Our hotel room has great pillows; however, we noticed during the night that …. our air conditioning didn’t work. Phillip says that his big brother is being mean to him, two hotels so far in Thailand out of three where we get the room with the malfunctioning A/C. Unlike at the Bangkok hotel, within two minutes after we  reported the problem to the staff, a maintenance person was here with hot water to thaw the compressor and freon (since that was the problem that caused the compressor to freeze up). Within ten minutes, we had cold air.

Today (Monday), David and Miriam will visit with family while Phillip and I check out the city on our own…