Our First Dinner in Bangkok

A 10 minute walk brought us to our restaurant destination, a place we were told made very good authentic Thai food. Inside, it was definitely not white tablecloths and soft music – think more along the lines of the tables at Denny's or IHOP.

The menu was multi-lingual, but of course we still had no clue what we were looking at. We found out that you share dishes, like in a Chinese restaurant, and that we ordered too much. The waiter didn’t speak English, so there was much pointing and nodding.

We tried to keep in mind that the airline food we’d had for the last 48 hours probably had not prepared our guts for an international encounter, and looked for those little chili symbols like you see on menus in the states.

They don’t have ‘em, incidentally.

Let's pause to take a moment to thank the nice people at the pharmaceutical companies who bring us Prilosec, Tagamet and Maalox.

The meal started with some type of a seafood soup in kind of a pinkish broth with shrimp, clams (?) and some other ambiguous stuff we figured was probably seafood, lemon grass and basil leaves.

It smelled wonderful, and was our first lesson in Thai food. It came in a bowl that most Americans would think of as “their” bowl. It was intended to be shared, though, and little bowls were delivered before we embarrassed ourselves and decided that we were both supposed to eat from the big one.

SWEET MOTHER OF GOD.

We’ve solved at least one aspect of the healthcare crisis. Those antibiotics for a sinus infection are no longer needed. A couple of good hits of this stuff, and your nasal cavity is cauterized.

Fortunately, the waiter had brought a couple of very large beers to extinguish the fire. You have to wonder if a group of them weren’t standing around the corner giggling about our distress, but that’s all part of the adventure.

After we caught our breaths, more food came out. It isn’t all served at once, but kind of trickles out of the kitchen as it’s finished. Fried rice with chicken, a vegetable plate with baby corn, asparagus and onions, and chicken wrapped in some kind of leaves – long pointy things, like sawgrass, maybe – finished out the meal.

There was enough for 5 or 6 people, even by American standards, but it was all really good.

The other drink that seemed predominant in the restaurant was a green coconut, kind of whacked into a squarish shape, with the top lopped off and a straw stuck in. Coconut water. We buy it in cartons at the health food store, they get it fresh here. As you drink the liquid, you take a spoon and scoop out the fresh coconut in it as well.  We'll be trying one of those next time around.

In talking to several people (and reading the guidebooks) we learned that most people don’t have set mealtimes here. They just tend to graze all day long, which, along with all the walking, probably explains why they’re not overweight.

That, and the fact that they’ve burned out the linings of their stomachs.