Postcards from Thailand

As the years pass my forehead expands relentlessly to claim space previously occupied by my flowing locks. It seems I am genetically predisposed to join the ranks of the follicularly challenged. Not for me the strong heads of hair, long, thick, jet black and straight, that are the preserve of the people around me.

Not that Thai people are oblivious to the beauty of their hair: many has been the time that I’ve visited a public restroom and had to wait whilst all the basins are occupied by young men preening their hair, teasing each strand until it’s just so.

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
– Ecclesiastes 1:2, Authorised King James Version (1611)

In search of individuality, some young men dye their hair – usually to a dark chestnut colour, though some go further and reach for the Clorox.

These same young men weren’t allowed to display their crowning glories when they were at school; the Thai educational system demands that all boys have closely cut crops. If a teacher thinks a student’s hair is too long she (for it almost always is a she) will grab a clump of hair and cut it off with a pair of scissors, so forcing the student to make an unscheduled trip to the barber.

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In searching for the quote from King Solomon I came across this optical illusion, which is apparently quite famous, but I hadn’t come across before and think is worth duplicating here, even though it has nothing to do with Thailand:

– All is Vanity, C. Allan Gilbert (1892)

Incidentally, Gilbert, an American, was only 18 years old when he created this image.

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Despite the tropical climate, fruit in Thailand is highly seasonal. Earlier this year the cost of limes sky-rocketed from the usual one or two Baht a piece (according to size and juiciness) to 60 Baht for a pack of five in the supermarket. This was quite a headache for the restaurant trade since lime juice is very widely used as a souring agent in Thai dishes, balancing the sweetness of added sugar (usually palm sugar), which in turn is there to balance the fieriness of the chillies; the high cost of limes was definitely eating into profits. (The common souring alternative, tamarind, is only used in a relatively small number of dishes, mostly from the South.) Anyway, the rains broke about a month ago and the price of limes is back to normal and I can enjoy a slice with my sundowner gin and tonic once more.

This is probably the best time of year for Thai fruits, with both durian and mangosteen in season. These fruits are known by the Thais as respectively the king and queen of fruit. And rambutan, the spicy, pink and green alien testicles are still around and very cheap (about 25 pence per kilo).

Durian, with its custardy flesh and overpowering smell of rank sewage, is definitely an acquired taste. And the best thing about acquired tastes is that one doesn’t have to acquire them.

Mangosteen is something that I hadn’t got around to trying, until today. The purple skin, which is soft when freshly picked, quickly hardens until it needs to be cut with a knife to reveal the soft white flesh within. To be honest, I wasn’t overwhelmed by the taste. The flesh is soft and a balance of sweet and sour, but without any particularly aromatic notes. Still, until they breed mangosteens which taste like foie gras or belly pork, I guess I’m going to remain unimpressed.

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According to Sydney Smith (a long-dead clergyman), heaven is “eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets”.

Today I was sitting in one of my favourite riverside restaurants with the deafening drumming of rain on the corrugated iron roof. Across the river was a magnificent Thai temple, gold paint glittering in the half light. Nearby was a sugar palm, its lollipop shape stark against the gloomy sky. And the river ferry carried on its work, taking motorcycles and passengers across the river, to-and-fro, to-and-fro.

I was waiting for my lunch: steamed pork spare ribs with soy sauce topped with finely chopped green chillies and garlic, a smoky, warm salad of grilled aubergines with minced pork and prawns, and some plain rice.

It then struck me that this has become so normal for me; I no longer look upon the temples with awe or feel thrilled by the brilliant food.

One can have too much even of foie gras to the trumpets’ clarion call.

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Last weekend I was entertaining. Rather than cook something Western I decided to showcase my talent (or lack thereof, as it turns out) for Thai food. Admittedly, this was a little foolhardy. Most Thai people are very particular about their food and analyse it in far more detail than your average Westerner would. Most Thai recipes include a comment about how the food should taste, along the lines of “first sour, then spicy, then equally sweet and salty”. Get the balance wrong and it will be noted.

My menu was straightforward:

• duck salad (Thai style) with rambutan
• tom yam gung (a hot, sour prawn soup)
• hor mok (steamed finely chopped fish and other seafood in a spicy coconut milk custard).

At least, it was straightforward until I went to Tesco-Lotus to do the shopping. The first problem was that they didn’t have any duck. And the second was that they didn’t have mussels. (I’d wanted to serve the hor mok in mussel shells; this curry is usually served in banana leaf cups, but serving it in mussel shells is a rather more elegant presentation.) After a bit of thought I substituted beef for the duck – not that Tesco-Lotus had any nice steaks or similar, so I made do with some tough old cut which I marinated for a few hours first. And as for the hor mok, I settled for serving it in ramekins.

The beef salad turned out pretty well – though apparently not quite as spicy as it should be, so I was told – though my sinuses and tear ducts beg to differ. The other two dishes weren’t so good. The hor mok had a good taste, but I hadn’t ground the curry paste quite finely enough in my enormous granite mortar, I’d not added enough fish sauce (leaving it under-salted) and there was rather too much coconut milk for the quantity of fish. The tom yam gung – using a recipe from a relative of HM The Queen none-the-less – was a total disaster. It was strangely cloudy, and neither spicy nor sour. The prawns were fished out and consumed, but the soup itself was left untouched.

A friend made the pudding – taro root cooked in a heavy syrup and chilled served with salted coconut cream. It may sound a little strange, but it works really well. However, I still don’t know how I’ll ever get my saucepan clean again!

But back to the subject of Tesco-Lotus – or “Lotus” as it’s generally called in Thailand. (Actually, it’s more like “loh-tut” since Thai people, for the most part, can’t pronounce “s” at the end of syllables.) I usually shop there because it’s rather more convenient to get to than Big C (which opened a little over a year ago), plus it seems rather more hygienic: Big C has sparrows flying around inside doing what sparrows do. My opinion changed somewhat earlier today. I picked a packet of red curry paste from the shelf in Lotus. (I only make curry pastes from scratch when I’m entertaining – it’s such hard work grinding the ingredients by hand.) I then noticed a movement at the back of the shelf: it was a large, fat, sleek rat. I jumped back in surprise. A couple of middle-aged Thai women looked at me askance until I explained what I’d seen.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba wrote:

“The honey in the flower or lotus does not crave for bees; they do not plead with the bees to come. Since they have tasted the sweetness, they themselves search for the flowers and rush in.”

When it comes to Lotuses of the Tesco variety, it’s not the sweet honey that attracts the bees, but rather the lack of a decent alternative.

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There’s been a rather heart-warming story in the press today: an 8-year-old autistic boy had his first day of class at a new school, but was scared and climbed out onto a third floor balcony. He resisted the imprecations of his teachers and mother to come back inside. Everyone feared he might fall. The fire brigade was called, but to no avail until his mother mentioned that he loved Spiderman. Fireman Sonchai Yoosabaito knew exactly what to do: he rushed back to the fire-station and picked up his Spiderman costume, which he put on. The young lad came running into his arms beaming and so he was safe. A happy ending.

(Contrary to popular opinion, a Spiderman costume is not a normal part of fireman uniform in Thailand. This fireman, however, used it to liven up presentations to school children. He also had an Ultraman costume [an Asian superhero]. I guess it’s just as well the child wasn’t a devotee of Batman or Superman, or the outcome could have been somewhat different.)

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There are a few restaurants around town that proclaim they serve Vietnamese food. The ones I’ve been to have either had Vietnamese dishes on the menu, but they’re not actually available, or have had regular central Thai menus. It was therefore with an air of skepticism that I went to another self-proclaimed Vietnamese restaurant last night. It was a simple place, shielded from the street by a screen of bamboo poles with cast concrete tables and benches, the tables topped with inlaid ceramic tiles.

There were quite a few customers there already eating, which is always a promising sign.

The menu when it came was all in Thai, and I’d forgotten my glasses, so I asked my companion to handle the ordering, adding a few suggestions from happy memories of past trips to Vietnam.

The first dish arrived quickly. It was simple, thin slices of pork rib topped with crispy fried garlic and a spicy dipping sauce.

Next to come was minced shrimp wrapped around a sugar cane stick accompanied by a large bouquet of herbs and leaves, some bitter, some aromatic, some peppery. I recognised coriander, mint and holy basil, but the rest were a bit of a mystery to me. There were also lettuce leaves and a large plate containing pieces of star fruit (carambola), sour green mango and cucumber, slivers of garlic and small, fiery green chillies as well as small coils of thin, cold wheat noodles. The idea is that you peel the shrimp mince from the stick and place it either on one of the lettuce leaves or on a larger herb leaf along with a selection of the other items. You then add a little hot/spicy/sour peanut sauce, roll the whole thing up, and pop it in your mouth.

Then arrived a thin, crispy pancake filled with stir-fried minced meat and vegetables accompanied by a small salad of cucumber and chillies in sweetened vinegar and another spicy dipping sauce.

And finally we got fresh spring rolls: thin sheets of moistened rice paper lined with lettuce leaves and topped with minced shrimps, lots of holy basil and tiny pieces of other vegetables and noodles, then tightly wrapped and sliced into bit-sized pieces. And, of course, there was yet another dipping sauce.

The food was pretty good. OK, they’d mixed minced pork with the shrimp wrapping the sugar cane to keep the cost down, and they’d used holy basil in the spring rolls rather than the more traditional mint and coriander (mint is quite difficult to find here I find). A Vietnamese traditionalist might have frowned, but for five pounds for two (including a large bottle of beer), it was excellent value for money and a very pleasant change.

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I celebrate each fourth of July (or “Thanksgiving” as it’s known in the UK) by taking a worming pill. It’s a common precautionary measure here in Thailand. Each year schoolchildren are lined up and fed one of these foul-tasting preparations by their teacher. What makes it worse is that you’re supposed to chew the pill, rather than swallow it whole.

Much of the risk comes from eating undercooked meat. Particularly in the north east (Isaan), salads are prepared with raw minced meat or fish, or only very lightly cooked meat. Here in the central plains when they make Isaan food they cook the meat more fully, but there’s still a risk. I suspect the Isaan tradition stems from two things: (1) the available meat is very tough and stringy, so mincing makes it more palatable. (In the case of the fish, freshwater fish are very bony, so mincing means you don’t have to pick out the hundreds of tiny bones.); (2) fuel has traditionally been in very short supply, and even now is expensive, so minimal cooking keeps down the cost.

The shortage of wood for fuel has also historically accounted for the rise of stir-fried and other quickly cooked dishes; slow-braised dishes are almost absent from the cuisine.

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I drove G to the central police station where he had to make a statement. The place seemed fairly chaotic. Nobody was manning the front desk, but seemingly at random various police officers would arrive and take away one of the waiting to somewhere more private to conduct constabulary business. Eventually G was taken away for his interview. About an hour later he reemerged to tell me that the police didn’t believe his story about his pick-up having been hit by another vehicle, and that they wanted him to pay a 400 Baht fine for the damage to the concrete barrier at the central reservation.

G didn’t want to accept this fine – it would affect the insurance claim. G was told to wait whilst the police officers had a private discussion.

At this point I went home. I hadn’t showered or shaved by this point, wasn’t wearing any deodorant, and was wearing yesterday’s shirt. To put it bluntly, I smelt pretty bad.

I put a dish of home-made baked beans in the oven to warm and quickly showered. Then suddenly remembered something I’d seen at the scene of the crash: there was a headlight near the start of the skid marks. I drove back to the scene, took my life in my hands again as I crossed the Asia Highway, and started searching. I couldn’t find the headlight, but I found several pieces of silver plastic, some of which appeared to be from a bumper. (G’s pick-up is white.) I gathered these up and went back to the police station. As I arrived there G ‘phoned me to say that he needed 2,500 Baht; the police had agreed to investigate the crash, subject to a fee. I drove to the nearest ATM and withdrew the money.

At this point G was at the police vehicle compound on the outskirts of Ayutthaya. He said that he’d be back at the police station in 15 minutes. I had a choice of waiting in police reception with its hard, plastic chairs, pesky flies and stifling air, or outside with its even harder, concrete benches, equally pesky flies, and baking sun leavened only by a slight breeze. I chose the latter. More than an hour later G turned up. It took a further hour for him to pay the fee and complete the paperwork.

But that wasn’t the end of it. We had to drive to the police vehicle compound to complete even more paperwork. “Compound”, perhaps, is rather too grand a word for a patch of dirt with a couple of huts at the end of a gravel track. Here there was a handful of smashed-up cars and a larger number of smashed-up motorcycles.

G’s pick-up at the Police Compound

Eventually G was free to go. By now it was mid-afternoon, and my baked beans had been in the oven rather too long. Still, having only had two mouthfuls of muesli all day, I thought they tasted fine.

Things are still far from over. G will have to come back to Ayutthaya to make a further statement, and will then have to appear in court. The toughest thing for him, though, will be how to tell his mother.

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