Being In Thailand

So here I finally am in Thailand. I bought a new camera with my birthday so I am well-equipped to photodocument everything that goes on.


Because of the blizzards last weekend in Boston, Philip and I stayed in a hotel downtown so that we would be able to get to the airport without any weather-related problems.(Photo: Me looking through my Moleskine address book in the Back Bay Hilton. But we were delayed and missed all our connections, so by the time we finally arrived in Bangkok, several days later, I was ravenous and quickly made my way to a little shop to get some food.


I was able to find many of my favorites: Prawncrackers.


Sugus, which is kind of like Starburst but less sweet. It comes in Raspberry, Orange, Blackcurrant and Green Apple.


Some fish sticks for Philip.


And my favorite, these paprika-flavored potato chips in the shape of penne pasta.


Once we got home we hung out with our grumpy cat, Fitz.


We didn't really have jetlag, because that;s just not how Philip and I roll, so we were able to begin doing fun stuff right away. Last night we went out to a tiny Indian restaurant, smaller than my bedroom back in Beverly. The food was very good and cheap (about $1.75 for this dish of chana dal) but the portion size was tiny. Afterwards we went and walked around the night bazaar. I'll have to put up some pictures of that later.


In Thailand there are a huge variety of kanom, which means snack or dessert. Two of the main ingredients in most of these are coconut milk and rice. This morning for breakfast my father and I walked through the temple compund and over the bridge to the market, where we picked up lots of fresh fruit, flowers and these kanom. From the left: khao laam, khao niaow/sankaya and khao mun sai goey. Everything comes wrapped in traditional biodegradeable packaging.


Here is the khao niaow/sankaya and the khao mun unwrapped. There are both served in banana leaves. The khao mun is coconut milk-sweetened sticky rice wrapped around a little piece of baby banana and then steamed in a leaf. Khao niaow/sankaya is sticky rice with gatit (coconut milk) and a porous, homemade custard, wrapped together in a fresh bit of leaf.


The khao lam is the most interesting; it is sticky rice, flavored with something, usually black beans (beans are seen as kanom in Thailand) and packed somehow into a bamboo segment and steamed. The whole thing packs together and forms a thin skin over the outside, so that once you peel off the sides of bamboo you can handle the sticky rice without getting sticky yourself. It is sort of the same concept as a sausage casing. This khao laam seemed very fresh; sometimes when they are a little bit older, maybe, (or maybe it ia different method of preparing it?) the bamboo flavor seeps into the rice and gives it more of a rich, worked-on flavor. Still, it was all very good.