scooter stories 4

On a map, a 160K roadtrip is nothing, especially with a semi-decent highway system. My WRX brain says, “Not even long enough for a pee stop.”

But then I get on my moped and start down the road, driving down the left shoulder and avoiding slower moped traffic, oncoming livestock, roadside stands, roadside picnics, people waiting for a bus, busses, oncoming moped traffic, oncoming busses, piles of manure, farm debris, piles of burning sugar cane husks, and the occasional maniacal driver intent on passing on my left. I get pummeled by wind, rain, sun, bugs, dirt, unfiltered diesel, acrid smoke, durian, fertilizer, and worse. Neither my tailbone nor my cheeks will callus over, and my arms are baked despite wearing long sleeves and the strongest sunscreen available in country.

Suddenly, a half hour is a long drive. Especially during peak bus commute time, when a bunch of psychedelic karaoke busses are vying for the fastest commute time.

So when I got to a town, I felt justified saying, “Here I am, and here I explore.”

First I took the road North out of town, following a sign toward a port. It petered into a single lane, overgrew, and opened into what must've been the port: a large cement turnaround area, presumably for ag trucks, and half a dozen empty slips. With, of course, a couple of bicycle cart vendors and a fleet of mopeds either run past the ground or completely tricked out. No saying what I was actually expecting, but that was certainly not it. And I was grateful the scooter kept idling happily with only my wildly swerving U turn on the knurled concrete.

Naturally, with the next pass I ended up on the wrong side of the river driving down an elevated soi that weaves through a swamp speckled with houses on stilts from which people barely distinguishable from the shadowy interiors watched me try to find a place wide enough to turn around without pulling into an already-occupied parking jetty.
It was too much. I couldn't look around me. I focused on the dirt strip in front of me, and through a blessing for which I will pay dearly, I'm sure, the soi came out on the road to the docks—didn't even notice it on the way in.

The good part is that town--the failed industrial port—looked really nice after driving down the soi. What's cracked concrete and a thick coating of grime? Here's a town center with half a dozen food stalls in a parking area servicing a pharmacy, a dry goods shop, two bars, a 7-11, and a terminal for the river-crossing ferry. Yeah, people in once-colored clothes are staring at me, just like they do back in NST, like they did in Bangkok, Naples, Rome, or Munich (oh for a cool rain, comprehensible language, and pig shank with a vat of Andechs beer, followed by a night nippy enough to justify a downen decka!).

So, following the doc's advice, I decided to get some protein—beef. Seafood in this area is easy—usually, half a dozen varietals are displayed, and all I have to do is point. I know hot to ask for chicken and pig, but not beef—the word is one of the bad ones for a farang tongue, and it's more difficult to find on display, so I've had little practice. Which found me walking along with my fingers curled up next to my head, making mooing sounds like a cow. Which is doubly awkward because the American “Moo” is remarkably close to the Thai word for pig, and my various syllabilizations—with what consonant does a Thai cow initiate its bellow?--drew considerable attention not just from the folks already sitting around and doing nothing but from those who had previously been occupied in something ostensibly meaningful and now found pressing reason to stand behind me.

Hmm. Well. As if it wasn't awkward before, now I'm in the middle of a milling group of people who are following and laughing at me without pretense of any other activity. Great.

It gets better through: I succeeded in finding cow.

I got a big bowl of beef soup. Kinda.

It took a few stands before someone understood the mooing, and then there was much frantic pointing and directing to get me to one particular stall. A lady pulled out a styrofoam bowl and opened a steaming vat from which she pulled a few tongfuls of wide, blackish ribbons covered with some sort of fuzz.

Everyone pointed at it and made eating motions, so I took it to be my beef meal: great. But what is it?

Some of the strips had nubblins like Mexican tripa, but some of the little cilia things were close to an inch long. And then there were big, wide ribbons of it on the bigger, wider ribbons.

Another vat opened, this one a clear broth billowing waves of chili, lime, and that distinctive organ meat smell.

I paid the 20B and lead a procession to a bench at the ferry dock, where there was much muttering and pointing and sniggering while I poked through strips from various parts of the GI tract—and what else would determine inch-long ribbons vs nubbly cilia in a bowl of tripe?

I'll admit that few things scream against lovin' as loudly as a big bowl of tripe, but I was pleasantly surprised when I started in on it: the meat was tender and flavorful, if the broth was a little salty, but the chili lime gave a great punch that worked well with the salty beef offal broth. Of course, shoe leather would taste okay if cooked for a similar time under similar conditions, but this particular sort of tripe, with the rainbow range of cilia, had particular textural excitement.

And boy was it fun to watch me eat.