Still, I'm stopped by one of the guys in the Isaan family who run the cart I frequent for dinner. It's to the point that I can smile, wave, sit down, and they bring a spicy salad something, a little something of soup, a little cooked veggie, a bit of cooked meat, and maybe one more if I say I'm hungry. Two daughters bring the food, smiling as they say what it is: something special for today, but with long roots in Thai cookery, is the general rule.
But there's this guy, the oddball nephew. He's about my size--really, we could swap clothes--but he has at least 20 kilos on me. He's lean like a street-tough cat, not like a model, not like he's been to hell and back, and just scrappy. Pick a fight, doesn't matter the opponent, pick a fight to fight, and win or lose, it's a helluva good time trying to wale the tar out of each other.
But then, here he is in a pastel green polo with a pink Playboy Bunny embroidered on the front and emblazoned across all of the back, wearing a flowered apron from which hang keys to a Hello Kitty scooter. It screams for something to be said.
But then the arm that he (or one of his friends) tattooed with swastikas is reaching into the jar of peppers to grab a handful for your padkingkai, and somehow it just doesn't seem right to say anything.
Of course, I didn't say anything when I went exploring, and it proved crippling.
It's a place I've noticed innumerable times and thought, "I should stop," but it took a while to work up the courage. They have a couple of carts lined with steam trays (no steam) full of sundry non-farang sorts of dishes. Most everything is a yellow or green curry with the distinctive, sour stank of Southern Thai curry. (Note: in this context, sour does not mean the smell of rice wine vinegar or the taste of lemon; instead, think, "better toss this salmon fillet, it's getting pretty sour [i.e. gone two stages past rank].)
But I'm not going to be one of those farangs like they expect my skinny ass to be, which is confirmed when I ask for a plate of rice and I point to what I take to be a curry of shrimp and lentils, what I'm almost sure is sweet-braised pork belly, and a complete gamble: it's a yellowish curry with what looks like cauliflower florets. Alas, there is much twittering over the last one--a bad sign where farangs are concerned--and it turns out to be spicy riverfish eggsacks. I can't tell whether they mean catfish or lungfish--either are on the cart in fried form--but it seems like a good time to shut down the senses and work the mouth with a smile while the dozen patrons and half-dozen proprietors watch the lone farang sit to eat the plate of food.
Which he does.
To great intestinal distress.
In America, when you wonder about something, you look at someone who's eating the same and think, "see, he's healthy, so it'll be okay for me."
Maybe one day I could do that in Thailand, but that would mean acclimating my gut to half-fermented seafood stewed in coconut milk and enough spices to bore out a diesel train engine. And as cool as it would be to hang with such locals, how on earth could it possibly be worth it?
So I'll trust the guy who sports a flower apron and swastika tattoos. (And his ordinary wardrobe, which would be utterly unremarkable in a seedy roadhouse or desert biker bar, makes me disinclined to reference the swastika as a traditional symbol of luck.) He's been good to me thus far, and even though he's threatening with tom-yam-cowfoot, at least he's seen me eat enough horseshoe crabs, pickled crabs, fermented pickles, fistfuls of peppers, and plateloads of sundry whatnots to know that I'm not just another soft and spoiled farang if I shy away from something.
And for some reason, that's important.
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