Spice of Life

One thing that friends always ask me about in emails is...What do you eat? This was something I worried a lot about before I came, and the anxiety increased as my bus on the way to Khon Kaen for the first time passed nothing but meat stalls (meatballs-on-a-string, meatballs-on-a-stick, links of meat on a string/stick, various pieces of meat drying on a string in the sun, entire cow legs and pig heads...I could go on). Luckily, Thailand does have vegetarians (even if most of them only practice for nine days a year--but I’ll get to that later) and Khon Kaen has several vegetarian restaurants.

The initial challenge became not whether I could find meatless food, but rather whether I could find a dinner that would not leave me literally crying with huge swollen lips. Thai food is spicy, and Issan (NE Thailand--where I live) is spicier--supposedly the spiciest in Thailand. In order to enjoy all of the culinary delights of my temporary homeland, I needed to acclimate. Every day I ate something that was a little spicier than the day before, pushing myself a little closer to the point where I was certain my head would explode. I’m really not exaggerating, all of the face on your skin pulsates and you feel like oxygen isn’t getting where it should. Try holding your breath for as long as you can and you kind of get the same sensation (without the burning pain in your mouth and the tears, of course). At home, this food is liable. Karl, a teacher we know who’s been living here for more than 10 years and goes back to the U.S. for a visit almost every year, cannot get anyone to make him food that is a spicy as he gets here. They are actually afraid he will sue them.

I wince recalling those first few months, but all that pain has paid off because I now enjoy, with great preasure (spelling intentional), SOM TOM. The spiciest of spicy Thai food, som tom is a staple of the Issan diet. Traditionally, it is made of shredded, unripe, green papaya tossed into a mortar and pedestal with several handfuls of tiny deadly chilies (their name, translated, is “mouse shit”), fish sauce, spicy sauce and several other ingredients and pounded together to make sure there is a little chili in every bite. I actually wake up to this sound almost every morning since I can hear a woman next door pounding her som tom for the day at 7:00am. This concoction is eaten with sticky rice, scooping up each bite with your hand. I eat the vegetarian version, which is no less spicy.

Speaking of vegetarians, there was a festival celebrating no-meat-meals last month. The Vegetarian Festival is celebrated by Thai-Chinese and mandates that participants eat no meat for NINE WHOLE DAYS (rough, I know). Down in southern Thailand, the festival is an even bigger deal with lots of merit-making at temples that escalates to self-mortification as participants do things like pierce their faces with any available sharp object and climb ladders made of swords. I don’t really understand this since one of the reasons I’m a vegetarian is that I’m against pain in general, but if piercing your cheek with a sharpened golf club makes you feel better about eating animals 356 days a year, be my guest. Strangely, they don’t have this festival in China. Only Thai decedents of Chinese people are this crazy.

Up here the festival was really just a pain for those of us that practice all year since the veggie restaurants were overflowing with people and they switched to buffet-style instead of order off the menu to make sure they could keep up. After the festival, all of the restaurant owners took a week or two of vacation to recover, leaving us without anywhere to eat.

Since food is one of the few things that is really, truly different in Thailand, it’s my intention to highlight some of the specialties in future blogs. That is, if I can remember to bring my camera to dinner.