And I took the opportunity to visit the market and take some pictures. It's not the most spectacular market but an average sized Thai market with plenty of good photo opportunities and 'smelling' experience, with all kind of new fruits, fish, meat and other things wafting their odors around. In a positive sense!
It wouldn't be South East Asia and in this case Thailand if food wouldn't be all around and over the place. Here some quick snacks at the ready and totally fresh. Deep fried tofu and deep fried corn or potato.
Here's picture of Horseshoe Crab or Mengda as the Thais call them. The female crabs carry eggs and those eggs are used to make a salad. It's a fairly hard to find dish on a menu but small restaurants catering to Thais tend to carry them.
Mengda is also a reference of Thai boyfriends that leech off their girlfriends. Guy hangs out at home doing nothing and girlfriend goes out to work, a lot of time in the red light/sex industry. These guys are called mengda's.
The stuff that Thai curries are made of, the curry pastes. Six different curry pastes are at display here.
The bucket at the bottom right has a substance in it that in Thai is called 'Kee Plaa', shit of fish. It's the intestines etc of fish, that's eaten. Enjoy!
Pret-a-Manger, Thai style. The finished Thai curry, ready to be put in a plastic bag and to be eaten at home. These kind of food stalls are all over Thailand and have some excellent food on sale. Besides the curries there are usually also a couple of non curry dishes for sale.
At the right side of this picture, the famous Durian is shown, they're in season right now. In the beginning I didn't like neither the smell nor the taste of Durians, but at some stage I came around and started to enjoy this strange fruit. Once I started to enjoy eating Durian, I didn't think they smelled bad anymore, now it's more like, wow, Durian is in the air, let's get some.
Thong Durian, the golden Durian, is the one I like most, there are several varieties of the fruit but this is the one that has the sweet taste, once you can call it that! I've eaten Durian meat and love it nowadays and even had some Durian ice cream in Malaysia! The link to this website even makes it into a drink!
The funniest thing or quote I found is this one though;"The durian is said to be a 'heating' fruit, which is unusual as most fruits are 'cooling'. Legend has it that this heating property makes the durian an aphrodisiac. A local saying goes, 'When the durians come down the sarongs come off!'."
Thais also say that you shouldn't mix alcohol with Durian, it makes you do crazy things and can get you violently sick!
Here's another link to a website called Durian, which funnily enough has a webcam of a street in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, the city I last lived in before moving to Thailand.
Last but not least, there are a few Durian plantations on Samui and we just bought the best tasting fruits off of one of my wife's cousins. Hmmm, lovely!
To get back to the picture though, on the left, the green bean string or pod, is a typical Southern Thai ingredient and is called Sator or in English also know as the 'Stinky bean', guess this pictures sums it all up! Durian and Sator all in one picture! Personally I like sator in quite a few dishes!
Here's a link to a website full of Thai vegetables, including pictures and also showing off Sator in picture 25 and a link of a Nation journalist's visit to a typical Southern Thai restaurant in Had Yai, describing a sator dish.
Well, this turned out to be a blog posting full of interesting Thai dishes and food, Mengda, 'Kee Plaa', Durian and Sator.
Not too sure about the 'Kee Plaa' (yet?) but all other food I can highly recommend! Maybe a bit much to try all in one go, but definately worthwhile looking out for.
Camille
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