ชาเย็น - Thai Tea

Wherever I go in the world, I turn to beverage carts and food stalls to see the drink menu. The finds have been spectacular. In Taiwan, they cook wintermelon into an earthy, cooling, and refreshing drink. And their iced milk tea is to die for. It's light and fragrant--the classic medium for boba tapioca pearls. Hong Kong has it's own special milk tea, a powerfully concentrated brew made from a blend of black teas to which evaporated milk is added. It's reddish orange, served hot or iced, and its intense flavor is a Hong Kong specialty. Singapore hawker centers serve bandung, an iced milky pink drink flavored with rosewater. But the beverage of choice is a black iced coffee called kopi bing. Invariably served in a glass mug, this drink is named with the Malay word for coffee and the Chinese word for ice as a reflection of Singapore's rich cultural heritage. Likewise, in Vietnam the coffee is preferred. Their intense, syrupy brew is poured over ice and stirred up to a red foamy froth, or has thick, honey-like condensed milk stirred in.

The original Thai iced tea
photo by Lữ photo by Lữ Như Tiên

When I think of Thailand, I think of flavors from stateside Thai restaurants. Especially, I think of the orange, milky, spiced tea in a tall glass filled with ice, with a layer of evaporated milk floating on top. In my experience, it's the iconic Thai drink. But they say (whoever they are) that nothing in the states is ever like the original stuff that you get in the country where it comes from. So when I got here I made a mission to try real Thai iced tea. Little did I know, getting Thai tea in Thailand was going to be a tall order.

Here on Pranang Cape, I ordered ice tea at the first place we went to. The barista pulled a yellow box with a familiar label from the back of a shelf, opened it, and grabbed the same type of tea bag that I had in my kitchen at home. This was no Thai tea. I asked to forget the order, and we moved on. What was the problem? You didn't ask for milk tea, I was told. So I tried again, this time at a different restaurant. While a friend ordered Thai iced tea, I ordered milk tea. Neither of us got the stuff we know from home. Mine was that old familiar tea bag steeping in a cup of hot water with milk on the side. My friend's was the same thing, but poured over ice. A triple dead-end.

The morning sun rises
on longboats at low tide
photo by Lữ Như Tiên

It wasn't until we traveled by sea and by land, to a common marketplace in the nearby town, when I finally found the tea I had been looking for. We hitched a boat into town sometime before dawn. The tide was low, and we walked across a hundred yards of mud flats to the edge of the water. Then, it was another fifty yards through the water to the wooden longboat. We climbed into the hull and watched with wet feet as the sun rose while we shuttled across the sea. We disembarked and hopped into the covered bed an old rusty pick-up truck. The chain link gate closed behind us, fencing us in completely like a cage, and I knew what a dog feels like when he gets caught by the dogcatcher.

We rode in the back of our pound paddywagon across the peninsula, past palm oil groves and resort villas, into town, and stopped in front of the village market. Our "dogcatcher" saw fit to let us out of the cage, and we headed into the market. It was extraordinary. Aisles upon aisles of fruits and vegetables. A veritable dry aquarium, with species of fish and shellfish too numerous to count. And oh so much meat. Since many of the southern Thai people are Muslim, the meat area is divided into Halal and non halal. So is the food center, where hawkers peddle packages and plates of endless variety, with giant pots of soups bubbling away, and neatly wrapped packages of sweet-sticky rice wrapped in leaves, and all sorts of things cooked on sticks. And things we could buy to eat and drink from these stalls delighted our tastebuds.

There, in one of the food stalls, we finally found it--a plastic pitcher with orange, milky tea, which was so thick it clung to the sides. Immediately we ordered enough to go around. The man filled the plastic cups with ice, then tea, then floated condensed milk on top for that extra milky kick. He capped them with lids and straws, and handed them over in exchange for 66 cents each. On the first taste, we found out something extraordinary. The Thai tea in the states is just as good as the original. Beverage heaven.

The moral of the story is sometimes they can be wrong about the stuff at home. The international food we get can be as good as the original. And when you go to the country of origin in search of the original flavor, I have one piece of advice: avoid resorts, because they work hard to provide you with the tastes you know from home. And that, in my opinion, is no way to travel.

มะพร้าว - Coconut

In my family, I have a reputation of being cuckoo for coconuts. Not the brown, monkey-faced cannonballs that contain insipid water and hard meat that is excellent for shredding into dried coconut flakes. I mean the young coconut with its sweet, tangy liquid and opaque jelly.

Coconuts ripe for the picking, if you can get to them

I got hooked on these husky fruits in Hawaii, on the east coast of Oahu, when a friend and I stumbled across a fallen branch with five or six coconuts. We had an hand axe along a desire to learn how to fend for ourselves if ever marooned on a deserted island. We cracked them open and discovered sugary juice within each leathery green fruit, as well as meat so tender you could scoop it out with your fingers. Since that trip, I've given up the axe in search of more efficient tools for getting to the goods. A machete is manly, but not too effective. In a desperate but hilarious moment, Kevin and I resorted to hurling coconuts against the corner of a curb--this method is satisfyingly primal, but resulted in not a bit of success. After coming home and buying green coconuts from the local store, I found the meat cleaver is best tool for the task.

While getting into the coconuts can be tricky, actually getting TO them is another story. What I thought was the old fashioned method involves climbing the tree yourself. I have been instructed on two sound methods. First is the monkey style, in which you tuck your knees into your chest and place your feet under your body, and the leverage keeps you on the tree. The other style is the frog, in which you place both feet on opposite sides of the palm trunk, and your body weight keeps you up.

I rather believe the style of frog to be most efficacious in the endeavor of coconut acquisition. The other day, I spied a coconut hanging from a short tree just a few hundred feet from our bungalow, and employed the frog style with all speed. I shimmied up the trunk and twisted the giant seed, which is not botanically a nut any more than a tomato is a vegetable. It broke free and plummeted to the ground far below (um...maybe 14 feet, but hey, I got it myself). With no meat cleaver, I employed a kitchen knife to the work of opening my harvest, and snicker-snack, poured forth the delicious water into an empty pot. With a spoon, I dug out the jelly, which had just begun to harden and turn white. The cost of my labor is a scratched up chest, right forearm, and left knee. Not a bad payoff, but the soreness has kept me out of trees for the past few days.

So, the frog style isn't the most ideal method for me to get the coconuts if I can only climb once before taking off a few days to heal. Next time, I'd like to try the tried and true method that the Thais use; they get a monkey to do it. In the southern Malay peninsula, coconut harvesters train pig-tailed macaques to scurry up the trees, differentiate the ripe coconuts from the unripe ones, and bite the stems in twain, letting the coconut drop 50 to 60 feet to the ground below. Clearly, I am no monkey.

According to this article, humans have used monkeys to gather fruits for millennia. Here in Thailand, monkeys actually go to coconut school, where they receive the training they need to be productive workers in the coconut industry. This means, in addition to learning how to cooperate with their handlers and gather good coconuts, they learn how to put rodent poison in the trees.

In this area, there are no pig-tailed macaques. Instead, there are macaques of the crab eating variety. I've never seen them eat a crab. They seem to hang out on the beaches and, with their cuteness, bribe the tourists into parting with their food in exchange for photos, or alternatively, aggressively scare the tourists into leaving said food behind as they flee. Also, here lives a species of gibbon, the world's smallest ape, and a type of langur, which is a black monkey with a white-moustachioed face. None of these primates has a taste for coconuts.

Instead, the local coconut afficionado is a squirrel that the ex-pats like to call roof rats. These tree toppers gnaw holes into coconuts while they're still hanging on the tree. I'm not sure what they do then; maybe they tip the coconuts over to spill the juice so they can get to the meat, a senseless waste of delicious juice in my opinion. But I can't talk these squirrels out of it, or into saving the juice for me. They just cling to their canopy branches and bark angrily--the first time I heard one barking, its voice was so low and throaty, I thought it was a primate. But it was just a squirrel, and judging by the vast number of discarded husks with gaping holes strewn about, I can tell I'm not the only one around here who is cuckoo for coconuts.

Pranang Cape Highlights

Longboat taxis waiting in the surf

Stone temple guardian sleeping on the job

Fiddler crab on the dark, sandy beach

Amazing Thailand Facts

1. Thailand is a kingdom. Its government is a constitutional monarchy, and the royal ruler shares power with a democratically elected prime minister.

2. While maintaining a strong sense of its traditional culture, Thailand has embraced aspects of western culture by its own accord. Unlike nearly all of its neighbor countries, Thailand was never colonized by a European nation.

3. Thailand is the size of Texas, and is the length from Seattle to Los Angeles.

4. The falconet, a raptor that is indigenous to Thailand, catches dragonflies in mid-air.

5. The king cobra of Thailand can grow to a colossal length of 19 feet.

6. All Thailand nationals are considered to be Thai, whether they are ethnically Thai, Chinese, Malay, or any of a number of minority groups.

7. The King and I was based on the real life experiences of a governess to the king of Siam. Her name was Anna Leonowens, and her story was largely fabricated and sensationalized.

8. The depiction of Buddha in the reclining position presents the image of Siddartha at the moment he attained Nirvana.

9. Thais consider the head to be most sacred. To pat someone on the head is considered very rude. The feet are considered to be the lowest and dirtiest part of the body. The left hand is also considered to be unclean, and must never be used to eat, recieve gifts, or shake hands.

10. The Thai chili pepper, that ubiquitous firey spice that makes Thai food so characteristic, was introduced from the New World.

Trains, Buses, and Boats

Status Update

1. Happy 4th of July! I had the pleasure of celebrating 12 hours ago, and you all still have the rest of the day. Enjoy!

2. Thailand just elected its first female prime minister ever.

We went sightseeing in Bankok to check out the weekend market, the reclining Buddha statue at Wat Po, the Wat Phra Kaew Emerald Buddha, and the Grand Palace grounds, all within about five hours. We probably could have spent five hours at any one of those places. Fortunately we'll have a chance to make up some time in the places we passed through when we get back on Saturday.

Thai cat, not Siamese cat

We wrapped up our sightseeing with a walk through the city back to our hotel to pick up our bags, then flagged down another hot pink taxi to take us to the train station. The cabbie was a boisterous fellow who told us that the Thai king was born in Boston. And Thailand was called Siam up until the 1940's. And there are two kinds of cats in Thailand: Siamese cats and Thai cats. He said Siamese cats are black and cream colored with blue eyes. And Thai cats are cats of every other kind. Then he chuckled to himself and asked if we would pay him more than the metered fare. Mike was happy to. The gregarious cabbie got an extra 15 baht.

Taking the overnight train was an experience. Twelve hours in a rackety-clackety wooden train car with open windows and rotating ceiling fans and no insulation from the sound of passing trains that hurtled by in the darkness and seemed to shake our car off its tracks. After we endured the overnight train trip, we added another six hours between the bus, the cart, and the boat. The mode of transportation was my suggestion,and I consider myself lucky that bro and sis didn't throttle me to death when we got off the train this morning at 5:15. But they took the high road with a positive outlook. The wooden, open-windowed, rattling train was an experience, Lữ said, and it was an experience she would avoid repeating.

One good thing about the train was the endless stream of foodcarts that passed through our car. They let up for only about three hours in the middle of the night. It was like one of those sushi bars with the carousel belt full of plates that constantly glide by you carrying something new and tasty to grab before it slips past. It was lovely. All night long, food peddlers hounded the passengers with bowls of chicken and rice soup, trays of omelettes, tins full of custard pudding with lotus seeds, and plates of fresh sliced mangoes with chili sugar, wax apples, and pineapple. But they'll charge an arm and a leg in the cafe car...just like everywhere else in the world. The veritable buffet was a welcome treat, but I'm afraid my traveling companions and I will suffer from train-lag for the next few days. Personally, I don't think I'd terribly mind if I fell asleep for a hour as soon as I laid down on a massage table, but I think bro and sis would consider it a waste of ten dollars. That's right. Ten. For an hour.

We finally made it to our bungalow on the narrow isthmus south of Pranang Cape. The place we're staying at is actually not called Krabi, like I'd said earlier, but Railey Beach. The west side of the isthmus is a gorgeous strip of white sand beach on the edge of an aquamarine bay, tucked in between towering vegetation-covered limestone cliffs. There are three species of primates that live here: macaques, gibbons, and langurs, the latter sings a chorus in the early morning hours, I'm given to understand. Can't wait.

Bankok Highlights

Wat Po reclining Buddha

Wat Phra Kaew Emerald Buddha Temple

The Capital of Thailand

Bankok. The plane touched down at dusk, and it was already dark by the time we got our pictures taken, our passports stamped, and our driverwho led us to a hot pink taxi with a 15-inch subwoofer in the trunk
and a gold statue of Buddha on the dashboard.

Driving on the interstate highway from the airport at night, you don't see much besides buildings, billboards, roadsigns and cars that drive opposite side of the road. Feels kind of like the states, in a way.Bankok has a lot of pickup trucks and SUV's. Thanks to the light
drizzle and the balmy heat, if you can pretend that the rows of billboards and roadsigns are in English, and not the beautiful Thai script, than you might feel like you're driving on an interstate around Miami or Jacksonville.

We stayed in a hotel in a sort of backpacker's district, with a money exchange booth, a tour package sales desk, and a tailor, just in case you want to get a suit, all conveniently located in the lobby downstairs.

When it was time to explore this neighborhood with its shuttered two-story shophouses, we stepped into the drizzly evening air to the smell
of grilled food and tropical rain. We passed by tarp covered t-shirt and souvenier shops, cheap massage and beauty parlors, gaudy theme
tiki bars, and hawker carts with all kinds of grilled goods, pad Thai noodles, and fresh cut pineapple, mango, and papaya. Pushy tuk tuk
drivers tried to wrangle us into their natural gas powered open cart taxis. But we had only one thing in mind: food. We found a night market on the far end of a park and tucked in.

After slurping down steamy bowls of beef soup with angel hair rice noodles, and curry soup with chicken, egg, and peanuts, we meandered over to a brilliant dessert cart with bowls filled with things all the color of a candy store. We spooned gobs of a flan-style custard cooked in a pumpkin squash, and pudding with sweet sticky rice, drenched in coconut cream, chased by a rich green milk tea. This place is a foodie's paradise.

We're off to see the weekend market and the imperial palace today. But I'm most looking forward to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all the in-between meals. Then goodbye, Bankok, as we board a sleeper car on an overnight southbound train tonight, headed for a bungalow in a town called Krabi.