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It's quiet here. Almost too quiet. So here's something I wrote and then sent to Kake after completely missing the essay rules. I'm also trying to do a review of a restaurant but it's not of a Sulston-esque quality yet. I'm also working on a front/subscription page but I've been bandwidthless in Paris. Enjoy. Simon There's something about being served your Phad Phet by a strapping 6ft transvestite whilst sitting by the River Kwai that really puts an authetic spin on a South East Asian meal. But I digress. Bangkok is a culture shock. Perhaps too much of a culture shock. We were under no pretenses that we were travelling to "find ourselves" - we were travelling because we wanted a multi-month beach holiday and no responsibilities except that we had had to be in Singapore at some point in the future. So landing in Bangkok at 5am and immediately hitting a wall of noise and humidity was a little too much for the senses. Sure, the floating market is cool and the street stalls abundant, cheap and tasty but we wanted rest. Tranquility. Laziness. We caught a bus to Kanchanaburi - perhaps most famous for being the village were the infamous "Bridge of the River Kwai" is. Kanchanaburi is the anti Bangkok - it's quiet (once you out of the bus station, past the pan handlers and roasted insect stalls and up the road towards the river) - the hostels by the Kwai often sit on poles above lily beds. I felt instantly at home. Every night we'd decamp to Apple's - Apple being the aformentioned crossdresser who instantly became our best friend. The food, in and of itself was remarkably similar to the Thai food you get in London. But the setting made the difference. We lingered over our food, trying whatever Apple suggested (although I ended up being hopelessly addicted to Red Duck Curry and Garlic Beef), sipping endless bottles of Singha beer which gave us terrible hangovers. We later found that it has formaldehyde in - somethign that accounts for both the crippling mornings it induces and also the sweet taste that compliments the food so well. Sitting, listening to the water laps aginst the banks, chatting with Apple and sundry other travellers who drifted through, it was easy to get seduced into thinking that this was all there needed to be in the world. I felt peaceful, ready to tackle anything. This is important when understanding my moment of foolishness. I had worked my way through many of the dishes on the menu, sampling different flavours and steadily increasing the spicyness - moving swiftly through one to four in the ubiquitous chillis-indicate-heat scale from one to four. I had handled my self gracefully - none of yer english lager lout. I like hot food when it's done well and, when challenged, can quite cheerfully scoff a Phall or a Vindaloo just to shut someone up, although to be honest I prefer a nice Muurg. So when Apple started to suggest that I might be read for "Thai hot, verrr nice. Ver tasty. Yumm yumm" I believed her. The four chilli dishes hadn't been too bad - the chilli giving a nice tingling sensation without the acrid burning much like a good whisky gives that glowing sense of warmth. If she thought I was ready then surely I must be. I accepted the challenge. I disremember what the dish was - possibly beef with bell peppers or chicken in a nice sour sauce. I took a bite. And waited. And waited a bit more. All clear. A little hotter maybe but not noticeably. Apple seemed impressed and was nodding and smiling in the way that only the Thais can do. I took another mouthful. And another. Warm and sweet and sticky this was delicious. I soon finished the dish and took a long swig of Singha. Then one of the other people round the table started to laugh. And then everybody else did. Then my eyes exploded. The reaction, it seems was delayed. My face had steadily been getting redder and redder and then my eyes filled with tears which started streaming down my face so fast I couldn't mop them up. And I daren't rub my eyes - god knows what the capsicum that could do this would do to exposed membranes. After about ten minutes my eyes cleared and I didn't see Apple again that night or, in fact again as, due to unforseen circumstances we decided to leave the next morning. Despite my insistences nobdoy believed that I'd at no point been uncomfortable, that there was none of the usual bad balti house burning, that given half a chance I'd love another bowl of whatever it was, preferably sitting in a garden by the river in northern Thailand, taking long pulls on a bottle of Singha and with nothing but beaches and bumming around in my immediate future. -- stay up late ... if we want to
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