If someone offers you a deal on a room that seems too good to be true, chances are, it is. Says the guy who checked into a room directly above a bar on a Saturday afternoon before an all Saturday night party kicks off at said bar while said idiot who thought he’d hit the jackpot with his three dollar room stayes awake listening to the sounds of standard Australian revelry and the clanking of bottles. Things finally quieted down at around 3:30 AM, allowing for blissful slumber until 5:45 AM when the bottle clanking resumed, resultant clean up from the seemingly just settled debauchery.
The complete lack of sleep and the early morning wake up did have a silver lining, driving me out of bed early to look around my new neighborhood in Chiang Mai on a Sunday morning. I found a local market, a block long metal roofed open air shed with stalls selling everything you can imagine, much of it food related. I was the only white guy in the place, watching in fascination as the locals selected their breakfasts and the ingredients for their Sunday meals. I barely knew where to start with ordering food, as much of it was downright unidentifiable. Cloudy red gelatinous cubes of...gelatin, green leafy vegetables that might have been field or collard greens, everything you can cut off a pig but the oink, tubs of live fish still writhing and fighting to be at the bottom of the bucket where the water pooled, brightly colored sticky rice confections, whole tables full of bowls of all types of stewed meats and veggies that sit there all day, a world of cakes and breads, ten different types of hand made sausages, shredded squid, noodles of all makes and models, flats of quail, chicken, and duck eggs, drink stalls with vats of liquids that get ladled into plastic bags with a straw inserted, an overwhelming sensory overload before even considering the surrounding stalls peddling flowers, sundries, and trinkets. If you’re going to be kept up all night because you saved six dollars on a place to sleep, you might as well go spend it in a place like this. Though might I suggest that you personally witness an open flame under anything you eat before you eat it? I jest, and can’t speak highly enough of the cleanliness, quality, and freshness of even the most ramshackle street food vendors, but I got here pretty soon after this market opened, and all those bowls of curry were already out and sitting at room temp. When did you make it again?
