THE NIGHT MARKET IN OUR VILLAGE

There is a night market close to our house where savory aromas linger and a cornucopia of Thai fare can be sampled. The vendors set up and tear down every evening next to a beautiful lake where children go to catch frogs and adults go to catch tilapia fish, eels, and giant catfish. The market serves as a cornerstone of local Thai culture here in our village. You can always find the old matriarchs posted up behind their homemade treats, gossiping about the daily drama. You can find weary men sipping rice wine at the speak-easy on the corner. And you can find us. We are here on most nights practicing our Thai language with the locals, bargaining with vendors, watching laborers husk coconuts, or guessing what exactly is in the mucky Thai soups that roll boiling on giant kettles and in deep vats.

Katie most predictably will be found sipping fresh squeezed juices while mulling over the assortment of tangy oranges, sweet pineapples, juicy papayas and every other tropical fruit she can get her little hands on. Travis swerves from one food stand to the next, pilfering for roasted bugs, cow shit soup (see blog posted last summer for further explanation), and mysterious looking main dishes which he will inevitably bring home and double-dare Katie to eat.

We are of course, now accustomed to eating rice with three meals a day. The big question usually becomes: do we want plain rice, brown rice, sticky rice, sweetened rice (which comes in pink, green or purple), fried rice, BBQ rice, or rice noodles? This is a fine example of the very difficult challenges we are facing here in the tropics. :)