Khao Soi Gai

Before I went trekking in the mountains I sent off an email to a local Thai teacher in Chaing Mai. The address I found was easystudythai@yahoo.com on a little slip of paper torn from a notice that had been plastered to a cement fence. Three days later I returned from the jungle. I found a cheaper hotel with better TV on a nice side street with more trees. I dropped off a 4 kilo bag of laundry. I ate some 20 bhat food. Then I checked my email and there was an answer.

His name is Ting and he met me at my hotel. I rode on the back of his motor bike to a tree filled plaza by a local monastery. There are monks and monasteries everywhere in Thailand. Almost every young man spends a few years in a Buddhist temple. Even the king, as a prince, spent a few years with a shaved head, wearing an orange frock, meditating and sweeping the parking lot with a palm broom.

We sat on a little cement table by a tree and he ran me through the basics. He is a very slight, very dark young guy. After an hour or so we finished and made plans to meet again. He is doing very well because it was hard to find spots in his crowded schedule.

I decided to try it out and went to a restaurant I like called The Wok. It is a stones throw from The Anodard. They make wonderful food, but perhaps is a little pricey for the locals so it is often filled with horrible Brits. They are all so white and so loud with streaks of bright red sunburn on their foreheads and extremities. The backs of their legs are often covered with the little sores that one gets from scratching mosquito bites too often. One of them was yelling into his cellphone at the table opposite me. He had had a motorbike accident on the road to Pi which he was quite proud of and wanted everyone on this side of the mountain to know about. A group of three girls sauntered in tossing their blonde locks about. One of them had a skirt so short that when when she tugged on it to adjust it, it popped right off, down to her knees exposing her tiny black panties. The English girls are often quite homely or fat or both, but I guess they do make up for it by being wonderful sluts.

No one even tries to say hello in Thai in that place. The waiter came to my table and I greeted him in his own language. He bowed slightly in greeting. Then I said
"Phom jaak kin Khao Soi Gai, Khrap" (I would like to eat the ((Chaing Mai curry)) fried noodles with chicken, please)
His eyes almost lept out of his head. This time he bowed hurridly and scurried off. I had never seen a waiter in Thailand move so fast. I began to wonder if I had gotten it right or if I had cursed the land his grandmother was born on.

The food came and it was what I ordered, including the drink without ice. I was making it.