by Alex Gunn
It is sold in tiny amounts in the upturned little crab shells. It’s a bit like a traditional dressed crab, the difference being that here the shells are tiny, which makes the presentation so much daintier.
Deep Fried Chicken Heads
As discovered recently by Thom, who famously waved one around in front of his trousers. They are though one of the more arresting sights in the market; a huge, and I mean huge, pile of severed chicken heads that have been battered and deep fried, beak and all. Khun Sonthaya’s brother tried to convince me that people don’t really eat them but buy them for their cats, but he obviously didn’t pass this onto the guys round the back of the market who drink whisky and munch down platefuls of them on a daily basis. Mind you these guys would probably eat battered and deep fried cats. The chicken heads (yes I have tried them) are crunchy at first which is fine, but also unpleasantly chewy. After extensive chewing you get to a point where you have to just swallow the whole gloopy mess. Eating a beak takes a bit of getting used to too.
Crispy Fish Heads and Bones
I used to buy these for the cats until one day when I was making dinner I got overwhelmingly hungry and just out of curiosity tried a bone and a bit of fish head. It was delicious and before I knew it, I had eaten a deep fried bony fish head. They are also fantastically cheap, which may come as no surprise, as most right thinking people wouldn’t dream of eating a deep fried fish spine. They are very crunchy and go extremely well with a glass of cold beer at the end of the day.
Slow Roast Duck
This is a classic. The whole duck is slowly roasted at a low heat which keeps the juices in and stops it drying out. In effect it is a classic American barbecue. It is served sliced in little containers for about 50 Baht a portion. You can buy freshly steamed jasmine rice from the stall next door and eat them together there and then in the market and taste a little bit of heaven.
Pork Rice Porridge
Locally this is called Jot, although you don’t really pronounce the “t”, it just gives us something to aim for. It is the poor mans staple food and available at the market almost all the time every day of the year. It is nothing more than a creamy porridge made from milled rice and flavoured with chopped coriander, spring onions and whatever ground meat you have to hand.
I like the pork version. It’s the local speciality. As the porridge is relatively bland for Thai tastes it’s often flavoured, to your own liking, from a choice of about 12 little condiment dishes. These include; dried chilli powder, crushed fried garlic, lemon juice, palm sugar, fish sauce, chopped fresh chilli in rice vinegar, chopped fresh coriander, chopped spring onions, chopped fried rice noodle, bean sprouts and pickled cabbage. For a little bag of Jot to take away you pay a measly 10 Baht.
Grilled Frogs (Chinese Edible Bullfrog)
These are definitely for the more adventurous Thai food gourmet. These little plump beauties are gathered up in big wicker baskets at the side of rice fields when the rice harvests take place. With the development of fast growing rice, combined with perfect weather, this can be up to three times a year. They are also farmed up in the mountains as part of the Royal Food Project which encourages hill tribe farmers to turn to sustainable and legal crops rather than opium poppies. It is fantastically successful, with Royal Project shops springing up all over the place selling things hitherto unheard of here, like local Buffalo Milk Mozzarella Cheese and Wood Smoked Trout Fillets.
The frogs are cooked here in numerous ways; in curries, roasted, grilled, fried and deep fried. The most common method that you will come across in most markets is grilled. The frogs are gutted and splayed on a bamboo fork which is then slow roasted in situ in the market. 20 Baht a pop and very tasty too, and, as people say, they do taste like chicken, but certainly more chewy.
Steamed Ground Nuts
These are so simple and plentiful and so good. When I was young we called them peanuts or monkey nuts if they were sold in their shell. In fact you could only buy them in their shell at the zoo where you did actually feed monkeys with them. I remember rather liking them myself, although my mum would knock them out of my hand in horror and tell me that they would kill me if I ate them. The only other way I thought they sold peanuts was salted and sold in little packets in every bar, pub and 7 Eleven on the planet. At the market you buy them in their shell having already been lightly steamed. They must be one of the healthiest, not to mention tastiest snack in the world. You see them for sale everywhere in Chiang Mai and they cost no more than 20 Baht for a big packet.
You also often see them for sale, along with baked eggs, from beach vendors down on the coast and on the islands. Actually they would go very well at Mocktail Hour…I wonder if David Beckham has tried them?
Chapter 8
The Old Woman and the Barbet
May: The swimming pool is at a perfect temperature but packed with hundreds of Thai families in full length Victorian swimming gear.
“Mister...(pointing at me)...doo poo chai kwai. ” The Old Woman
It’s a bright sunny day and rained heavily last night so everything is green and lush and sparkling clean. I am creeping along a country lane near to where I live with a pair of binoculars (what us bird spotters call “bins”), following the sound of a Coppersmith Barbet. They are beautiful birds. You have probably seen one, along with Green Bee Eaters and Lady Amherst’s Pheasant as they seem to be the mainstay of all “walk through” aviaries around the world.
I don’t know if you have noticed, but every walk through aviary is the same. There’s a conspiracy probably overseen by the ever sinister and all powerful British institution, the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). Never mind about the axis of evil and threat of terrorist attack, just look at the amount of land and power these people, and their counterparts around the world, have been quietly amassing over the last hundred years. Who will miss an odd marsh here and there, a few estuaries and a bit of old moorland? Before you know it they own an area of land bigger than Luxemburg. They could invade Belgium if they wanted to. And, who’s to say they haven’t? How would we know?
There is a sinister, international tropical bird wholesaler breeding vast flocks of Barbets and Bee Eaters in a massive warehouse, in Albania, all ready for export to the never ending uniform walk through aviaries that spring up with worrying regularity in zoos and animal places all over the world.
It’s the same with public aquariums. Have you noticed they are all the same these days...same fish, same walk through tunnel, same eco friendly displays (usually called “From Source to Sea” which has huge photos of a stream, then a bigger river with a factory next to it, a dead fish, some washed up litter and an estuary), and same spotty faced disinterested and unhelpful attendants? “No sorry you can’t come back in once you’ve left the aquarium”... “but I’ve left my son in there”... “sorry, it’s the rules.”
Walk through aviaries and aquariums are the same the world over from Chelmsford to Chiang Mai, from Boston to Bangkok, and spreading at a rate of one a month, backed by massive sinister organisations like the RSPB. Believe me, it’s no accident. Just let me ask you this; have you noticed that the rise in world wide terrorism has coincided with the proliferation of public aquariums and walk through aviaries? Say no more. You heard it here first.
Anyway, there I was creeping along with my bins, eager to catch a glimpse of a Coppersmith Barbet in its natural habitat. I could hear the familiar and repetitive “tonk, tonk, tonk” which gives the bird its name. According to my bird book it makes a noise “like a coppersmith beating a panel of copper.” Now, either the birds have changed the noise they make or the person who named them was abusing powerful auricular enhancing medication, “wow, listen man, far out, no way, that bird is making a noise like a...like a... coppersmith!”
A coppersmith? How many of us know what noise a coppersmith makes? I’m not even sure that coppersmiths still exist outside Middle Earth. If an
ything, the sound these birds make is more like a bored toddler hitting a broken drum with a wooden pudding spoon. But I suppose that would be a rather long winded name for a small bird.
The noise is incredibly repetitive and the rhythm never varies from the same beat, which happens to be exactly the same as the 1970s disco hit Staying Alive by The Bee Gees, which also happens to be enjoying renewed success at First Aid training days around the world, as it is exactly the right rate to manually pump someone else’s heart during CPR (30 chest compressions to 2 breathes, apparently). It’s a shame the humble Barbet doesn’t get some kind of recognition in all this. The First Aid literature should read “compress the chest by two inches at a rate which matches the 1970s disco hit Staying Alive, or alternatively find your nearest Coppersmith Barbet.”
I catch a glimpse of the bird but it flies on, much further down the lane and perches on a telephone wire outside a little wooden house on stilts. I creep along as silently as I can towards the bird. It starts its tonking again and I move over to the other side of the road. I stand silently in the shade of a dark leaved mango tree and fix my bins on the bird.
It is a lovely sight; a bright red patch on its head, green and yellow dappled breast and a little red collar with bright yellow under its beak and around its neck. To a boy who grew up in the greyness of South East Essex in the south east of England it is the most incredibly coloured bird in the world. When I was growing up it seemed that every bird I ever saw was either brown or black or at the most a dizzying combination of the two. Observing a multi coloured bird in the wild is still a genuine thrill. They look like a drunk art student has taken an airbrush to them.
I walk as close as I dare holding my breath. As I walk closer the sound of the Barbet mingles with another indistinguishable noise. It sounds like the far off babbling from a crowd of people and seemed to be coming from the nearby wooden house. There is no one about. The house is still. Then I notice an old lady in the corner of the yard watching an ancient black and white TV under the shade of the house. There is no one else around.
The TV is sitting on a dirty white plastic garden chair, and the woman is sitting about two feet away straight opposite on the same kind of garden chair, and she is laughing her head off. She is watching one of a multitude of terrible Thai soap operas. I say terrible, because they are. They try to outdo each other by how rubbish they are. The story line is the same (young lovers separated by an evil older relative who disapproves of the coupling who eventually manage to get back together via a whole cacophony of messages from spirits, interventions from ghosts, drunken misinformed uncles, violent bandits, do gooding cousins etc...) and each actor only specialises in melodrama. Even my Thai friends say they are rubbish, but equally, quite addictive.
The old woman is very involved with the TV show. From across the road I train my bins on the TV screen. The actors look huge through 10x25 magnification and rather compelling in old fashioned black and white. We are just getting to the bit where a dopey uncle is making all kinds of social faux pas and mentioning a load of family secrets that he shouldn’t be talking about in front of a startled group of people with very startled faces.
The TV blares out and the Coppersmitth Barbet is tonking away on a wire just outside the house. Suddenly the old woman, turns around and shouts something at the bird. This startles me somewhat as I am still looking at her TV through my bins, becoming slowly engrossed in what the uncle is going to do next. He looks drunk. I quickly lower my bins and realise what an odd sight I must be. Unless you knew that I was looking at the bird I would look like a man standing across the street training my binoculars on an elderly woman’s black and white TV, which technically, I realise, I am. Luckily she has not noticed me as I am standing still in the shade, blending in with my surroundings as advised in a bird book which I read when I was 10 years old.
The old woman is disturbed by something and I realise that it is the tonking of the Barbet. She shouts at the bird again but it carries on unaware of the discomfort it is causing. The old woman tries to get back to the TV. But again she is disturbed. She stands up with some effort, takes off a shoe and throws it at the bird. It is a feeble under arm old ladies throw that slowly loops up in the air, goes nowhere near the bird and lands just the other side of the road from me. I stand stock still hoping that her eyesight is not so good, which, judging by how close she is sitting to the TV, is not a bad assumption.
I wonder if this is the first time in the history of the world that someone has thrown a shoe at a Barbet? It would be interesting to catalogue all the unlikely things that people have thrown at animals (1957: Yangon, Burma, a man threw a herring at a tiger, 1959: Anchorage, Alaska, a man threw a vacuum cleaner at a moose). Actually having written this down it very quickly wears thin, so perhaps not such an interesting thing after all.
I think about making a dash for it, but fear that this will make it look like I was doing something wrong or worse, something sinister, so I continue to stand still.
She is now missing a shoe, missing her favourite TV show and the bird is still tonking away with its back to her. She is now a seriously pissed off old lady and as I am about to find out, a seriously stupid old lady. In a fit of old lady rage she scoops up a handful of dust from the yard (yes, dust), and throws it at the bird. The dust, being, well, just dust, travels all but about 12 inches and blows back in her face.
“Ha” I think. Two nil to the Barbet. The bird continues tonking. She is approaching, limping towards her missing shoe and me. This time, having learnt the lesson of the dust, she picks up a stone and throws it at the bird. The Barbet suddenly gets the message and flies off.
The old woman mumbles to herself and stumbles out of the yard and into the road to retrieve her shoe. She suddenly notices me standing surprisingly close to her house brandishing a pair of binoculars. She turns around and looks at her TV. She thinks I have been spying on her and her TV show, which, yes, technically, technically, I have. Perhaps she thinks that I cannot afford a black and white TV of my own and have to creep around watching Thai soap operas on other people’s TVs.
At the same time she also realises that I have witnessed her abusing a defenceless, (and potentially life saving...have you already forgotten) Coppersmith Barbet.
“I was observing the Barbet,” I offer, and point at where the bird had been.
I sound strangely formal, as though I am announcing an uncomfortable home truth on a Thai soap opera. It also strikes me that it sounds vaguely unpleasant and voyeuristic. It sounds like I’m the kind of man who might frequent a kind of bird peep show down some shady side ally in Amsterdam, if there was such a thing. For all I know there might be. “Hey mister you wanna see the dirty little finches...got a big fat crow in here.” It’s possible I guess. The seedy side of birding (geddit?...sorry).
The old woman just looks at me.
“They are beautiful birds,” I say trying to sound less weird and more reflective and intelligent and I look wistfully up towards where the bird was perched for added effect. I’m hoping to come across like a birding version of Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisted. I don’t suppose she’s read it though, she probably thinks I’m just a bit of a ponce.
She doesn’t understand and probably wouldn’t care. I see a beautiful bird and she sees a bloody nuisance.
She then says something like “Doo poo chai kwai,” and laughs like a drain.
I laugh along with her nodding my head in agreement with whatever she is saying, slightly relieved that she hasn’t called the police or a big strapping son or grandson.
“Doo poo,” she is laughing “doo poo chai kwai,” she repeats to herself over and over again, and I laugh and nod in agreement. “Kap, kap, kap” I say nodding in agreement. At least she’s still laughing.
Eventually she shuffles off back inside the house cackling to herself with the odd “poo” or “doo” or “kwai” wafting towards me on the
faint breeze.
I walk home and our friend Khun Sonthaya is there talking to my wife.
“Khun Son” I say. “What does Doo Poo Chai Kwai” mean? He looks worried.
“It’s kind of slang, and you’ve got it mixed up, it’s what children might say, and means....it means like a dirty peeping Tom, a dirty peeping boy buffalo...like a dirty man who might spy on women getting changed on the beach...why?” he asks.
“Oh no reason,” I say in an airy distracted kind of way, as I stash my bins at the back of a kitchen draw.
Chapter 9
A Broken Spine
(pronounced “Spy”)
June: The garden has grown so much in three months that parts of it are now impenetrable.
“You have to le(t) go...you have to rela(x)... you have to no figh me.” Dr Chan
I am in excruciating pain with a bad back, sitting in a small, sparsely decorated consultancy room of Dr Chan, who, my wife has led me to believe is another one of these “alternative practitioners,” a fellow “healer,” who specialises in traditional Chinese medicine and may, may just be able to stop disabling shooting pains searing through my back and up my neck.
I woke up in such agony that I don’t argue or make stupid jokes about Witch Doctors and phoneys, but just allow her to take me to Chiang Mai’s Chinatown, down by the river, next to the beautiful flower market, piled high with bundles of purple and white orchids, and deposit me next to a crumbling building that smells of cat wee. To be honest I am in such pain that I would let her deposit me with Hannibal Lecter, as long as he had a couple of aspirin, and said he knew something about fixing bad backs.