I’ve got a new favorite morning routine here in Chiang Mai. It’s evolving, rather than set, but the essentials include a brisk walk to the daily market at Chiang Mai Gate a generous mile away, and then a pause for a glass or two of traditional Thai coffee from a vendor there. The walk is great first thing in the morning, under usually hazy skies, the sun just coming up and the traffic light, people heading groggily to work and other chores, often wrapped in a scarf or jacket against the morning chill.
But there’s something a little dangerous, or perhaps the word dangerous is too strong, let’s say risky, about a routine. That’s why I try to keep it evolving, of course.
This morning I was given a much-needed kick in the pants in that direction by an email from a friend named Jim. I’d written him a quick note to say I was just headed out for coffee, and describing the coffee women: “She makes traditional Thai coffee and tea, also has soft-boiled eggs on offer, and that wild Thai "toast": white bread toasted carefully over low charcoal, than buttered with some kind of yellow grease, then dusted with white sugar and drizzled with sweetened condensed milk, and finally put on a plate and cut into four or five "fingers". The egg and the toast are 5 baht each (about 15 cents?) and the coffee is double that, and comes with a side of clear tea. I never have more than two coffees at a time, and have never managed the courage to have the toast. I just watch others eat it!”
Jim wrote right back: “Now there’s the difference between us: I’d have ordered the toast right off, wolfed it down and then had a second one!”
My timidity about trying sweet treats thus outed and exposed for the feebleness it is, I set off this morning with more ambition and in a different frame of mind. Instead of thinking of this morning coffee as a settled treat and routine, I was bumped back into that traveller’s mind/beginner’s mind attitude: look at everything freshly, and engage as much as possible. The alternative is to just find something comfortable and stick to it. That’s fine, but it eliminates a lot of possibilities for serendipity (and a lot of catastrophes too, yes of course!).
So this is a report on my toast and coffee: it was just spectacular! I had thought I could imagine what the toast would taste like, and anyway I’m not that big on very sweet tastes, and especially not in the morning. That was my excuse for skipping the toast possibility. And I do know that taste of sweetened condensed milk on bread, from eating the Thai classic ice cream sandwich: coconut ice cream served in a sweetish hamburger bun style bun, drizzled with sweetneed condensed milk. It’s a wild and crazy and quite delish combo on a hot day!
Nothing had prepared me for the deliciousness of this morning’s combo though. First of all, the toast had a little tender crsipness at the edge and a faint smoky taste from being over the charcoal embers. It came on a small plate with a small fork alongside and had been cut crosswise in half and then the other way in four, so there were eight perfect squares of toast. I impaled one, dipped it lightly into the coffee, ate it, and immeditaely felt very grateful to Jim for goading me into trying the toast. The sugar that is dusted onto the toast has a vanilla aroma, perhaps that’s the thing, but I think it’s just somehow a good marriage, the smoky mocha taste of Thai coffeee with this improbable Asia-Fusion toast. The coffee comes with clear tea, so you can rinse your mouth clear after each rich bite, and then start in and get another hit of intense flavour, eight times in all.
No, I did NOT order a second toast, nor even a second coffee. It felt perfect, the pairing, one to one. I paid my 17 baht, about 50 cents altogether, smiled my thanks, and headed off into the market, delighted.
I think I'll have to take the immersethrough people over for coffee and toast next week, don't you think?
Showing posts with label Thai coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thai coffee. Show all posts
Monday, January 18, 2010
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
THE INTENSITY OF DEPARTURE
It’s late on my last night here for awhile. Tomorrow evening I fly Chiang Mai-Bangkok, spend the night in a hotel near the airport, then catch a crack-of-dawn-flight to Narita and from there to Chicago. I go through the rigmarole of American customs and immigration then get on a plane to Toronto. While I’m doing that Tashi will be writing his last Christmas exam, Ancient Greek. With luck I get home on Wednesday in time for late supper with Dom and Tashi (if he’s still standing, as he said on the phone to me this morning!). How lovely is that?
Like every departure, this one makes me reflect and notice a little more than usual. I find myself reflecting back on the last five weeks, beginning with the intensity and whirlwind excitement of the Worlds of Flavor conference at Greystone in November, moving on to my first ten days here in Chiang Mai, and then from there to the extraordinarily interesting two weeks I spent in Moulmein and Hpa’an in Burma, and finallly to these last days back in Chiang Mai. A friend said to me this evening, “Do you actually LIKE this rushing around?” “Well, I said, I’d rather be slower paced, but there are some pushes and pulls involved. First, I really want to see my kids, so that’s why I am heading back to Toronto for the holidays. And I am still engaged in trying to make a living, so obligations related to that also play in. But I have no complaints. How could I? given all the freedom I have to choose my own projects.”
This life of travel is not a vacation, to do with exactly as I please or to be “lazy” in, but instead is a way of engaging with the world and trying to understand how people live in other cultures, other places. It’s a pretty privileged way of going about things, with no boss, and no schedule, but then that lack of structure demands that I structure myself, and set my own limits. Hence, I guess, the travel schedule, so at odds with the free-form life that many expats here in Thailand lead in their early retirement. Many soon get fed up and take on commitments of one kind or another. And then of course they get to complain about being over-committed...
So like eveything else in life, this matter of freedom versus constraint is a balancing act. With luck, each of us gets to figure out our own balance. Many of us have the luxury of complaining when the balance doesn’t suit us, or, even better, of doing something to tweak it so it works more comfortably.
As for the noticing, it’s more acute just pre-departure. For example, I walked across the footbridge to Wat Ket Karam this morning. It’s a temple with beautifully maintained grounds and a small school, and was the neighbouring property to the little wooden house we stayed in for some months the winter Dom turned two, so it’s wonderfully familiar. I try to get there several times each season I am in Chiang Mai. This morning the way the light hit the temple figures at Wat Ket felt magical, a serial spotlighting of details. Would I have felt so struck by it had I not been on the brink of departing? Hard to say. And then, on the way back across the footbridge, would I have been so ready to put money into the begging bowl of the old indigent guy who hangs out there?
...... I wrote the above twelve hours ago. Now it’s already past noon on the day I go. I had a long walk this morning to Chiang Mai GAte, where there’s a lively daily market and also a woman who makes traditional Thai tea and coffee. I think of Ed Rek when I’m there, for he’s a big fan of Thai tea, orange-coloured and then sweetened with condensed milk. I had two glasses of coffee today, each tasting as great, earthy and rounded, as the other. It comes always with a glass of clear “Chinese” tea, that gets refilled endlessly. The tea is to quench thirst and clear the mouth after the rich intensity of traditional tea or coffee (especially when served the classic way with sweetened condensed milk).
On the way back I cut through back lanes and then came out on Thapae Road near Wat Bupparam where a woman had set up selling sticky rice and a couple of options to go with, “sai tung”, that is, to take away in a bag and eat elsewhere. I chose the makeua tam (literally “eggplant pounded”), roasted eggplant pounded to a smooth texture, with fish sauce and grilled shallots and garlic, topped with a piece of hard-boiled egg and generous amounts of fresh herbs, in this case mint. It was the breakfast I needed, smoky tasting eggplant and always welcome sticky rice. And it made a lovely pause in a day of errands, sitting in the sun by the door of the apartment, the fountain trickling gently nearby, and a world to travel around just waiting.
Like every departure, this one makes me reflect and notice a little more than usual. I find myself reflecting back on the last five weeks, beginning with the intensity and whirlwind excitement of the Worlds of Flavor conference at Greystone in November, moving on to my first ten days here in Chiang Mai, and then from there to the extraordinarily interesting two weeks I spent in Moulmein and Hpa’an in Burma, and finallly to these last days back in Chiang Mai. A friend said to me this evening, “Do you actually LIKE this rushing around?” “Well, I said, I’d rather be slower paced, but there are some pushes and pulls involved. First, I really want to see my kids, so that’s why I am heading back to Toronto for the holidays. And I am still engaged in trying to make a living, so obligations related to that also play in. But I have no complaints. How could I? given all the freedom I have to choose my own projects.”
This life of travel is not a vacation, to do with exactly as I please or to be “lazy” in, but instead is a way of engaging with the world and trying to understand how people live in other cultures, other places. It’s a pretty privileged way of going about things, with no boss, and no schedule, but then that lack of structure demands that I structure myself, and set my own limits. Hence, I guess, the travel schedule, so at odds with the free-form life that many expats here in Thailand lead in their early retirement. Many soon get fed up and take on commitments of one kind or another. And then of course they get to complain about being over-committed...
So like eveything else in life, this matter of freedom versus constraint is a balancing act. With luck, each of us gets to figure out our own balance. Many of us have the luxury of complaining when the balance doesn’t suit us, or, even better, of doing something to tweak it so it works more comfortably.
As for the noticing, it’s more acute just pre-departure. For example, I walked across the footbridge to Wat Ket Karam this morning. It’s a temple with beautifully maintained grounds and a small school, and was the neighbouring property to the little wooden house we stayed in for some months the winter Dom turned two, so it’s wonderfully familiar. I try to get there several times each season I am in Chiang Mai. This morning the way the light hit the temple figures at Wat Ket felt magical, a serial spotlighting of details. Would I have felt so struck by it had I not been on the brink of departing? Hard to say. And then, on the way back across the footbridge, would I have been so ready to put money into the begging bowl of the old indigent guy who hangs out there?
...... I wrote the above twelve hours ago. Now it’s already past noon on the day I go. I had a long walk this morning to Chiang Mai GAte, where there’s a lively daily market and also a woman who makes traditional Thai tea and coffee. I think of Ed Rek when I’m there, for he’s a big fan of Thai tea, orange-coloured and then sweetened with condensed milk. I had two glasses of coffee today, each tasting as great, earthy and rounded, as the other. It comes always with a glass of clear “Chinese” tea, that gets refilled endlessly. The tea is to quench thirst and clear the mouth after the rich intensity of traditional tea or coffee (especially when served the classic way with sweetened condensed milk).
On the way back I cut through back lanes and then came out on Thapae Road near Wat Bupparam where a woman had set up selling sticky rice and a couple of options to go with, “sai tung”, that is, to take away in a bag and eat elsewhere. I chose the makeua tam (literally “eggplant pounded”), roasted eggplant pounded to a smooth texture, with fish sauce and grilled shallots and garlic, topped with a piece of hard-boiled egg and generous amounts of fresh herbs, in this case mint. It was the breakfast I needed, smoky tasting eggplant and always welcome sticky rice. And it made a lovely pause in a day of errands, sitting in the sun by the door of the apartment, the fountain trickling gently nearby, and a world to travel around just waiting.
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