So the grand “plan” for this 3 month adventure was basically find old and crumbly things for my husband and let me eat and drink my way around the world.   The best way to accomplish my plan seemed to be booking food tours in various cities.   I spent days pouring over Parisian wine and cheese shops and Italian pasta making classes trying to decide on just the right ones to enjoy…and then for some reason I booked none.   I spent a month in some of the best food cities of the world and didn’t once have a local guide us towards the best and yummiest.   We managed alright on our own (remember all that casa vino blanca??), but I don’t really know how or why I dropped the ball there.   For some reason, I did manage to book us a food tour of Bangkok.  I think I booked it really early on in the planning thinking it would be one of many and I could compare.   I also planned for us to be experts at the markets and street foods long before Southeast Asia so I would be able to gauge what was safe to eat…but we were flying blind. [Ed. note: Completely blind. No idea what we are doing…still]

We got off the dreaded overnight train and convinced our hotel to let us check in hours early.   A hot shower was necessary after the wilderness week… And then it was tour time. Our guide met us in the lobby and we grabbed a tuk tuk to begin.   She spoke so softly that I only heard every couple words, but I figured that was safer to make us brave enough to eat!  And eat we (sort of) did… It didn’t matter that it was shy of 10 am, these markets had been open since 6 am and we were late, so we had to catch up.   She handed us chicken off a cart the same man ran Tuesday through Saturday for the last 80 years.  It was marinated in fruit juice and then fashioned into a bamboo skewer like basket to grill on the street.  We didn’t want to offend, so we stood beside the canal littered with floating trash and ate our chicken quickly before the guide had time to buy the kebab of chicken feet sitting on her left…

The rest of the first market went about like that…she stopped in front of some stand and named a few ingredients.   If I heard something particularly strange (stewed pig’s blood anyone?), I said no thank you. [Ed. note: not kidding – one stall had a giant bucket of pigs blood. That was a bridge too far.] If I recognized most of it and there weren’t any live animals walking atop the cooking surface, I said ok.  At most I managed 3 bites of eat item…but I think I did better than my husband who stared at me with bug eyes and kept looking for a trash can to discreetly hide the leftover evidence.  [Ed. note: As we walked down the food alley with the cats, the birds, the raw fish being cut, and the various other raw meat and baby pools of water used to wash things, I was sure the FDA would have something to say about all that.   Why did my wife have me eat from that area? I ate, though…]

Thankfully, it was time for a break…at the Buddhist temple.   We bowed and people chanted and some old lady got mad at my guide for bringing me inside wearing shorts (I swear I didn’t know the food tour included a temple or I would have dressed more appropriately!!) so that meant it was time to leave and take a tuk tuk to the next market. And then we encountered the monsoon.   We spent 3 days in the rain forest lugging our raincoats in preparation for the impending storm…and there wasn’t a drop.   So when we got to hot, hot Bangkok, we didn’t even think to consider the weather beyond the heat.   Yes, those trusty raincoats remained in the hotel and we sat in standstill traffic in the open air tuk tuk while it poured.   Sheets of water flooded down the side of the roof and directly onto my right leg, drowning half my shorts.  Karma?  Probably.

We made a run for it into a “restaurant” and sat there wringing out my leg as our guide took her broken umbrella around the market and returned with plates and bowls of stuff. Unsure of where it all came from, we decided to just trust at this point and tried a little of everything.  It was strange…and chewy.   Unfortunately, the monsoon was still kicking so we were stuck inside staring down the plates of barely touched food like a cranky toddler holding out for dessert…Why did we travel during rainy season again? [Ed. note: Hey now, I ate most of my…whatever that spicy minced meat thing was.]

Finally there was a break and we headed out again to another stop…another “restaurant”…this one complete with the 90 year old Thai patriarch who kept walking up and down the stairs wearing nothing but his saggy boxers.  Appetizing site for sure.   Luckily, she served us beer with lunch.  Delicious local beer because alcohol kills germs, right?  Surprisingly, this place was perfection.   We had 3 dishes here–something super spicy for my husband, some seafood for me, and the most amazing crispy lemongrass chicken to share.   We devoured it all.   I asked for the name of that dish but it was about 11 Thai words so I think when I get home I’ll just order lemongrass chicken until some place comes close!

On a high note from finally eating something recognizable and yummy, it was time to wrap up our tour.   And the last stop was not food, but a promised flower market.  Look, I got my hopes up on this once before so I wasn’t really expecting much.   Plus, I had a flight in 24 hours so I couldn’t buy a bunch to decorate as we traveled like the plan was around Europe…but oh my goodness the Bangkok flower market is legit.   We went up and down at least 4 streets packed with flower stalls.   And trucks were rolling up throwing bushels of roses out the back constantly.  This place is open 24 hours and every inch is covered with blooms.   There wasn’t a sad little tulip bulb in sight!

And of course we had to buy some flowers, if only for the short time…they were only $1.50 after all!