Plates of pure pleasure

One of the many meals consumed by my good self during my recent sojourn to the Land Of Smells. I never get fed up with eating vegetables, rice, fish etc. These little plates of pure pleasure (as I refer to them) each contain spices and flavours in abundance. Each mouthful is an explosion of pure ecstasy. Take the dish bottom left. I won't attempt the Thai translation but in English its called 'morning glory'. The dish has been cooked with chilli's in an oyster sauce and as I type this I can literally taste it. Hmmm wonderful.

After a few weeks of I start to feel so much better. The food must have something to do with it? Oh and the nice hot weather.

This time I brought back a big jar of crushed chili powder and find myself adding it to almost everything I cook. I now crave the heat like a drug!

Market

During an early morning market jaunt near Surin I caught this wistful glance from a young market worker. I wonder what she's thinking? Probably that it's too cold and early to be up!

Sadly this picture can't convey the smells, noise and colours of the ensuing cacophony that is an early morning market in Thailand. Needless to say its organised chaos.

I've never seen so many chicken heads (who buys these and why?) buckets of various living crustaceans and animal body parts in any one place before. Everywhere you look there is something interesting to point the lens at.

I wish veggies and meat were as cheap in the UK...!

Menue

Some of the menue translations always make me laugh when I go out to dine. I try not to laugh too loud because they really are trying to please and English must be as hard for them as Thai is for us westerners. Still sometimes its hard not to.

Offensive odour anyone? or perhaps a little something burnt?

Mcdonald wai

At what lengths will a corporate giant prostitute itself in order to entice hungry diners to enter it's hallowed portals and dine on pure shit. The picture on the left may help to answer the question.

I'm inclined to think McDonald's are taking the piss. Seeing an over sized plastic clown sporting red hair, a gay yellow romper suit and a sinister sarcastic smile wai me every time i pass causes me to wince.

The very fact the welcome sign is in English only tells me their target market is not the Thais. Would they eat poo? No! their palette is far more discerning. Its only the supposedly educated westerner that has a diet akin to Beelzebub's bottom.

I can promise you one thing I have definitely not been inside. If I'd wanted to dine on a piece of damp cardboard draped with a sheet of limp yellow plastic  I'd probably eat the Bangkok Post. At least it would be educational.

Air shed

Even your average hairy arsed builder needs a shed to retire to now and again and so what if he is 40 feet up a scaffold pole at work?

He needs a place to house his lad mags collection. A place to contemplate life and what to have for breakfast. A place to just be at one with his inner child.

I give you the 'Air shed'. No real man can be without his...

Pavement artist

Just checkup yourself day by day... Wise words indeed from this cheeky pavement artist but I doubt this method would be possible by any living human being other than one of those incredibly bendy Chinese circus performers!

I have seen this picture before on the net, but seeing it 5 feet high in living colour somehow made it seem more real. Its a hideous thought. How does one breath? Perhaps not a good idea as the smell would be a bit over powering.

What is uncanny is the fact that the artist must have met my old boss as the likeness is amazing...!