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*sigh*
more meat... Hello All,
I have no idea where to start, so I might as well talk about food, as my never-ending struggle to find edible food consumes so much of my energy. My initial enthusiasm for Thai food has thoroughly dissipated as I confront the mind-numbing, or rather, stomach-numbing, lack of variety and lack of flavour available to me. I usually eat either rice with vegetables or rice noodles with vegetables for lunch and dinner. I can’t have soup because they use a meat-based broth. Every single street stall uses the same vegies - cauliflower, carrot, some lettucy thing. Sometimes, when I’m really lucky, I get asparagus or tomatoes or cucumber. There is no sauce. No sauce!! It’s an outrage. It’s a crime against foodmanity. Instead, the vegies are just really oily - eww - and I add some lime/soy sauce/chili which most places have available in front of their stand. It’s an absolute travesty. It wouldn’t be so bad if only the vegies were really good quality and very flavoursome already but they’re not - they’ve been sitting in an unrefridgerated glass cabinet for however many hours and are dry and wilted. It’s enough to make me cry. Or go
*spews*
and more... and eat Western food. However, I’ve become so used to bland boring Thai food now that when I eat Western food, I get queasy! I had a sandwich the other day with mozzarella, tomatoes, cos lettuce and basil pesto - I was so excited at the prospect… but they used Thai basil! What is the point??? I also went to Villa, the supermarket for foreigners, and it was like… I don’t know… going to Santiago di Compostela. I wandered up and down the aisles, my eyes wide open, enthralled, my stomach *crying* with desire… Vegemite (EIGHT DOLLARS AND FORTY-FIVE CENTS for 345 grams! - I still bought it though), basil pesto, cheese (including Meredith Dairy Marinated Goat’s Feta, which at $12.10 is cheaper than at good old Louie’s back home!)… I was salivating. I stood in front of the cheese section for almost ten minutes imagining the different flavours… yummmmmmmm. In the end I just bought some vegemite and pesto and as soon as I’d paid for the items, opened the jar of Vegemite and just walked along sniffing it… ah, that sweet smell of salt and yeast… people must have though I was a right freak. Not that they
View from our office balcony
Over Lumpini Park, in central Bangkok. don’t anyway! It was so good. I can’t believe how much I miss food from home… oh, for an aloo gobi… or a caramelised pumpkin and sage risotto… or a sweet potato curry with lots and lots of cumin, and mustard seeds, and asafoetida powder, and turmeric… or just a really simple pasta with fresh tomatoes and fresh real basil…
Anyway.
I appear to officially have a Thai friend, even though she told me that I look four months pregnant. This is Tom, the woman I’m going to Isan - north-east Thailand - with this weekend. She and I went to her sister’s house on Saturday, which was really weird. Her sister is married to an American, so I thought we were going there to spend time with her English-speaking sister but no. Her sister wasn’t even there, and didn’t turn up for almost two hours. Tom and I sat outside with the housekeeper (9 months pregnant, still working, lives at the back or the property with her husband and will keep the baby with her for the first three months and then give it to her parents in the provinces to look after), rather than waiting inside the house. The husband, however, was home though he never invited us inside. Then the sister, Noi, arrived, we chatted for about 10 minutes, and then she went out for dinner. Tom and I stayed there for another four hours and I cooked pasta with a basic napoli sauce, which was quite good, though Tom could barely eat it! It was strange.
Work is still fine. I’ve been helping do some research for another project which has been interesting - I’ve been interviewing people about their organisation’s anti-trafficking activities and trafficking-related research. I went to Rahab Ministries, which is a small organisation run by some missionaries from the Assemblies of God, who work with women in prostitution. They do outreach, run a drop-in centre, and have some programs for women wanting to leave prostitution. They seem to do good work, though it wasn’t clear if all their services are open to women who don’t convert to Christianity.
In Thailand, there are now calls to legalise prostitution, which is being supported by the two other organisations (Empower and Foundation for Women) who work with women in prostitution. Rahab, on the other hand, is against legalisation. There seems to be the typical divide and attendant conflicts between women's organisations on this issue, unfortunately.
xxx
Nina.
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