One Love and One Hate

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One thing I love in Thailand is that the majority of places you go, whether it be an internet cafe, a hostel, a shopping mart, and most definitely at a temple, you are expected to take off your shoes. I love being barefoot. It's one of the greatest feelings. Everywhere I go, I leave my shoes in the pile of flip-flops right outside the door and they are always there waiting for me whenever I return. Half the time on the island of Koh Chang, my flip-flops were left in the bungalow, because I knew I'd be taking them off anyway. And somehow, it just doesn't feel dirty. It feels right.

One thing I hate in Thailand is that on every daytime bus trip there is a stop off in a village where you usually have two options for lunch. On our trip from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong (the town on the Mekong River, which is where we took our slow boat from to head over to Laos) we stopped in a little village where our two lunch options were fried rice or chicken and noodles. I eat fried rice pretty much everyday, so on this particular day, I decided to go for the chicken and noodles. It was 30 Baht, barely warm, but tasty enough and I was hungry! I do love these dishes, because they are so colorful. So about halfway through my meal I begin to realize that all these carrots (which are making my meal so beautifully colorful) have eyes! Now this is not the first time this has happened, yet every time it does I get about halfway through my meal before I realize that my carrots are actually baby shrimp, eyes and all!! So I refuse to be too easily grossed out and continue to eat around them, but am inevitably inspecting my food now as I eat. And this is when I begin to see the dead flies and can no longer go on. So I wash down my chicken and noodles (and eyes and flies) with the remainder of my coke and choose to be grateful for an extra bit of protein. Never inspect your food in Thailand if you're really hungry!

Ohh the life...

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Comments

[anonymous]

You ate flies?

[enlightenedtravels]

not by choice, yet i won't be surprised if it happens again.