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June 26, 2006

Bonking between Towns

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LOCATION: Sichon, Thailand
SEE WHERE WE ARE!
Longitude: N: 09.01094°
Latitude: E: 099.92062°
Miles from Singapore: 960

Eating local food is the key when traveling: it's cheap, readily available, good value for money and usually delicious. But this morning my bacon was saved by a sweaty packet of Clifbar (energy) Shot Blocks that had been cooking away in the bottom of my camelback since leaving Singapore three weeks ago. They'd been getting so squishy in the extreme heat that I nearly threw them out a few days ago. Glad I didn't! They saw me through to the next town en route where I was able to pick up a decent meal.

I'd run out of the energy between settlements (a.k.a. bonking), after not having a proper breakfast. The problem stems back to the lingo again. When planning this trip I'd decided to focus on learning Mandarin Chinese, as the expedition will be in China the longest and potentially be dealing with tricky situations traveling through Tibet. So the Thai language didn't get a look in. The upshot of this is that finding food to eat in the more remote villages here in Thailand is proving harder than I originally imagined. The food is there. The trouble is getting one's hands on it.

This morning I thought I was ordering a boiled egg, bread and cup of tea from the little roadside foodstall that I stopped at. I ended up with a raw egg in a glass and a bowl of hot water with what looked suspiciously like grass floated around in it. Roll on the day when one can insert a language chip into a USB slot in the back of one's head and instantly speak the local language.

jason

Posted on June 26, 2006 1:52 AM

Comments

Posted by: ROBERT at June 28, 2006 10:14 PM