Mornings are the coolest when you have a neighborhood to hang out in.I woke up this morning and went out for breakfast, which is the only way I ever do breakfast these days (not as bourgeois as it sounds, I promise) and which usually means either Burmese noodles or Nepali roti chole. I'm not avoiding Thai food—I love it—but there's a large Nepali-Burmese immigrant minority in my neighborhood and I just dig their vegetarian options a lot, and have gotten to know a lot of the shopkeepers.
So I was around the corner, eating to hpu nuy [sp?] (bean soup noodles) at a Burmese place, and I had a small language triumph. A Thai guy walked into the shop and asked them for miang (เมี่ยง), by which he meant (I'm pretty sure) maak (หมาก), which is betel. Miang is a thai dish wrapped in leaves, a lot like the way betel is wrapped. I thinks that's what he was dumbing down for the shopkeeper, but the point is that she had no idea what he was talking about, and so I got to be the farang who could tell him that they made it a few shops down and then later explain to her that the guy had wanted kun-ya (betel). This is a long story for a small event, but it made me really happy, so you guys are going to just deal with that. After that I was just on a neighborhood high. My apartment building is in the Phra Khanong market, and so I went out and bought a shirt from a vendor, and when I admired the banged-up old motorcycle side mirror he had repurposed, he told me where I could buy one, but then remembered he had another one, and just opened up his junk cabinet, dug it out, and gave it to me. Good people around here. Met the woman who irons my work shirts (yes, that part IS as bourgeois as it sounds, I guess) and chatted with her, and just exchanged a lot of pleasantries with neighbors about my broken wrist, which is a conversation I am getting slightly better at having. It was a good morning in a good place.
A bit about the pictures: up top is a Burmese shop. You can see their daily pile of samosas out there. They're not my favourite samosa spot, but I pass them every day, so sometimes I go for one anyway. Down here is the morning soy milk and you tiao cart. They do this Chinese breakfast food here in Thailand too, but the family that runs this cart is actually Chinese. They just moved down here from Yunnan almost exactly
a year ago, so they and I both get to be new to the neighborhood. End of story: I'm settling in pretty well. Send postcards and/or come visit.-Matthew
