Night Market

Taken about 6pm

We headed off to the night market last night to savour the culinary delights of Chanthaburi.  This was, in part, a fact-finding mission before the arrival of our friend Leon in a couple of weeks time.  We have been meaning to go for a while now but a pending visit sure focuses the mind.


Before I tell you about it though, I must tell you about the TV channels we have - stay with it, there is a link here! I've mentioned before that we have some 93 channels that came as a package with our Internet and of those, 18 are in English.  One of those channels is BBC Lifestyle and it's chock full of foodie programs.

Mr John and I watch these, mostly when he's just got home from work and prior to going for our tea.  This has varying effects on us and our reference to it varies from food porn to a form of self harm.  Picture the beef wellington - beef is nigh on impossible to find here plus we have no oven.  So even though I now have all the time in the world to prepare these types of meals my access to ingredients is nearly as limited as my cooking facilities.

Lately, the aforementioned channel has been showing Rick Steins' tour of South East Asia.  So I had this vision of amazing street food with copious quantities of fresh ingredients and inviting smells and tastes.  Well, the reality didn't quite live up to the fantasy.

I don't think the language barrier helped as we couldn't really ask what things were - though we do have a limited range of words for meats, fish and eggs.  I should point out though that one of the stall holders spoke good basic English, which helped.  A lot of things were on a stick (as one of my nephews likes to say) though no satay sauce in sight and a lot of things were deep fried.  Some stalls had photos of their dishes which looked really unappetising and we were a little sorry we hadn't had tea at our corner shop.

Whilst the experience was different, I'm not sure we'll be rushing back for food anytime soon.  Mr John thought it was a very different experience to the night market in Chiang Mai (north of the country) which he really enjoyed.  We do know where China Town is now though and that's our next plan for a food adventure.