fruit and farang

Phuket Town is away from the beaches and, if you believe guide books, is the sort of place where a visitor can feel like a local. Let me make a critical point here: you can absorb the ambiance, you can marvel at the smells and sounds, but in Thailand on vacation you will never - ever - feel like a local. There are far too many people pointing at you and laughing, or selling you things for eight times the price. No, really. We were walking to dinner in Chiang Mai and had a motor scooter full of teenagers point at us, yell "farang!" and then laugh their way into the distance.

"Farang" is a word applied to westerners and we've had friends tell us it originally was a word for the French. These days, though, we're all lumped into one big group of funny-acting strangers and the Thais aren't afraid to bandy the word around freely. But back to the point, you can wander around a great smaller place like Phuket Town and get a feel for things without all the commotion and commercialization, but it's hard to sink into the reality when tuk-tuk drivers keep offering to take you to "shopping."



Rather than be suckered into an engineered shopping expedition we meandered around and found a great market. We slowly walked the length of it, submitting to the cacaphony that is Thai produce and dining.

It was a pretty compact space with a main drag of sorts and stalls insistently pressing into the pathway. I have no idea what all of the fruits, vegetables, animals, you name it... were. Can't tell you what the pink and green fruit with the protruding petals is. Can't tell you what kind of small speckled eggs the woman was scooping into plastic bags. I can affirm that there was a stall with very, very sweet items all covered in bees. With a healthy crowd of bees still trying to find a spot.



There were piles of pineapples that still had long, sharp stalks poking out of the bottom. Never seen that before. There were large roaches/beetles ready to eat. Haven't seen that either. Lots of fish laying around on beds of ice bits. Seen that - but their eyes were clear and sharp, being pulled from the water only hours before.

Long florescent beans strung over poles. Hundreds of limes piled into pyramids. Spices, powdered and flaked. Armies of small bananas. And mounds of scarlet chilis that could fell a bear.



And such a delicious commotion. The vendors screaming, laughing, prodding. Children scrambling in tiny open spaces. Bees humming. A garbled TV running off a power cord appearing out of nowhere.

There were giant pots of prepared foods, cauldrons of Thailand's miraculous spice combinations. But we kept walking and let the real locals line up for clear plastic bags filled to the brim and tied off at the top.



Pig faces without bones. Yellow shirts celebrating the beloved king. You really can get anything in a Thai market. And maybe, just maybe, you can get a feel for Thailand without the tourists. Maybe.