What I Ate In Southern Thailand (Part II)

One late night we ended up at a ‘khao dom‘ place. Khao dom literally means boiled rice but in this case really it refers to rice cooked in plenty of water served with various dishes of food that you desire. I suppose you can describe it as a plain congee. A khao dom joint is actually mostly a supper type place. It opens from early evening to often early morning. Some place opens all night. Anyway, the above nice greenery is the kana (also known as Chinese broccoli, kai lan or gai lum) stir fried with bits of deep fried salted fish with plenty of chilli and garlic. Now unfortunately, the chilli in this instance is green and the dish itself isn’t at all hot until you stop paying attention and bite into the actual chilli. Which I did. Twice.

This is, of course, the actual rice. You can order normal rice as well obviously but to me that sort of defeats the purpose of the khao dom joint!

This is stewed bamboo shoots with bits of chicken feet. The bamboo shoots are what are referred to in Thailand as Chinese bamboo shoots. They are soft and not the usual crunchy bamboo shoots. I have tried looking up what the differences between them are (as in whether they’re different because of they are different types of bamboo shoots or processed differently, anyone know?). The chicken feet, I suspect, were there as a stock ingredient rather than actually the intention of the dish. I’m not a fan of chicken feet but I think they make great stock.

My cousin, on the other hand, rather likes the chicken feet. So she ordered this dish. They were basically chicken feet deep fried and then braised in this funny, sweetish sauce. Not a fan, myself.

These are boiled salted eggs yum. Yum is basically loosely translated as a Thai salad. But I suppose I prefer to describe this dish as salted eggs with Thai dressing which was made up of fish sauce, lime juice, a bit of sugar, lots of chopped fresh chillis and of course rings and rings of raw onions. Hardly the stuff I would want to eat right before bed. But there you go.

I would like to close off the post with fresh young coconut. Until you taste the very fresh coconut, drink its water and eat its beautiful tender flesh, you can’t really begin to compare the horridly sugary stuff you get at Asian grocery stores here. Ewww.

I <3 fresh coconut. 10 baht. I likes anything costing 10 baht