cuisine on a stick

i'm sure most of you are somewhat familiar with thai cuisine. pad thai, curries, fiery hot spiciness, etc. there is also a lot of "street food" in thailand, where there's a little stand by the road and the lady (some times a man) makes the food right there for you. its hard for me to eat a lot of those things because i don't know the words. but i can always find something i can point at and ask for, because so many things come on a stick. like a kebab, but its only one thing on the stick. chicken, pork (sidenote, the thai word for pork is moo, so i get it confused with beef), meatballs (these can be made of any kind of meat, including fish, so its a surprise), squid or octopus, shrimp, chunks of various sausages and sometimes they are even wrapped in bacon. these are all roasted on a grill and then you get some kind of sauce with it. the chicken with satay sauce is delicious!

you can also sometimes get roasted plant matter, usually bananas. there is a lady across the street from school who makes some delightful roasted banana slices. then there is the fried things on a stick. those come in all varieties also, but there are more sweets on a stick when its fried instead of roasted.

or say you feel like some fresh fruit. well, you pick out what you want and the lady chops it up for you and puts the pieces in a plastic bag and gives you a stick. then you use the stick to pick up the fruit pieces. or if you get a dumpling or patty sort of thing, the lady chops it up and puts it in the bag and gives you a stick. you can't avoid the stick. its how you eat.

on a related note, you may have noticed that i said "delightful roasted banana slices". you may or may not know that i have always found bananas rather revolting. something about the texture and the smell combined. but since i've been here, i've had some good banana snacks! banana chips in a variety of flavors, long slices rolled up and covered in honey and baked, battered and with sesame seeds and deep fried... i have to explanations for this newfound like of bananas. (1) i still think raw bananas are gross and haven't eaten one yet, so they are still gross in that form. (2) there's something like 10 varieties of banana cultivated here, each slightly different and i think none of them are the variety we eat in the states. so maybe i just am revolted by that one variety and the rest are ok for whatever reason. regardless, i'm gonna keep eating the banana snacks.

two new fruits i tried today: rambutan and duku. i like the duku a little better than rambutan, but they are both good. they are more common in southern thailand, near malayasia. kook is originally from there, her parents brought them up with them (they are visiting for the weekend). can't hold a candle to mangosteen, though. i need to go eat some mangosteen right now...