Fruit and flowers

cut fruit stall

A more relaxed day today - just half a day of meetings after an early morning of emails perched in bed and then some free time to play after crazy hours.

I arrived early for my first  meeting to find the street a buzz with vendors selling lunch-type fare. Stalls, with cut fruit, other stalls with lurid orange balls made of  a sweet pumpkin mix and glutenous rice, little mini bbq stalls with skewers of marinated chicken in coconut milk, like a chicken dish sold on the streets of north eastern Malaysia I once ate ...yum!

pineapple bubble bag

But when it is hot, the thing I most want to eat is fruit. The choice was wide and colourful -  watermelon, pineapple, chom poo, papaya, greenish-yellow mango...

I decided on a bubble bag of spirally cut pineapple -  deep yellow and fragrantly sticky and dipped it in the accompanying salty - chilli dip. 

Very sweet fruit with salt and chilli is a great combination and a little salt is a good top up after losing so much thru sweat.

mystery fruit

A little more stall stalking and I came across another interesting fruit that I had not had or seen before. Elongated spiky cases all clustered on a small branch. This spiky cover - a little like longan or lychee coverings - can be peeled back to reveal a yellow fruit with a large seed inside. 

Just delicious!  A bit like fruit salad plant  - a bit banana, a bit pineapple. I will find out what it is called and report back!

mystery fruit nibbled already

Over to the Jim Thompson House for lunch.  This is one of my favourite places to visit in Bangkok.  It is because it is an oasis of calm and quiet in  a busy dusty trafficed city. The website can describe it better than I can but the combination of traditional teak houses with superb decor  in a tropical garden is just perfection.







rose and jasmine bracelet

To add to the scene, a young  woman, decked out in Siamese finery who was demonstrating the art of making floral decorations for personal and temple adornment, gave me the a gorgeous cluster of jasmine and rose flowers that she had just made to wear around my wrist.

No sleep and strange fruit

My fruit basket

Hot sticky Bangkok.  A night of not much sleep for many many reasons, take your pick:

A -  Because it was too hot with the air conditioner off
B -  Because it was too cold with the air conditioner on
C - Because the air conditioner was too noisy
D - Because the barking of the geckos kept me up
E -  Because I was jet lagged
F -  Because I am responsible for 7 other individuals

I think the answer is all of the above except the geckos - which I love.

On the plus side food in Thailand is of course one of life's great treats.  And the fruit in Thailand is strange but glorious.

I decided that the fruit bowl provided by the hotel was sufficient for breakfast.  I like fruit for breakfast, and this morning's was very different to my usual fare.

Three tiny fragrant bananas, a sticky darkish yellow below the skin and with a fragrance unattainable in Sydney.

Two mangosteens, a beautiful looking fruit, muddy brown-purple on the outside  with a floret of green around the top.  And the creamiest slightly astringent flavoured loby flesh in side.

And perhaps the strangest fruit of all, the rose apple or chom poo -  my Thai word of the day.

I have had them before and recognised their genus straight away (Syzygium or formerly Eugenia).  They are reminiscent of my days of grazing on bush food along the coast of NSW.  They are related to the lilli pilli common to the yards of east coasters at least. 

Those who have munched on lilli pilli will know that strange rosewater-like flavour and crunchy yet light as air flesh under the shiny thin skin.  But with lilli pilli the pleasure is fleeting as the fruit are so small.  With the rose apple you have more to tackle.

A great way to start a long work day after little sleep.