my new roommate

Utterly lacking company in my little house here, I concluded this would be the ideal opportunity to focus on improving my near nonexistant guitar skills. Yesterday I made my purchase and came home with my new friend, Ote (the guitar). He's a great roommate, there's plenty of room for the both of us here. He never leaves dishes in the sink and he's the first roommate I've had who doesn't recoil in horror when i pull out my guitar to practice.

hanging out with Ote.

This evening I wandered through market stalls teeming with thais and flies and brimming with all manner of strange new edibles. As I still can't say much in thai and certainly don't understand 99% of what's being said around me, I tend to just smile broadly and point at things and nod and take whatever people give me. My presence seems to be something of a novelty here and people seem eager to share and have me try new things. It's wonderful working on my miserable thai language skills and getting to try all sorts of new, striking, unusual, tasty, sometimes questionable, little morsels. so far it's working out well for me. I can't remember (or even pronounce) a lot of what I'm trying. Too bad, guess it means I have to keep coming back and eating it all again.

The dinner I returned home with ended up being more of a dessert, really. largely dominated by tropical fruits, that's my kind of meal.

startlingly colorful dinner

Rambutans, mangosteens, lychees, mango and some sweet chewy purple sticky rice topped with a layer of a bright orange mixture of sugar and coconut and some pieces of a very familiar but unidentifiable leaf/herb that has a strong lemon (and maybe basil?) flavor.

sweet, fleshy insides of my mangosteen and rambutan

after 30 minutes of peeling, slicing, seeding - finally, dinner time.