2015 Writing Scholarship Entry

I believe that a small dose of suspicion is good for you when travelling but suspicion, as I discovered, must always be taken in moderation.

It was a dirt car park, a space almost void of light and colour, like someone had taken a bite out of Bangkok. The skeletons of market stalls stood, skinned of their covers. Stray cats prowled. It looked post-apocalyptic; a place where a couple of flaming oil barrels would have looked at home. We were watched by young men leaning with attitude on scooters.

We had got off the boat a stop too far and planned on following the road back to the centre, staying parallel to the Chao Phraya River. But we were drawn, like mosquitos, to lights at the end of the land to a stripped down wooden barn. As we got closer, the cooking smells thickened.

Hungry, we made the sign for “Two” and were sat in the open air. It seemed like a flying saucer had landed on the table between us. It was metal, with a small dome in the centre, ringed by a trough. The waitress poured boiling water into it and fired up the gas underneath, ready for take-off. We followed her hand gestures to the back of the building.

There, a buffet was laid out across several long tables. All you can eat, but raw. We realised that we had to cook our meal by somehow utilising the mini spaceship. Picking up plastic baskets, we collected portions of Unidentifiable Food Objects with an autopsy curiosity.

A woman shuffled up to our shoulders and watched. We snubbed her and carried on picking pieces of…Fat? A delicacy?

“No.” The woman took my basket and started adding her own selections. She ushered us motherly back to our table. The water in the trough was gently simmering and she took a piece of fat and rubbed it on the dome.

“Not for eating,” she said as it sizzled.

For greasing. When the meat cooked on the metal, the juices dripped into the water. It created a flavoured broth into which the woman dropped fish balls, leafy greens and noodles. After several helpings of this delicious soup, we asked for her name.

“Montana,” she smiled. “Like the place.”

We had experienced locals trying to trick us into Tuk Tuks tours. So we had expected Montana to wait, open palmed, for a tip, but all she had wanted was English practice and conversation.

As with any strange encounter, we wished we had remembered the camera for proof of our experience. Especially with Montana. Had it not been for her, we would have been sat there for hours, chewing on pork fat.