After hitting the streets of Spain and coming out all things European there is nothing like giving yourself a bit of a culture shock in all areas of mind, body and belly. I planned to meet my mother in Surat Thani to attend a Buddhist monastery on a noble silent retreat for 10 days. I had discussed this with her prior to leaving Australia and had decided that it was what I wanted to do for my 40th Birthday. Something different I thought something that would help me with the next and significant years of my life. Now we could have gone up to Noosa and done something similar and as I hear without the harsh realities of a Buddhist monks regiment although very relaxed lifestyle.
We were housed in what I would call a brick cell, extremely modest with a wooden pillow; a piece of maisonite timber on top of a cement and brick shelf was the bedding and a mosquito net that for me was being held together with band aids. I am a simple, low maintenance girl at heart so cobwebs, cockroaches, frogs, bad bedding, cold baths, no toilet paper, one meal of rice soup and a divine vegetarian curry a day, the daily job of cleaning the toilets, no speaking and 4am meditation starts for 10 days were all ok, what really got to me was the 5-6 hours of meditation that for a beginner was very difficult, frustration, relentless and challenging. Having passed new years eve, with a scrapped knee as I fell trying to clean my teeth into the gutter surrounding the cement communal baths and then my birthday, glancing over to my mother and smiling in silence as I tried to think about not thinking, I wondered how many days I could possibly stay here. As the days continued, there were some significant changes that did occur, I forgot about the importance of hair washing, wearing shoes and changing outfits, what freedom for a change, there were also no mirrors so the liberation of not even worrying about what you looked like was heaven and peace enough for me. So use to carrying around a hand bag full of stuff, suddenly I had no stuff, no need for stuff and wondered as I watched people take bags of stuff to the open meditation hall… what do you need from a bag to close your eyes and be in a quiet peaceful state, what was in their bags that maybe I had left behind and did I need stuff to help me dissolve my thoughts into my breath.
Well another couple of days passed in silence and after going through elements of sheer frustration, thinking about not thinking,
again, and reorganizing my entire life in my head. I kept breathing, again thinking about not thinking and then the highlight…watching and becoming mesmerized by ants climbing up a tree, making a tunnel in the wet sand and watching fireflies illuminate the sky, I had my epiphany and decided my time was compete and I had achieved what I had come for. I decided to call it to an end on the 6th day and left for my next adventure in Thailand leaving my mother behind to continue her path to the blessed and euphoric “nibbana”. And that’s when the light returned back into my body, I reconnected with my love for food, for people and discovered that I am doing ok and that for me, my “nibbana” and complete happiness is where I am at that moment as long as I am in the moment and enjoying my life.
The next days in Thailand were filled with wonderful new food experiences, making new friends and lots of laughter. When you are travelling on your own it is often easier to simply go up to people and strike up a conversation even if you can’t speak the language, fortunately for me, my new found friends spoke some English and we were able to get our messages across quite easily of course with the help of modern technology.
While having breakfast in my little local resort I met three wonderful women, Fon,
Kook and Meaw who over the next two days took me under their wings, invited me into their homes, gave me a Thai cooking lesson, wandered behind me explaining all the details of unusual produce at the local markets while I proceeded to take photos of just about anything and everything that was unusual or different.
We picked wild mushrooms and bagged them ready for the markets, Stopped by
road side stalls searching for pippies, wild leaves and other ingredients needed for the cooking lesson.
I became obsessed with eating these beautiful fruits the Longan, similar to a lychees but with really small almost no seeds and a grapefruit, lychee flavour, refreshing, sweet, juicy and easy to peel just have to be careful of the ants that also like the fruit and live in between the tightly bunched stalks.
We dined on fresh crispy fried prawn cakes with chili dipping sauce, squid and bean
thread salad, dried curried scallops with sugar snap peas and baby corn, spicy green papaya salad with salted eggs and nam prik and vegetables, a spicy sauce made a variety of ways accompanied with a selection of raw vegetables. Similar to the Italian style bagna cauda but with three times the punch in chili as the bagna cauda has with anchovies and salt.
My cooking lesson was filled with excitement as the girls proceeded to lay out all the ingredients for our floor banquet which later we shared and laughed as the tears rolled down my face , my nose ran and the excruciating look of burning lips and tongue appeared on my face. But that didn’t stop me from loving every minute of the pain and of the eating.
We enjoyed the tasty little mouthful of what the girls described to be as a bit of a palate cleanser consisting of a betel leaf,
rolled with toasted shredded coconut, fresh chili, dried prawns, a piece of lime, a piece of ginger, peanuts and then a wonderful sour sweet thick sauce which was a dollop on top, the tasty morsels of fishy, bitter, sour and sticky sweet were then rolled up and crunched into and to my delight they were delicious as I knew they would be.
We finished with a creamy sticky coconut rice and fresh mango drizzled with a coconut palm sugar sauce and cooled my sizzling lips with icy cold fresh coconut and jelly, which again was something that in our summers here in Queensland should be a staple on the side of our roads as well.
