Thailand. Rotten Fish and Papaya Salad.

The last few days every time I arrive home from school there is a smell like something has died and has been lying in the sun for many days. It’s a very pungent smell that makes your stomach turn and screw your face up at the smell.

The offending smell is a disgusting food well more the sauce that is used in “Dum Laos” or somtam/papaya salad Laos style. This form of papaya salad is extremely spicy and very salty and the taste overpowering and not delicious. You see the sauce is made from fermented or rotting fish mixed with fish sauce salt and so forth.
There's papaya in that chili.

I pull my motorbike up about 5 metres from the front door and I can smell this disgusting odour wafting from the house. My first words are always “Has something died last week and we haven’t found it” and I am met with 2 girls sitting with massive smiles on their face around this dish. I tell them half seriously and half joking to get outside and eat it which always brings a stupid grin. I get changed quickly and get out of the house and go to the park for fresh air and try and get the smell that has attached itself to my noise hairs and is making me fell ill and like vomiting.
Ben this is hot.

The girls sit and eat this chili infested dish and ooh and arrh and say in Thai hot, hot, hot while whipping their nose that is running. They keep doing this again and again for the next 10-20 minutes. After finishing this usually comes complaints of stomach pains and I don’t know why this would happen.
Served with noodles. Kanom Gin

We have our own special fish sauce in our house that Noot uses for green mango salad and homemade papaya salad. This sauce sits in a container on a shelf near the window cleaner and a large red container.
Can you see it hiding.

In this container is something that should never be consumed by any human being that doesn’t have a iron stomach and no sense of smell.
Red alert, Don't Open!

Inside are fish, fish that have been in he container now for at least 3-4 months sitting at room temperature and fermenting away. Noot adds fish sauce and salt and god knows what else to it sometimes. You have to thank me as I never open this container as you can imagine the smell is indescribable. I only did it to show my loyal readers true Isaan sauce.
I am an Idiot..Stink.

I did this in the kitchen and Noot had gone to feed our lane dog and Ben was in her bedroom getting changed. I took the photos as quick as possible and put the lid back on it and back on the shelf. I went into the living room and sat down to eat dinner and Ben came out and asked if I had shi* myself or farted and I just laughed. When Noot came in from outside Ben told her I had farted and Noot told me I was disgusting and was pretending to throw up. I got great happiness with this as she always tells me when she opens this container that it smells good and sniffs it like its perfume. I didn’t tell her the offending smell wasn’t my big white ass but her precious rotting fish sauce.

Dinner tonight was from the street food stalls. I had a soup called “Suki Moo” and has pork mince and plenty of vegetables in it and you mix a chili/suki sauce with it and is very nice. I had the remaining bread that was left over and it was still nice and fresh. Noot and Ben had grilled pork liver (Dup Moo) and sticky rice and also stringy vegetable thing called “Mook Nor Mai” or something like that and taste okay and I will eat it but it isn’t high on my list of foods.
It's a hard life but someone has to do it.


So all up today it was a very hard and tiring day here in Isaan, working for 8 hours, an hour and a half at the park a little down time watching rugby league State of Origin Football, Queensland V’s New South Wales. You will not see football any tougher than this not anywhere on the face of this earth. These guys punish themselves and anyone who gets in their way.

It’s now 11pm and I have updated or added to both my blogs and now have some reading to do and look at a few forums and hopefully be in bed before midnight.

Everyone have a great day/night where ever you are.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Oh I thought I would throw in this picture of the sun today and it had a weird looking ring circling it. It looked like a rainbow and was the talk of the school at lunchtime today. See excitement everyday here in Thailand

Brunty.