There are two reasons as to why my heart is no longer whole since leaving the incredible Mae Hong Son - a beautiful town in the North West of Thailand, super close to the Burmese boarder.
The first is simply because it is my favourite place in Thailand and the feeling of bliss that it instilled in me was unprecedented. We arrived after two days of rafting and were looking forward to a shower and a bed. We stumbled upon our best accommodation so far - a simple bungalow in a loving family's backyard, surrounded by the neighbours' banana and coconut trees.
It had a fridge. Our excitement was barely containable (after being on the road for so long it really is the small things that get me excited... A fridge is one of those things. As is sawtooth coriander, but that's another story!)
Sitting outside on our patio in the sweltering heat we decided it was beer time, so the errand boy was sent off to procure the goods. He returned with this bounty... A bottle of Thai rice whiskey costing $3, some fried crickets for $1 and three Chan cigars costing $0.15.
We would sit each evening afternoon (who am I kidding!) with booze and snacks and prepare for the gecko wars that would soon commence. As soon as the sun started to disappear I'd turn on our outside light, proclaim 'I am the Gecko Queen' and watch my 10 or so faithful followers crawl out of the ceiling and get in place for their feast.
Watching geckos fight each other is nasty business - they bite the skin on each others face and then don't let go. They pull at eye sockets, forehead skin, neck fat, anything they can get a hold of. At the same time they make a horrible hissing sound and arch their backs off the ceiling exorcist style. We were much happier when they were hunting giant moth men instead of each other!
The food in Mae Hong Son is also delicious... As if I'm going to fall in love with a place that doesn't keep my stomach satisfied! From traditional Mae Hong Son style curry and stir fried ferns, to chicken head skewers, to snack size bowls of noodles in tomato broth, this place had me covered.
Add in the day and night time views around the lake,
the simple pleasure of feeding the fish in said lake,
and the stunningly kind and friendly people, and you've got yourself a pretty fekking awesome life.
The second reason why I could quite literally be missing a piece of this vital organ thanks to Mae Hong Son is because of this orgasmic bastard.
This delightful morsel is called Khao Kan Jin and is rice and blood steamed in a banana leaf. A typical Northern Thai snack, I'd been dying to try it and was stoked to have correctly identified and bought it. So much so the next night I went back for more. Half way through the second helping I remembered reading that out this way they do a second version of it which uses raw blood mixed with the already steamed rice. At the same time I also recalled that when picking my banana leaf parcels there were bright green ones and mucky yellow ones - indicating that they had probably been steamed.
I'd been going for the bright green. I'd been consuming and feeding my husband raw pig blood. Oops. Ironic in a way because we'd discussed it a few days earlier and decided not to hunt out the raw blood version because we were probably pushing our guts and immune system too far as it was. So fingers crossed there's no little piggy parasite men currently nomming my heart.
I'd been going for the bright green. I'd been consuming and feeding my husband raw pig blood. Oops. Ironic in a way because we'd discussed it a few days earlier and decided not to hunt out the raw blood version because we were probably pushing our guts and immune system too far as it was. So fingers crossed there's no little piggy parasite men currently nomming my heart.
In the interest of full disclosure, if presented with another parcel of this right now I would gobble it down before you could say 'tapeworm!'
