1/23-1/27 -- Bachelor Pad

Chabaa left on Friday to go to Bangkok so she could spend the weekend leading up to the Chinese New Year with her family. Wat had been joking about how much her cooking would be missed, but we had no idea what we were in for. Friday we ate for the fourth day in a row at Pat's (the mud house), where we had been dining on a combination of restaurant to-go food--pint-bags of steamed rice topped with mystery mixes of meat and veggies that varied widely in flavor, spice, and deliciousness--and Pat's competent but not stellar cooking (timidly seasoned pork, fried eggs, and salty-bland fishball soup). Turns out that we should have been thankful for this Last Supper...

Saturday's breakfast marked an abrupt transition as we tried to fill our bellies with white bread and super-sweet strawberry jam (both store-bought); I probably ate four of our small squlyinder bananas. Ants appeared suddenly and in armies--the bamboo countertops writhed in hues of black and red. Wat's friend from college appeared mid-morning, and we all headed to town for Internet and other errands. Aud and I had agreed to do some research for Wat regarding grant opportunities and attracting a long-term volunteer, so we went into town to do that and check email, etc. Wat and his friend were working on invoices and cover letters for the shampoo, to add a bit of professionalism to their itinerant shampoo-promo activities.

The four of us shared a lunch of papaya salad with sticky rice and some pork-kidney dish, and as Aud and I finished the strange wafer-and-vanilla-ice-cream dessert she had picked out, Wat asked what our plans were for the rest of the day. Perplexed and with mouths full of cardboard-wafer, we shrugged. Normally Saturdays are work days, so we figured the morning was Internet-research time and that the afternoon would involve some kind of physical work. But Wat said that he and his friend had plans, so Aud and I wandered around town and enjoyed our unexpected extra Sunday.

We hitchhiked home, and Wat and his friend returned at dusk. We ate an early dinner of instant ramen noodles, friend egg, and some canned fish, a salty hodgepodge or dormitory-grade cooking that did not bode well for the next few days. Chabaa was not returning until Tuesday.

Sunday was more of the same--bananas and white bread for breakfast, lunch in town, and a lackluster dinner. Noodle soup went awry and was more like a salty, watery noodle dish, but it was filling along with the sauteed eggplant. Dishwashing was now a daily skirmish against endless phalanxes of six-legged invaders, but we held our ground. Our ammunition was running low, however: since Chabaa had left the plumbing had also dried up, so every cistern from the kitchen to the latrine had to be rationed carefully. Aud started bathing in the stream.

Monday I went to Hua Hin with Wat, leaving Aud alone to contend with our suddenly inhospitable conditions. When we returned for dinner, Wat was able to whip up a tasty though simple noodled mass of re-hydrated tofu, egg, and every seasoning we could find inside the kitchen as well as out. It wasn't Rachel Ray, but it worked.

All weekend, Wat (to use Audrey's phrasing) had been counting the minutes until Chabaa's return, and Tuesday he brought several updates of her precise ETA. He was even nonplussed by our efforts to end the breakfast monotony with some improvised French toast, but he was practically salivating when he left to retrieve her from the mini-bus stop. His enthusiasm made it seem as though he expected that she'd schlepped a picnic in her bag from Bangkok. Sure enough, she announced upon returning that she was a bit tired after ten-plus hours of transit and did not feel like cooking. Wat was disappointed but understanding, and he returned to the village to get three packets of instant ramen noodles, which we ate along with some Chinese steamed desserts and gelatinous rice cakes filled with dry, yellow bean paste that Chabaa had brought actually brought from Bangkok.

[An aside about ramen: this Thai stuff is WAY better than the Top Ramen we have in the states. The noodles are actually food, complete with color, texture, and perhaps even some nutritional value. And rather than a foil-wrapped sodium bomb, the seasoning that is included is actually, well...seasoning. Like, it has granules of herbs and some chili seeds and so forth. The one drawback, which Wat gleefully informed us of after we'd eaten but before Audrey's headache had set in, is that it is chock-full of MSG. Go figure.]

And so my sob-story comes to a close. Chabaa is back, bringing life back to the kitchen and filling the cabin with pleasant cooking aromas all day long. Vegetables and herbs have materialized out of thin air, and Chabaa's quiet singing has supplanted the sounds of frustration and growling tummies. And, as if by some strange housewife voodoo, the ants have abdicated and the water has returned to the pipes. It makes one wonder what we'd do without her...

--Kyle