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Sticky Rice at the Orchid Cafe
Di Bob Andrews
Azioni libro
Inizia a leggereLunghezza: 132 pagine2 ore
- Editore:
- XinXii
- Pubblicato:
- Jul 16, 2012
- ISBN:
- 9786162220678
- Formato:
- Libro
Descrizione
It seemed a good idea at the time. The village chosen by Bob Andrews as a refuge from the chaos of Bangkok lay just off the north-south motorway. His partner Pan already ran the village store and noodle shop. Why not expand the business to include an English-style tea shop? But Bob hadn’t done his homework. Thai motorway travelers are in too much of a hurry to break their journey for a pot of tea and a plate of crumpets. And Thai villagers eat rice soup for breakfast, not bacon and eggs. Nevertheless, Bob did gain some profit from his failed enterprise, winning a rare insight into the life of a typical Thai village.
Informazioni sul libro
Sticky Rice at the Orchid Cafe
Di Bob Andrews
Lunghezza: 132 pagine2 ore
Descrizione
It seemed a good idea at the time. The village chosen by Bob Andrews as a refuge from the chaos of Bangkok lay just off the north-south motorway. His partner Pan already ran the village store and noodle shop. Why not expand the business to include an English-style tea shop? But Bob hadn’t done his homework. Thai motorway travelers are in too much of a hurry to break their journey for a pot of tea and a plate of crumpets. And Thai villagers eat rice soup for breakfast, not bacon and eggs. Nevertheless, Bob did gain some profit from his failed enterprise, winning a rare insight into the life of a typical Thai village.
- Editore:
- XinXii
- Pubblicato:
- Jul 16, 2012
- ISBN:
- 9786162220678
- Formato:
- Libro
Informazioni sull'autore
Veteran journalist, feature writer, television author and producer (London Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Bavarian TV, Deutsche Welle). First book, “Boom Boom Baby,” published in 2006.
After the success of “Boom Boom Baby” (“a gem”: Pattaya Mail), British author Bob Andrews returns to rural northern Thailand to ruminate on his failed attempt to run an English teashop in a Thai village where grilled frogs are more of a delicacy than crumpets and cream.
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Anteprima del libro
Sticky Rice at the Orchid Cafe - Bob Andrews
publisher.
Prologue
It seemed such a good idea at the time (as so many failed entrepreneurs have said in their time). Pan, my partner in every sense, ran the local stores and bar in her village in northern Thailand. The business netted one hundred baht or so a day, about the average daily wage in those remote parts. But there was definitely room for expansion. The small teak bar, on which stood jars of local whisky, could be extended, there was room in the shop for a few extra tables and across the yard stood a pretty, flower-smothered pergola, with massive tables and benches hewn from solid tree trunks.
Most importantly, Thailand’s main north-south motorway ran past the village, which was connected to the artery by a slip road that passed directly in front of Pan’s place. Why not open a motorway cafe? Tourists whizzing north or south had an unlimited choice of noodle stalls that hugged the motorway like shabby, wayside waifs. But nowhere on this stretch of the road could the weary western motorist find a decent cup of tea and anything resembling a currant bun.
Pattaya and Phuket’s Patong have flourishing eateries offering everything a visiting tourist or home-sick retiree could wish for -- in the culinary line, that is. An all-American breakfast
at six in the evening? No problem. Fish and chips wrapped in paper, like they serve up in Hull, Huddersfield or Hamburg? No problem, either -- and nobody bats an eyelid if you just chuck the greasy paper in the gutter after your perambulatory feast. This is Thailand, where freedom is writ large -- freedom to eat just about whatever your heart desires, at whatever time of day suits you and to dispose of the accompanying plastic and paper accoutrements just as you please.
So what better country, thought I, to open up one of those old-fashioned English tea-shops, with teapots and china fresh from the kilns of Lampang, chocolate biscuits from Big-C, Earl Grey tea from the venerable house of Twinings (By Appointment to her Majesty Queen II, tea and coffee merchants
)? Big-C -- the Fortnum and Mason of the North -- provided just the right kind of sandwich bread: white, whole meal and whole meal with honey.
From the same supermarket shelves come ham and cheese (New Zealand Cheddar and Edam) in abundance, although at a price. To offset these extravagances, fresh farm eggs, tomatoes and even cucumber are a baht bargain at the local market.
Why, I could even offer, as well as cucumber sandwiches, an all-day English breakfast (even an American version, at a push), although my Thai partner in this enterprise -- long-suffering Pan -- protested at the prospect of busloads of Brits, Scandinavians and worse clogging the soi outside her village noodle-shop and general stores. She blanched at the thought of having to handle orders such as two eggs, sunny side, up, love, a coupla rashers of bacon -- but make it crispy, there’s a darlin’ -- and don’t go easy on them baked beans.
We had an afternoon course on how to make a pot of tea (warm the pot beforehand, my dear, and make sure the water is really boiling as you pour it on the tea. And, no, heavens no -- not the water from the household tap.
) Pan is a quick learner and actually did a bit of homework -- I caught her leafing through her dictionary late at night for the Thai word for muffins.
A name was quickly chosen for the cafe. Pan ruled out The Greasy Spoon
after referring again to her dictionary. Not only can I make a rather good pot of tea but I’ve discovered a knack of growing orchids. So what better name for our rural teashop than The Orchid Cafe
? It didn’t sound half as picturesque in Thai -- Lan Gluaymai -- but I concurred with Pan’s businesslike view that we might actually entice some Thais to call, so up went that name, too.
The village signwriter made three very pleasing placards, in ascending order of size: one for the shop front, one for the end of the soi and a damn great hoarding for the motorway that passes but a hundred yards from the house and which we hoped would funnel off lots and lots of trade.
That’s a fairly accurate description of the procedure for opening a business in the rural wilds of Thailand. No forms were produced, no formal application made, no permission sought for the erection of a Turn left here for the Orchid Cafe
hoarding on one of the country’s busiest motorways. Easy. Just get the signs up, fill the fridge with the necessary provisions, open the doors for business -- and hey presto. Sit back and sing along with the ring-a-ding-ding of the cash register.
Well, as I say, it seemed a good idea at the time. But so many ideas, like ships launched into heavy seas, founder on the rocks of reality. The only difference here being that reality turned out to be fantasy land -- a shadowy territory which, paradoxically, is the real Thailand...
Have A Good Day
As every long-time resident will confirm, two little words dictate life in rural Thailand: Wan di
(a good day
). Three words, I suppose, if you include the opposite: Wan mai di
(Not a good day
). They don’t refer to the weather or to the kind of day which begins with a joyous leap out of bed but which is then perhaps followed by a painful encounter between a big toe and the bedside table. Wan di
, Thai-style, is probably better translated as an auspicious day.
Auspicious
occasions are, of course, not a peculiarly Thai phenomenon. The ancient Romans used to study birds’ entrails in sanguine searches for auspicious signs. Why do blushing brides in the West steer their chosen men to the altar in June? It can’t be because the weather is predictably better in that summer month. My Queen and I share a birthday in June (hers, though, is official), and it almost invariably rains on the big day. No, Juno was the goddess of marriage -- that’s why Britain’s clergymen can’t take a holiday in her auspicious
month.
But that, and other similar customs, are hangovers from another age. Where else in the modern world (can we rule out China here?) but in Thailand is virtually every important decision dependent on a local mystic’s pronouncement of the most auspicious day on which to undertake it?
And so it was that the opening of the Orchid Cafe was postponed about one week until an auspicious day
had been established. And who decrees an auspicious
day? The local temple wants nothing to do with what it probably regards as a survivor of truly pagan beliefs, so the decision is made by a lay sage -- in this case, Pan’s father. I’m still too nervous to inquire into the mysteries of his prognostic powers, so I tend the orchids and wait for the oracle.
Pan’s father had already been called in to look for other auspicious days in his mystic calendar, and up to now he’s had a 100 percent success rate. At least, no catastrophe struck on the days he had decreed as auspicious. He’s on a winner here, of course, for nobody who consults his oracle would dare to flout it, so no catastrophe occurs. Sometimes the oracle is delivered unbidden, and (theoretically) that’s just when a catastrophe could occur. On a Tuesday that had been deemed auspicious I had an important contract to sign in Chiang Mai, but on Monday a virulent attack of conjunctivitis put me totally out of action. I decided to postpone the business meeting until the Wednesday. Pan returned from a meeting with her parents to report that Wednesdays and Fridays were inauspicious days that month. It would have to be Thursday.
But, Pan!
I protested. Conjunctivitis is scarcely a credible reason to postpone an important meeting, and now I have to tell the guy a further postponement is necessary because the next available day is an inauspicious one?
He’ll understand,
said Pan confidently.
And, would you believe it, he did. No problem,
he said. Quite understand.
In a subtle way, Pan’s dad took over the job of running our engagements book. Life in Bangkok had weaned Pan off reliance on a calendar of good and bad days, and when she first returned to the village she’d plunge unthinkingly into arrangements which her dad would then summarily undo.
Her first mistake was to engage the services of the local Jack of All Trades to start laying floor tiles for the Orchid Cafe on a particular Wednesday, discovering later from her father that Wednesdays were not auspicious days during that particular month to embark on any business undertaking.
The tile-layer (who presumably also hadn’t checked up on good days and bad days) was none too pleased to be told he’d have to postpone a start on the work for one day and lose a few hundred baht income. But then he came up with the kind of pragmatic solution with which the Thais are very adept at sidestepping such nuisances as a wan di
or a wan mai di.
After completing another job of work on Tuesday he called by that evening, ran a hand over the stacked piles of tiles, nudged the sand heap with his foot, shifted one bag of cement slightly, took a handful of sand, patted that down in a corner of the concrete floor, lay one tile on top and then sank a glass of whisky before kicking his motorbike into life and heading for home. A symbolic start had been made to the job that lay ahead -- he had technically begun the task on Tuesday and could now proceed in earnest and with impunity on the Wednesday. Phew, crisis over.
The next big decision which required my family soothsayer’s intercession was the purchase of a motorcar. After several trips to town balanced on a lurching, unsecured wooden bench in the back of Kun Son’s battered songthaew, I really couldn’t wait to get mobile in anything approaching a motor vehicle which I wouldn’t have to share with 30 or so chattering Thai housewives on a shopping expedition.
That ruled out a pick-up, of course. A pick-up, even one of those macho, ram-raider jobs with a cow-catcher contraption on the bonnet. six searchlights on the top of the cab and a set of fairy lights at the stern, had been struck off my shopping list
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