Banzaan Food Market

There are motherless meals and then there are motherless meals. This one was the former.

A bucket filled with the choicest critters and catch purchased still flapping from the seafood market down stairs, carried upstairs where carefully numbered stalls with similar menus cooked them for you in a preparation of your choice for the price of a fart and a burp. Of course for the additional cost of a little pee, you could buy rice and some kalian or “Morning Glory”, greens which serve one purpose, and one only, to make your morning glorious.

At first, the concept itself was difficult to grasp. I mean, where does one start? For the first fifteen minutes or so, I found myself pin-balling around vendors, probing their produce in a gastro-inebriated daze. So much to choose from and only one stomach to fill. It was a tragedy that deserved verse. In time though, I realised that being overwhelmed was a part of being in Thailand. It isn’t a country that slowly soothes your senses and nurtures your experiences. It’s a country that shoots a ping-pong ball at your face when you’re walking down a crowded walking street. If you’re not ready for it, then it’s already too late. This is key. You are just passing by this country as things occur. You don’t experience things here. You are experienced. And what an experienced it is!

The more time I spend in Thailand, the more I wish I was 25 with a year off and enough money to back-pack needlessly across the many islands there are to discover. It does help that I am a complete water-baby in ignorant comfort of my not so perfect proportions in the absence of a shirt, and there are umpteen number of opportunities to take your shirt off and jump into a canyon / sea / river / waterbody, I assure you. I’d sell all my shirts before moving here for good. This time though, it was a short 4 day hiatus to get my open water diving license and belt some unbelievable grub.

Having said that, I must admit, Banzaan, is not for the faint of heart. It’s a slimy, grimy, honky, sweaty, crowded market place that you’d rather avoid in favour of the air-conditioned comfort of the Jungceylon Mall food court close by, but that would be a mistake of epic proportions. Speaking of epic proportions, did I mention we bought us a 1.5 kilo lobster? We named him Daniel. We even took him for a short walk, to that special place where egrets perched on the rocks until the tide came in and burbled white foam over black stone. Finally, when the time came, we said a little prayer and handed him over for butter-garlicking. A-fucking-men! His life was short, but man we made it worthwhile.

There was a stupendous clam stir-fry too, tossed in a sweet, spicy, coconutty sauce that had us licking every shell until we thought people were staring at us. We stopped for a moment to survey and saw that there were others on other tables with similar inhibitions, one, an Asian gentleman, looked me square in the face with the tail of a giant mantis shrimp sticking out of his mouth. We were at home. This was family.

The prawns, deep fried with a little coating of chilli and garlic were eaten whole, head, shells, feet, everything. The squid, cooked to perfection but slightly under-seasoned, should have been placed on a mantle-piece as a symbol of culinary perfection.

There are motherless meals and there are motherless meals. This one was the latter.