So I got a coffee on the road the other day. We were headed to the Handicap Village for jewelry & we stopped at a gas station coffee shop.
A really nice one actually.
And I got a hot cappuccino to go.
I decided to let myself splurge a little & add some syrup* to my coffee.
(*here in Thailand, they make a sweet syrup that you can add in your coffee for free that they keep over by the sugar).
So I checked the syrup to make sure there were no ants floating in it by looking through the glass. Looked clean to me.
Poured a big dollop in there & as soon as the "dollop" came out of the glass and dropped into my coffee- I saw them! 20 or so huge dead black ants floating on the TOP of the syrup!
I must have poured 6-7 big fat dead bodies into my coffee in that one fast move.
I instantly ran to Anne & told her what happened. I told her I need to get a new coffee & asked if she thought they'd let me have another one for free.
Well, Anne knowing how we Westerners are about ants in our food, totally understood my problem.
But the Thai people working at the coffee shop obviously had very little experience with Westerners and offered to just pull the dead ants out of my coffee for me.
How they could even find them?! I have no clue!
It turned into a 15 minute discussion of Anne explaining to them how Thai's dont think anything of ants and just eat them if a few fall into their drink/food/whatever. They just say, "oh, extra protein".
Westerners and Foreigners on the other hand, are totally disgusted and wont eat/drink it and would probably never return to that shop again (I actually have a shop I've stopped going to b/c they always have ants in their food!! Gross!).
At first the lady was very resistant and saying I had to buy a whole new drink. I was fine w/ that and actually had kind of lost my appetite after pouring a whole ant grave into my coffee.
But Anne was very nice (and persistent) in making sure these Thai women understood - for the future of their business- that it's not ok to have ants in their food/drinks/syrups/anything.
They had a Really nice shop, but that people will think it's dirty and not come back because of something like this.
Finally, Anne figured out a way to help these Thai women understand just how disgusting it is to us, the thought of eating ants.
It turns out, and I just learned this from this experience- that Thai's absolutely HATE flies! They think they are so gross and full of diseases!
If a few ants are in their soup-- no problem, extra protein.
If a fly falls in their soup-- they will not touch it and demand a new bowl!
Who knew?!
So finally after Anne used that analogy (they hate ants like you hate flies) the ladies were practically dying to make me a new cup of coffee!! When before they were insisting I had to buy a new cup! And when I was leaving they were all smiles and asking me, "will you come back here? Will you come see us again?? Thank you so much!"
Ha! Culture . . . who knew?!
So, if you come to Thailand and you have ants in your food- dont expect the Thai cook to really care much or be willing to give you a new plate. But, if you have a fly in your food, know that the Thai's will totally sympathize with you & be just as disgusted as you are.
Moral of the story (or, what I've come to decide): I will carry around with me fake plastic flies to stick in my food whenever I get served something with ants in it. Guaranteed to get me a new serving*!
(*though chances are pretty high that even the new serving will have ants in it as they are usually in everything and have probably been in that dish since before you even arrived!)
No comments:
Post a Comment