In Search of Jok

As you might be able to tell from my full figured physique, I do love food.  I’ve mentioned before how I can occasionally get frustrated seeing all this delicious looking stuff here in Thailand and not knowing the words for it.  I get a little shy about ordering because I don’t want to look like an idiot, nor do I want to order the wrong thing and have them bring me a shoe with cheese on it. 

Yesterday, I hung out with some new friends and the topic of food came up and one of them mentioned rice porridge.  I’ve never had anything similar to rice porridge in America, but I remembered back when I was young in Indonesia and rice porridge was one of my favorite things to eat.  It’s delicious; my Filipino friend who was talking about it shared my enthusiasm.  Most importantly, he told me not only the Thai word for it: jok, but also where to find it in my neighborhood.  

I went home counting the hours until breakfast where I could wander over for a nice Bt20 (60 cents) bowl of jok. No chance that I would forget the word; it’s the first three letters of my name!

Well, this morning being Mother’s Day in America, I had an appointment to Skype with Mom.  This is the first time we had Skyped, and it was really cool. Technology is wonderful.  Again to compare this overseas journey to my last venture to SE Asia in 1990, back then, we exchanged written letters that took 2 to 3 weeks to cross the Pacific.

Anyways, after the call, I headed out in search of jok… You’ll have to watch the video to see what happened next.