Monday, May 3

Pretty quiet couple of days around here. Bangkok has moved into its more restrictive lockdown, and dine-in restaurants are now closed (as well as parks, schools, gyms, massage parlors, etc).

The most exciting thing I have to report on is a couple meals...

On Saturday, I cooked in our Airbnb for the first time (not counting our porridge breakfasts). I made chicken larb with ground chicken, fish sauce, chili powder, a little sugar, fresh mint, cilantro, chilies, scallions, shallot, and lime juice. I served it with sticky rice I bought from a nearby fried chicken cart and sliced cucumbers. And we drank homemade guava kombucha along with it.

I don't have a mortar and pestle or spice grinder do I can't make roasted rice powder, and I couldn't find any at the small grocery stores nearby, so I don't know if you could really call this dish larb, but it was as close as I could get. Next time I'm going to make it with mushrooms and eggs (and I am determined to find some roasted rice powder).

For Sunday dinner, we walked over to Suan Phlu, where we picked up fried chicken, sticky rice, and papaya salad, which we brought home to eat.

On Monday, we took a train to Sukhumvit to get my phone screen repaired (I accidentally dropped it what seemed like a very short distance and it cracked). We really got a fuller sense of the lockdown—almost every restaurant, café, and street food cart has put away its outside seating, so there are very few options if you want to sit somewhere and have a cold drink or just take a break from walking in the heat.

We were lucky to find a street cart near the phone repair shop that let us sit at one of their little plastic tables to eat our lunch, but I think that was probably an exception.

My guess is that for the next couple of weeks, we will stick closer to home. I have a fiction project I'd like to get started on, and maybe I'll do a little more cooking at home?

Anyway, if these entries start to get a little less frequent, it's only because there's less news to report at the moment—blame it on Pandemic Times.

BUT on Monday evening, we did have dinner with another couple! We met up with Sean (the American I connected with a couple weeks ago) and his girlfriend, Emma, at their very-close-to-us apartment in Sathorn. It was lovely to have the chance to chat with other people, and to learn about their experiences in Bangkok and traveling around the world. And the food was awesome—Sean made a Spanish tortilla with cauliflower, spaghetti puttanesca, and a green salad. And we brought over some sweets from a fancy bakery to share—a tiny apple tart, a chocolate caramel tart, and a chocolate chip walnut cookie.

It was pretty cool to get outside of our little bubble-of-two for an evening.

Thai cat graffiti