The condominium building is nondescript and peeling on the outside. The hallways are bare, white walls with a few scuff marks. But then the condominium inside has a wonderful view, beautiful new hardwood floors, and very very effective air conditioning. The pool on the sixth floor terrace is luxurious, some of it in shade, some of it exposed, with blue tiles, elephant sculptures, and a beautiful table and benches of highly polished and shellacked not-perfectly-finished wood, where one can see the edges of the planks and bark.

The Private Eye and I spoke with the Expat Teacher and made plans for today. Silamander has headed to the country for the weekend with his family, so it’s just the Private Eye and I who will head to her expat enclave for fun with the family and dinner. We haven’t seen her since her wedding in… 2002. She and her husband (then boyfriend) stopped by our place in Boulder in 2000 on a road trip.

Their wedding was near Philadelphia, and Iron Chef Japanese (Morimoto) had just opened his first restaurant there. The day before the wedding, which involved huge amounts of barbequeue and bouncy house for the adults to play in, we ate at Morimoto with the Smiling Knife Girl, also there for the wedding. It was my first meal that I paid for myself in a high style restaurant. The food was outstanding. I’ve come to learn, though, that I’m drawn to rustic and simple cuisine much more than high cuisine. I’ve been to The French Laundry once. The food was divine and spread over four hours. It was a culinary production, full with pomp, tension, expectation, delight and surprise. But given the choice, a plate of pasta at the Incanto bar draws me more. Hence my love of burrito trucks.

For this reason, I am so far loving the food in Thailand. Street food, simple food, just made and made well. For lunch yesterday I had catfish, smoked fish, and eggplant on a bed of rice. Dinner, we huddled around a tiny table on the sidewalk for noodles. Unfortunately, after the noodles jet lag set in, so we tucked in early. It also seems that seeing Muay Thai is a bigger endeavor than we thought, one which deserves more research.

— The Professor