we don’t eat floor fish

Our second night in Thailand, we ended up at this Chinese restaurant, Twin Elephant. The entire menu was in Thai and Chinese… no common language there. Each menu page had a cheap word-art-esque drawing of a chicken, pig, cow, or eggplant. So we picked which animal/plant we wanted to eat, and just pointed to some random item on that page. They were numbered, so we picked our favorite number and dove in…

Apparently, they didn’t have any of the numbers we pointed to. Thankfully the chef spoke minimal English and talked us through what he did have. Despite Brody saying, “no fish,” the guy told the waitress to write it down anyway.

I know this is a long blog, but this gets good.

We were all served our food rather quickly. It was all horrible. We got a plate of swamp-vegetablesthat tasted like sewers of the everglades and cigarette butts. Brody got a blackened chicken, mostly bones. It came with a nice surprise. Chicken talon. They blackened the chicken’s foot, and served it on the plate. He wouldn’t eat it for just 100 Baht (about $3). He already ate his daring food for the day (a spoon full of spicy Thai peppers).

After a few minutes of eating, we saw one of the cooks reach into the fish tank and pull out a live one. “Guess we’re getting fish.” The problem with plucking live fish out of a tank, they’re still alive. The cook dropped the fish just feet away from us. That little guy flopped around, slipping and sliding right out of the guy’s hand. It flopped it’s way under the drink fridge. He picked it up… swoop… back to the ground it went. Keep fighting buddy, you’ll find water soon!

Twenty seconds later, the cook was walking back to the kitchen, a fish held with two hands. Now, when you need both hands to carry a fish, here’s a tip for pushing open a door. Use a leg, a shoulder, an elbow, some appendage not clutching the slithering sea-booger to your body. Here’s what you don’t do… let the fish go. He did get the door open, but lost the fish. That thing was popping and locking like Mexican-jumping-bean popcorn. The fish slipped right through the swinging doors, disappearing into the kitchen, to never be seen again… until 10 minutes later when it’s brought to our table.

Brody said no. He shook his head. He put up his hands. “NO!” He gestured so much he probably gave himself gesticular cancer, but did the waitress understand him… Nope. She look confused as she cleared room on the table for the floor fish, then quickly scampered off.

When it came to settle bill, the untouched fish on our table was the most expensive item on it. We told the waitress, “we don’t eat floor fish.” Her response: a look of absence. A loss of words. Even a little fear. What did we resort to? Brody got up, and acted out the whole scenario. She followed him to the fish tank, where he plucked a fake fish out of the water… dropped it. He tried to pick it up, but oh… it slipped out of his hands. He carried the invisible fish a little further and oh… on the floor once more. “We don’t eat floor fish.”

The best part was when she took the bill back, brought it to a co-worker, and re-created Brody’s charades. It was funny. She only dropped the fish twice in her rendition. Regardless, we didn’t have to pay for it, and we left hungry…

So we ended up back at 7-11. I got me strawberry Hello Panda, cola jelly, picachu juice box and watermelon seeds. It was a good night.

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