Chairs and tables stacked, one lonely woman sat under the wooden roof baked by the searing afternoon sun. We could not find food for miles, we just had to eat what we found. And there in contradiction, she said no Quay Teow served, never bought noodles for the day. We could however order anything we want, such as fired rice and such. In the midst of occasional ten wheelers roaring by, it seemed we were the first customers in this entire world she had. Deserted, isolated, no one seemed to have eaten there in decades. A rolling stack of passing hay would have made the scene pretty dramatic. Our bottles of Coke were served, the ice she said “we don’t have much today, never buy”. Coke, okay it tasted like Coke… minus the bubbles that were supposed to effervescent. I sipped the dull water pondering if she bought the carton 20 years ago, one bottle served once annually.
Some chickens walked by pecking the hard ground, some very elderly chicken. Waited for so many years to be eaten, their feather were tattered, they were balding. One stared at me, and in its stare told me telepathically “order fried whole chicken or I will commit suicide tomorrow, please eat me”.
Someone came by and the place was soon immersed in the sharp melodic strumming of old E-San music. A juke box, it still worked I thought it didn’t. It had a TV in, a very old TV embedded. I believe the jukebox was made when I was still a sperm.
I ate my fried rice on the aluminum table top. The sunny side up egg slapped on top of my cuisine. Was it an egg on the way to the status of century egg? Never mind, I was hungry I just ate. Swallowing the bits, I stared up the wooden wall. The calendar, the most interesting artifact, was actually a wanted list of criminals. Just my another day in Thailand.
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