ISO: Good Pad Thai

Our goal? To find good pad thai. Nay, great pad thai. The kind of pad thai that would make us forget about Bangkok 54 on Columbia Pike. For seven days, we ordered pad thai at every chance. To say it was a 'hit or miss' experience would be an understatement. To our point, we present several exhibits of proof:

Exhibit 1:
We patronize a street restaurant and order 'the local' (meaning - the only thing on the menu). It turns out the local is basically a bowl of mystery meat from which one can also still frighteningly identify valves, sinews and types of muscle. We end up with what we come to term "spicy soup" since we reject all meat and are left with basically a bowl of well-flavored water.

Exhibit 2:
We enter a restaurant. We notice only westerners in the small establishment. This should have been our first warning. But we heeded not and proceeded in. And then noticed one small fluffy dog who greeted us from atop a table where it is relaxing in the fan (note the picture - you can see it on the back left table). We order. The pad thai has a million tiny shrimps that resemble cockroaches. Maybe they were cockroaches - a very realistic possiblity. That was warning number two. We pick out the cockroach shrimps and continue to eat until I noticed a long white hair in my food. I look around - no person in the restaurant has white hair. But a dog does... just then another hair - in Anna's curry.

Exhibit 3:
No explanation necessary. We assume it was mushrooms, but it very well could be mystery meat. Reference Exhibit 1.





Exhibit 4:
We take a break from dog hair, mystery meats and greasy pad thai and find refuge in Magnum bars.




Exhibit 5:
To our great horror, we discover that our fear of mystery meats and possible cockroaches is justified...




Exhibit 6:
We go to the floating market/ restaurant. By now, expectations are low. We order and I pick out the cockroach-like shrimp. We find SUCCESS! in the form of some sort of Thai salad and satay ... until a strange white ball of something appears (in the picture: left side on white plate). We ate the satay anyhow. We were hungry and little white balls no longer scare us.

Exhibit 7:
Our last night - we FINALLY find pad thai that makes Bangkok 54 hang its head in shame. 50 cents off the street - we eat it on the curb listening to someone karaoke Coldplay in nearly 100 degree weather. It was a Thai moment well worth a possible case of ghirardia caused from a week's worth of possible mystery meats.

___

Bonus Exhibit? I pull a Mentos out of a package. I notice a curious hole in it. Strange, I think. So I crack it open with my teeth and ... a small red ant crawls out. I screech and throw it out the window. Sadly I did so before I thought to take a picture. It seems as though my survival instincts were stronger than my archival instincts.