Post Script

 Today I went back to the big, sprawling food court in tent. It's sunny with temps in the 90s and no breeze. It was hot enough so I saw Thai mopping their faces. But, what about the cooks standing over hot stoves, braziers and woks? What is the ambient temperature for them?
     As I travel about Thailand I'm struck by all the jobs people have to keep life together that I would hate to do; sweep streets by hand? cook in a food stall? etc.  It reinforces both my gratitude and my clarity that so much of that for which I'm grateful is simply an accident of my birth, where, when and to whom I was born. Don't go giving me any of that "self-made" nonsense.
   When ordering an omelette with rice I can do it verbally. But with the demands on the cooks they use a system that has customers writing their order, in Thai, and putting the note on a spindle. Holding pen and paper I turn to another customer and say "omelette with rice" in Thai, they write it for me and I place it on the spindle. Meanwhile the cook is serving several customers before me and she appears not to have noticed me. She takes several orders from the spindle and when she fills mine she nods to me. How did she know it was mine in the chaos of that stall?

Takk for alt

Al

Street Sweeper

Cooking in a food stall