Dinner with some Thais

I had a kinda second dinner at the hotel yesterday. Ja's sisters showed up to the hotel (as it seems they do a few times a week) and brought some food. They basically set up on one of the tables by the pool... and its late enough that enough that Ja doesn't really need to watch the desk (but can still see it from the pool). Ja's boyfriend, who also lives at the hotel, came down to join them as well. I was sitting down in the lobby at the time so they invited me to eat with them. This was definitely an odd meal (food was good though).

Ja speaks pretty basic English.. but I can have decent conversation with her with little trouble, the older of her two younger sister has a very good English vocabulary... but can't really pronounce much, and the other two speak very little English. This made conversations very.... tedious, but still possible and quite fun.

I tried to sit back and watch as much as I could before eating.... so that I (hopefully) wouldn't do anything stupid..... you know.. like actually eat with the fork. I will try to explain the set up we had.... there was a dish of very spicy veggies and other things, a kinda spicy seafood soup, a fish, some fried eggs, and two plates of rice. We each had a plate and a spoon and a fork. Ja's boyfriend (whos name is also Ja.... ya.. that got confusing quick) took one plate of rice(which he shared with Ja).. and the other one stayed in the middle of the table.

Everyone uses the fork to push rice onto their spoon and moves some rice to their plate. Lin put rice on my plate for me... then started pulling the meet off of the fish and passing some to each persons plate. It was pretty impressive how she managed to work around the bones of the fish. All of the other dishes we were supposed to just scoop the stuff onto our spoon with our fork and then just move it to our own plate.. add it to some rice.. .and then eat from the spoon. I had been wondering why we got a spoon and a fork at every restaurant I had been to.

They were very nice and always offering me more... and I would occasionally turn away from my plate for a second and when I turned back around there would be more food on my plate.

It was a lot of fun and a learned a few more Thai words :)