Thai dinner

Yesterday was a good day. Yesterday I had my first dinner with Thai people exclusively. It's a major step. But to understand why it's such a big deal I have to explain a little bit more how things are going down here.


There is a truly multi cultural international environment here, with mainly people from South and Southeast asia. Thai people represent probably less than half of the students. Many people arrive here without marks. So, as a natural human trend, a newcomer will hang out with his fellow citizens when he arrives. The problem is that it becomes a habit. This results in that most students spend 95% of their free time with their fellow citizens.

During the classes you have an pretty impressive cultural mixing, but outside, putting aside group works, very little mix.


Have been there for 3 weeks and until now (actually Yesterday) spent all my free time with French speaking people. I started getting acquainted with some Thai people though.

So yesterday after a 2 hours long chatting, I ended up being invited to dinner by my 3 new friends. We went outside AIT campus, to Thamassat (5 min away by car).

We went to a restaurant where I would never go with French people. You know these little nice restaurants that you have to know to go to. The menus were written only in Thai anyway so you have to come with some Thai people.


The food was very good, we ate a little bit of everything, a grilled fish, steamed seafood, grilled vegetables, a seafood soup, an omelete with something-i-dont-remember and of course rice. I had the chance to see how thai people eat, and it's quite different from the occidental way. They eat a little bit of everything in the same time. The only thing that is left apart is the dessert.


We discussed of our different cultures. It was quite an interesting conversation. I'm gathering enough material to make a first post on the Thai culture. I want it to be consistent and avoid all the cliché. I'm gonna blog about it soon.


The minor detail you might want to know is that the only place you find a knife is a kitchen. And this is an assumption since I have not seen a single knife until now. And while everything is made taking into account that fact, sometimes you find yourself briefly looking for a knife.


Next time I'll take pictures of the food so that you, dear reader, get an idea of what does Thai food look like?