Our Boxing Day starts out so chill and relaxed. The girls are continuing to enjoy their presents from yesterday, and today they’re tackling the tiny puzzles I bought for them back in Osaka. Téa’s and Maylins are the same size pieces, but Téa’s pieces are mostly see-through, and makes it much more difficult than Maylin’s solid pieces.
The girls are perfectly happy just playing all day long, setting up a market for their stuffies on the couch. (Yes, it means mom has nowhere to sit, but I do get the entire kitchen table to myself, so I have somewhere to write you from.) Joe joins the girls in a round of Overcooked!, and I pull some treats out from the shelves:
I take the last of our pain killers, and my jaw is pounding. We need to make a trip to the mall! We grab a Grab taxi, and are there within 10 minutes. Luckily, seeing as there are no days or reasons for the malls to close here, it’s no busier today than any other day. Our first stop today is the ramen restaurant from last week, knowing it’s Joe’s favourite. Yes, there are noodle soup options in the basement, but there’s something to also be said for everyone eating the same thing at the same time in a restaurant as well.
After lunch, Maylin and I head downstairs and leave Joe and Téa to do their own thing. Maylin and I are off to visit the fishes again! The tanks are all taken when we walk by the first time, and the second time. We make a round of some of our favourite stores, and by the time we make it back, there are tanks for us! The attendant offers to take our pictures:
After our foot spa, we head upstairs to meet Joe and Téa. We find the pharmacy and stock up on pain killers, and decide to head home. We haven’t even been to the pool yet today! But first, Maylin wants to pose with the decorations outside:
We leave the mall for home and the pools. No day is complete without a swim, I think it’s only been two days without taking a swim, or maybe three so far?
After swims and showers, and once it hits 5pm, we’re ready to head to Tamarind market. We are so incredibly lucky to live within a quick walk from not one, but TWO fantastic night markets! I will really miss these peaceful little walks to and from dinner. We have no idea what our next few destinations will be like! We have three places to stay before we finally get to Hong Kong around Feb 8th: First Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon, then Nha Trang, then Da Nang. We are starting to look forward to Hong Kong a lot, missing Joe’s mom’s incredible cooking especially over the holidays. But first, tonight’s market walk:
Maylin makes a beeline to the hot dog vendor. With 60 baht in her hand, she pays for her “original hot dog in a bun, please” and puts the remaining 5 baht in the tip box. It’s her very own night market tradition!
Téa has been craving the stone oven pizza for a while, and tried to get her sister to split it with her, but the hotdog was too tempting, again. The pizzas are about three times more expensive than anything else at the market, and take about 15 minutes to cook, but I have to say it’s very tasty! We order the pizza, and then go sit down in our usual area to wait.
I know what I want to have tonight. Usually I’ll walk around and browse and see what my cravings want, but there’s this Indian vendor kind of tucked in between the pizza and the hamburger stalls, so I don’t really walk by there too often. But I saw on their menu yesterday that they have palak paneer, and so that’s what I have decided to try today.
Palak means spinach, and paneer is an Indian cheese with the texture of tofu, but it melts. It’s a solid that you can easily chop with a knife, but unlike feta, it stays in neat cubes. When heated in a palak curry, it goes softer and feels “melty” in the mouth, but it is not a stretchy cheese at all. Together, they are absolutely delicious! The naan is not freshly made, but I’m nitpicking.
The second thing I was excited about on the Indian vendor’s menu, was Pani Puri! I have watched contestants on Australian Masterchef make these little crispy hollow balls for the judges, fill them with pickled vegetables and then pour the sauces in right before it goes in the judges’ mouths, and I have never tried them before. Until tonight!
The crispy shell (puri) is the texture of a pringle chip, and loaded inside are pickled potato, chickpeas and red onions. The spicy water (puni) are tangy, sweet and spicy and COLD! Too cold, all my teeth shiver and it hurts. The green mint sauce is actually still defrosting, so I screw the cap back on and give it a good shake, then unscrew in the hopes that it will defrost by the time I take my next bite.
The shells are super porous, and the liquid starts seeping through the minute I pour it into the shell. It becomes a very fast little race to get it from the plate to the mouth without wasting too many precious drops of sauce. We may have done this all wrong, because I mixed the two liquids in each bite, although now that I’m reading up on the specifics, maybe we’re meant to have either the red OR the green for each one? In any case, we love these little bites, and will definitely order them again somewhere else!
Joe didn’t end up ordering anything this evening, seeing as I ordered two dishes, and Téa optimistically set out to finish an entire pizza by herself. So Joe and I share the Indian food, and he snacks on pizza inbetween bites of palak paneer and pani puri.
After they have finished their “main courses”, the girls finally try the one vendor they keep forgetting about: the cookie vendor! For 98 baht, they return to the table with big smiles and even bigger cookies!
After our usual hour or so at the night market, watching the crowds thicken and the lines lengthen, we head home just as it gets properly dark. I continue down to the fruit stand for my papaya and some watermelon for the girls, while Joe and the girls head upstairs to set up for another game night.
I don’t think Christmas has ever been this relaxing. If you ever get the chance, one Christmas away from the hustle and bustle is highly recommended. While we do still love our traditions in Canada and look forward to creating new holiday patterns in Vancouver, this one turned out to be not so bad either.