Craving for meat

I couldn't find any meat to eat in the market again yesterday, as we are still in the grip of a purist vegetarian food festival, where to eat meat is to sin.

Thai shopkeepers joke about it. I visited one shop yesterday, after the owner called out to me from the street.

The day before, I had turned down her offer to try vegetarian noodles.

'Come on - just the once,' she said.

I ordered khao pad kra pao jey - bamboo shoots, mushrooms tofu, and basil-leaf on rice.

The owner is a woman in her 40s, whose daughter, aged about 20, helps run the shop.

She was wearing pretty shorts and a T-shirt, and gave me a big smile.

A butch lesbian was sitting at a table with the daughter. She was wearing a saggy-baggy pair of jeans, and had dyed her hair gold. They look like girlfriends, and were together the last time I visited the shop, too.

The butch one wore her jeans like young men the same age. They hang off her rear end, and are torn at the bottom where she walks on the ends.

Two office staff turned up, and ordered. I heard the owner joke that to cook that dish would be a 'sin'.

After I finished my unspectacular basil and vegetable dish, I asked her if she would be tempted to cook meat for me, just once.

'No, I can't - there's another eight days to go,' she said.

The vegetarian festival is popular among Chinese. Some devotees get around entirely in white.

Today I saw two women clothed head to toe in white, walking along the railway line next to my place. They look like Buddhist nuns, who also wear white. Is that the idea?

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Mum's shop is dead. Two customers turned up for a beer in the three hours I was there last night - that was it.

When I arrived, Mum and her husband were eating a shrimp salad she had made. My God - fish meat! I thought.

Mum offered me a plate of it, which was dripping with mayonnaise. Delicious.

I spent the night watching comings and goings at her shop. Most customers dropped in for cigarettes, or a Pepsi on ice in a bag.

At Mum's request, I poured a few Pepsi drinks for customers, as I was sitting closer to the fridge cabinet.

Mum called over young Pao, from the shop next door, to order a tom yum dish.

I do not talk to Pao much these days, as all he and his friends who serve at the eatery next door ever want is money for beer and liquor.

However, Mum remembers that I like him.

'The farang wants to know if you would like a beer,' she joked.

I had not said a word, but I enjoyed the game she was playing.

Pao shook his head. No, of course I don't want a beer - not if it's coming from a farang who lusts after me!

Actually, Pao was probably not thinking that way. He, too, knows that I like him.

He is shy, and does not talk to me when people are present, even in front of Mum.

Once his eatery closes and there is no one else around, he relaxes and can be himself. When he is free for a beer, we talk.

The shop was quiet - only two regular customers turned up, both graduate performing arts students.

The pace of Thai life can be a contrary thing. If I try to hurry it, it will slow. If I am content just to watch, the scene will get lively.

But after a few hours, I felt in need of sleep, so trundled off home.