On Bamboo Worms and other delights

I'll start this installment with a short vignette from Khun Awn:

A Special Delicacy
In my country, we have a special dish that is delicious to eat. That's the bamboo worm. The bamboo worm grows in the bamboo. Before they become caterpillars, they eat bamboo shoots and bamboo fiber until the bamboo is very tall. When the bamboo is tall and the caterpillars mature they will bore a hole in the bamboo. The become butterflies and fly out.
You can buy bamboo worms in the market in during the winter from December to February. We make a special dish from bamboo worms. We fry them in oil with salt and pepper. We eat them for snack anytime.
Bamboo worms are very expensive and difficult to find because we must wait for their season. They are very clean and very delicious. So bamboo worms are special snacks in my country.
End
Other than a bit of difficulty explaining the maturation process of the bamboo worm, that's another small insight into the life of the people from the countryside in Isaan.
Common misconception number one: Thai people use chopsticks to eat. Thai people in the city actually use fork and spoon English style to eat. Thai people from the countryside either use spoon or fingers. Most Thai people from the city CAN use chopsticks and if eating Japanese food do quite well with them. Even most Thai people from the countryside CAN use chopsticks as well. I have never seen any Thai people using chopsticks other than in a Japanese restaurant.
While Thailand is one country, people from different regions refer to each other in different ways. It's much the same in the USA. There are southerners, northerners, westerners, New Yawkers and so on. In Thailand people from the Bangkok area are referred to as khon thai (Thai people). Those from Isaan are khon isaan. Perhaps the worst insult one can give to a person from Isaan is to call them khon lao, meaning from Laos. Laotians are thought to be totally uncivilized, the 'worst' sort of country bumpkins.
Here are a few other funny things I learned this week. While asking my teacher about mangos, I discovered something about how Thai people refer to Japanese. I was lamenting the fact that I had not been able to buy ripe mangos from the typical street vendors. There are several types of mangos sold. There are ripe mangos typically yellow in color that are the sweet tasty ones I have had in the USA. There are green mangos which are just less ripe. Some green mangos are a little bit sweet and some almost bitter. The slightly sweet ones are typically sold with either a dry sugar mix and the bitter ones sold with a dry spicy mix. I wanted to know how to ask for ripe mango. The word for mango is mamuan. The word for ripe is suk and for not ripe or raw is dip. Thus mamuan suk is ripe mango and mamuan dip is the green kind.
Back to the Japanese. The word for fish in Thai is plaa. Raw fish is plaa dip. Thai people refer to Japan as muang plaa dip which literally means "raw fish country". Even on the news Japan is referred to that way. Bizarre? Was to me!!

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