Assault by pepper: My first day on the Chinese-Burmese border

Rarely do I manage to escape a cluster of street stalls without fistfuls of mystery to-go bags, but Ruili’s local farmers’ market so overwhelmed me that I managed it.

People fanned spits of rotating ducks and chickens, the air heavy with dry spiced smoke. The woman at the first duck stall waved her cleaver menacingly as she told us how she’d cut and price the duck, but she good-naturedly offered me one of a bucket of tiny chili-soaked crabs as a taste when I expressed interest. The crab was a thumb-sized bomb of pure red spice, its meager flesh holding the oil of so many peppers that my nose, shocked, immediately started running so aggressively I had to use up my entire day’s supply of toilet paper.

Women sat surrounded by bowls of green salad-looking dishes, and after much deliberation, I chose two to sample as I wandered. Despite the vendor’s assurances that these were dishes and not spices, even though they came in plastic bags with no chopsticks, the first was a dense mass of cilantro and pepper seeds that would have been fiery even as a teaspoon in a pot of something much bigger, and the second was not much milder. Wishing I could magic the bags home to my mom, who would quickly figure out how to blend them into something, we kept walking. A beggar asked for my dishes/spices, and I gladly acquiesced, hoping he knew what he was getting into, and it started raining.

The covered section of the market was a muddy, sloshing gymnasium-sized gathering of butchers, vegetable vendors, breakfast stalls, and oddities (the most notable of which was a large, uneven-looking rock that its vendor explained was actually an anthill. One apparently hacks off a piece of anthill, boils it, and eats it. Next door to the anthills were mushrooms so large they appeared to have morphed into wooden tree trunks.

Indoor market

Tree trunk mushrooms

Unfortunately lacking in places or pots in which to boil an oversized anthill for lunch, we left the market (via boards laid across the flooding ground) and found a place that advertised Thai-style chicken on its sign, but actually drew us in with bowlfuls of fresh fruit on the counter, plus an extensive fruit juice menu. Buoyed by the sudden realization of my proximity to Burma - less than 6km away - I ordered tea leaf salad. It came out thick and a pastelike dark green, its leaves weighed down as though painted onto the plate. The dish was dotted with bright red circles of pepper, though the owner claimed they were merely decorative and the spice came from the green. Based on the care which I had to take to keep my lips from catching fire and falling to the ground, the green paste was likely distilled from ghost peppers. The only thing that saved me was the tall glass of passion fruit juice, which I saved from the inevitable Chinese Sugar Spoon of Overkill by claiming I wanted it ‘sour’.

Tea leaf salad in front, vegetarian rice embarrassment in back, smoothies standing guard.

I would not be granted a respite from spiciness for dinner.

Dai Dai Xiao Diao, a lushly decorated Dai minority restaurant next to a blind massage parlor (where I received my first gua sha of the trip), advertised Lao-style roast fish and though I knew what that would entail - dry red spice rubbed on the outside, gut cavity stuffed with wet green spice - I went for it.

As though the dry and wet spice weren’t enough, the fish came (along with lettuce leaves, fried garlic and mung beans, a mystery fish-mint cousin, and cilantro) with a mildly foamy orange sauce for dipping, a mere drop of which sent my nose into evacuation mode yet again.

Spying on my distress from a corner, our waiter very kindly dropped off a different dipping sauce which he claimed was not spicy. Though totally untrue objectively, when compared with the habanero lava lake, it indeed gave mostly the impression of lemongrass and garlic.

(I should reiterate here that I am the person who regularly gets into near-altercations with Thai and Chinese restaurants in the U.S. who are reluctant to make my food spicy enough.)

However, with the lemongrass dipping sauce, the fish made an extremely satisfying dinner. Dragon-backed and with almost no bones to speak of except for a robust rib cage, its flesh was easy to dig out, place in the lettuce leaf, and sprinkle with trimmings. The flesh alone was white and mild, but smeared in dry spice, soaked in wet spice, wrapped in leaves, and sprinkled with beans and garlic, it came alive in the kind of way that only really overwhelmingly flavorful meals can.

When what should by all rights be way too many axe-wielding ingredients somehow settles down, smooths out, and hits your throat as a unified whole, you know the chef really knows his stuff.

No, I’m crying because I’m happy

So I’m sitting at Thai Nakorn, hundreds of napkins stacked at the ready.

“How spicy do you want it?” asks the waiter.  “On a scale of 1 through 5?”

Do not say ‘5’.

Don’t do it.

You’ll be sorry.

The waiters will come by later, concerned, and innocently ask, “Too spicy for you?”

And you’ll have to say no, no, of course not, as tears run down your face and water runs from your 

nose and into your napkin as you try to surreptitiously spit out pepper seeds and simultaneously cool the fire with Thai iced tea.

Because, let’s face it, you said 5.  And now you have to suffer the consequences.  Here’s a secret: the only thing that will help your poor tongue now is not Thai iced tea.  It’s sticky rice.  Not regular rice.  Sticky rice.

I always say '4'.  '4' is tongue-swellingly, forehead-sweatingly spicy enough.

But Thai Nakorn doesn’t rest on its fiery pepper laurels.  Its flavors come through, mingled, quite well enough on their own.  The crispy catfish green mango salad is a particularly arresting dish texturally, with the peanuts and crispy fried catfish skins giving a satisfying crunch to the sour and juicy spears of green mango.  The tiny orange half-circles are not some sort of exotic orange Thai pepper; they’re shrimp.  Their microscopic legs and eyes are visible if you peer closely at your plate, but you don’t need to see them to be able to taste them: a savory ocean dash at the edges of your tongue.

Thai, Laotian, and Cambodian food has always thrilled my taste buds at the same time as it pushes my tear ducts' boundaries to the limit.  It's not afraid to offend me, and I LOVE unapologetically pushy food.

Take Vientiane Thai Laos' larb goong (shrimp larb).  There are shrimp chopped tiny and just barely seared, like ceviche, from the lime juice.  There are impossibly crisp vegetables and shredded strips of mint leaves that aren't afraid to take over.  But they don't have to worry about having to do that, because everything is thickly coated in finely chopped red pepper.  

Or the gang thy pa from the same place, a soup that looks like it's going to be a neutral, perhaps coconutty or fishy cross between tom yum and tom yum kai, but then turns out to be a seething bowl of fermented fish sauce, tamarind, and pepper, pepper, pepper.

Sometimes you think you're safe ordering fruit.  Wrong!  Wat Dong Moon Lek Noodle's rambutan salad - rambutan salad, come on! - comes out so shockingly hot that you have to practically mainline your basil-pineapple smoothie just to keep breathing.  Its base, spicy lime cream, is dotted with fiery orange chilies, and the juice from the rambutan spreads over the cream like oil over water, creating a swirled kind of tonguefeel.

Whenever I eat these dishes, and even though my nose is running and my mouth is aflame, I am able to taste straight through to the complex flowery tones beneath, I give thanks to one man.

I know him only as 'Kim'.

He runs Thai Avenue in Boulder and I used to order drunken noodles from his little food court stand weekly.  I started going there in 2006, ordering my noodles emphatically mild.  By 2010, when I left Boulder, I was well into the 'spicy' category and going strong.

I have no evidence of this, but I strongly suspect he upped the pepper content by microscopic amounts weekly to get me accustomed to it.  I never noticed the difference in his plates - they were simply perfect and delicious every week - but I gradually started noticing I was able to hold my own with jalapeño pepper-infused Mexican dishes and Korean gochujang-soaked side dishes.  And more than that, I was tasting them in new and wonderful ways.

Now, you'll find me vigorously entreating Thai waitresses to please believe me, yes I want it spicy, yes I know what that means, yes, I promise I won't run out of here cursing you.  Yes.  Spicy.  Please. 

Thank you, Kim.