On Thursday, I showed up to our weekly pub quiz looking like a
drowned rat. The storm had started when I was only about ten minutes
from the pub, but man, it’s pretty astonishing how much water Thailand
can dump on you in the space of ten minutes. By the time I crossed the
moat, the road was swamped, with the water practically up to my pedals.
And then I got this text from Pam:
Trying to get to quiz but there’s been a powercut and I’m trapped in the elevator!
So yeah, my night could have started out worse!
To Pam’s credit, she not only stayed completely calm while trapped in
a completely dark box with the temperature rising (no more fan), which
probably would have had me leaving bloody claw marks on the sealed door,
but when they finally located her by knocking on the walls (no
emergency call button, either – someone didn’t think through the whole
“emergency call button linked to the same circuit as the elevators”
thing!) and got her loose, she hopped on her motorcycle in the
still-pouring rain and drove down anyway, only missing the first round
of the quiz. That woman is hardcore. We walked away with third place. :)
Given the horror-movie slant of the evening, though, I thought this
would be an appropriate time to share something utterly and
indescribably Thai: the Body Bakery in Ratchaburi.
Yup. That is bread in the shape of dismembered human body parts.
It’s completely edible, and also accurate enough to be extremely
disturbing (seriously, look at that top photo and tell me that isn’t exactly the
way a pair of real, shrink-wrapped human heads would look). My
favourite part, though, is the fact that the baker believes the message
of his art is, “Don’t judge by outward appearances.” Right, because I
thought that was a severed head, but it’s actually lovely, lovely
bread! I think we’ve got the closing couplet of a Dr. Seuss book here.
(Why did I say this was utterly Thai? It’s that mix of gore and
innocence – it seems very fitting for a society that considers watching
the cleanup from a fatal road accident to be a spectator sport, and then
turns around and invents motorcycle helmets with kitty ears in a
variety of soft pastel colours. Also, Thais love baked goods, so there
we go.)
But what if snacking on a bread head gives you a craving for the real
thing? Well, you may get your wish soon enough, considering that the zombie apocalypse has started in Florida.
Clearly, it’s time to bone up on the mechanics of the zombie takeover of the world, and the most statistically effective strategies for stopping ravening hordes of the undead.
And if any of you haven’t heard this yet, consider it the soundtrack to the apocalypse...
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