Features

Ding dong dollies and muddled menus

A generous offer by the management of an infamous establishment on South Pattaya Beach

NOTICE:
“PLEASE BEWARE OF YOUR BED COMPANION EITHER BOY OR GIRL WITH WHEN YOU BRING INTO YOUR ROOM. WHENEVER YOU ARE DISTRACTED, HE OR SHE MIGHT STEEL YOUR VALUABLE PROPERTY. Please be constantly careful and to be safe, you better deposit your valuables with the hotel management.
THE … HOTEL CO., LTD”
Although the saying goes: “Once a thief always a thief”, I could not resist “steeling” this beauty from the inside of a hotel room door I spent the night in about twenty years ago. This well known second or third class hotel is still as popular as ever with the up-country folks on business in the big city, so I will not tell you the name; just that it is in the neighbourhood of Patpong Road and Suriwong Road. I am sure that I have not been the only hotel guest who acquired it and hope to be forgiven for the misdemeanour. I added the pamphlet to my collection of curious documents and going through it the other day, I came across a few other choice items worthy of further scrutiny. For instance, a notice on a strip of paper put around a hotel toilet seat claims: “CLEANED + DISINSECTED” and an advertisement for a bar in Bangkok promises a “DISACCOUNT” when the ad is presented.
In the early seventies during the Vietnam War, a new Go-Go Bar in Bangkok named “DING DONG” proudly announced the following:
DING DONG
NEWEST IN TOWN FOR RAVERS
– NOW—
A DING DONG COCTAIL TO PUT ZIP IN YOUR ZONG
A DING DONG DOLLY… GO – GO – GO – GOING – GONG!!
COME-COME-COME—BEFORE WE ARE CLOSED.”
We rushed down to Bangkok for the Ding Dong, the Zing and the Dolly but as feared, we found the place closed.
An advertisement of a Bangkok vasectomy clinic on Patpong Road ran: “Let your pigeon fly high……. FREE OF CHARGE……. COME AND HAVE YOUR AIR CONDITIONED VASECTOMY WITH US” (Thank you Mr. Meechai. We always looked forward to a cool vasectomy.)
It seems that the restaurant menus in those days were much more colourful. Old timers will remember that popular Thai Chinese restaurant in Cholburi on the road to Pattaya with such an extraordinary menu that it was even quoted in the American “Time Magazine”. I used to have a copy but mislaid it years ago. Fortunately, I do have another collector’s item that is a worthy rival of the Cholburi menu. I obtained it in Phuket in the early seventies. It was from the New Lucky Restaurant, situated on Sapan Hin which was, and probably still is, on the silted waterfront of Phuket Town. Particularly young people would have their stroll there after the scorching day, either to seek romance, do their homework or have a bite at the restaurants lining the pier.
The menu is called “Menu for Today”, albeit it does not mention any specific date. It starts with Thai Salads and among them are such delicacies as “Thai Salad Gut’s Pork” and if you do not desire to eat gut’s pork, you can always order the “Thai Salad Gut Beef”. I personally advise you to stick to “Thai Salad Spawning Crab”, it sounds so much more lively, or perhaps “Thai Salad Alls” would be the best choice for the connoisseur.
In the next section the fried items are listed and some particularly appetising are “Fried Lizard Frog” and “Leather Chicken Heaven”. A more sinister sounding dish was called “Fried Torpedo”. Further on the list I find “Darling Crab” which sounds rather cute and “Fried Boild Crad’s”, presumably not as confusing to eat as it sounds. If it is a cold dish you desire, well there is the “Cold Orderf” and “Sinew Beef Steel Cool” and although listed under ‘Cold Food’, “Hot Orderf” sounds interesting as well.
The New Lucky Restaurant was not at all afraid to let the customers know that it was not perfect and under “Burn Food” we find “Sacking Pig” and “Prawns Big Burn”, “Fired Chicken with Coconut Milk” and “Fired Spawned Crab”. Less pyromaniacal is the next section called “Fried Cravy” and you may like to select “Stewed Stomach’s Fish in Gravy”. Sharkfin soup is also listed under “Fried Cravy” as well as “Fried Convulvulas”. “Chicken in Whiskey Gravy Nippers” made me reach for the dictionary to find out what “gravy nippers” are without getting any the wiser.
Under “Put in the Oven” we find more nippers; “Boild Crab’s Nippers” as well as “Prawn’s Nippers” and “Chicken Nippers”. Going a bit far in their ferociousness they sell under “Fried Dishes”: “Fried Four Families” and “Fried Eight Magicians”, but a more benign and totally new dish for me is “Fried Pork in Sweet Sow Sauce”.
When New Petchburi Road in Bangkok was still the fun street for the GI’s on leave from the Vietnam War, there was a restaurant among the hundreds of entertainment places called the Sooksomboon Restaurant. In order not to become tedious, I will only mention a few of the oddities their menu featured.
What would you say if somebody offered you a “Beautiful Man Talad” or maybe a “Frie Rice with American”. I can’t resist a “Chicken Fried with Stretch”, a dish of “Poultry Stare Up” or a “Hane Sanvit”.
As I have no recipes for these outlandish gastronomic masterpieces I had to think of something myself. I wonder if you have noticed it but it is the Setoh season, that lovely bean with that incredible and delicious gaseous odour.
The pods of the “Setoh” are about 45 cm long and twisted. They grow on huge trees in the forest or along the roads as in the South of Thailand, Malaysia, Burma and Indonesia as well as in the province of Chantaburi in the East. It prefers an equatorial climate, which means plenty of rain all through the year. The beans are about the size of a fava (broad bean) or slightly larger, when the sticky purple skin is peeled off they are bright cadmium green, and rather like Thurian, Setoh is an acquired taste. You either love it or hate it. Setoh
is supposed to
be very good for your kidneys and general health. The season for “Setoh” is from March until August.
The best way to deal with the bean is to make slices diagonally through the skin of the pod half way into the bean after which it is easy to extract the bean and peel off the skin. The pod is, however, also eaten toasted or boiled with the “Nam Prik”. Setoh beans are particularly delicious with shrimps, bean curd, bean sprouts and as an ingredient of the “Sajur Lodeh” a mixed Indonesian vegetable curry with the “Rijsttafel”.