Thai tours are not like other tours. First of all, one must make sure that there is rice available somewhere everyday, or people will complain about not feeling full. A tangent to the first one: you have to book every Chinese restaurant in the area, at least once a day. And a tangent to that one: you have to stop at least once at the local Thai restaurant favored by your embassy, because that is what the “Global Thai” and “Kitchen of the World” assistance programs are all about. And then a tangent to even that one: this Thai restaurant must have karaoke.
I was nervous about going on this trip, because it wasn’t just me, or even just me and my family. It was me, my parents, my in-laws, and 20 of their closest friends from Chulalongkorn University 10 million years ago. Several people walked with canes, and more than a handful had titanium hip or knee replacements (which, incidentally, did not keep them from getting strip-searched by airport security). Some had dietary restrictions (meaning they didn’t like unfamiliar food) and, like true Thais, had brought their own packets of Mama, chili dips and bottles of Maggi. They had many needs, and rightly so. But our intrepid Thai tour guide, Mod X (yes that was his name), and Georgia (the country, not the state) were more than up to this challenge.
But first, the obvious: how to sell Georgian cuisine to older Thai people? Mod X appeared intent on trying to make Georgian food as similar as possible to Thai food, which meant lots of fish at every meal, rice, and of course soup to go with that rice. He passed out bowls of his own chili dips (this would change every day, from nam prik narok, or flaked “hellfire” dry chili dip) to nam prik mangda, chili dip flavored with mangda bug extract) and his own bottles of Maggi, with the red top (made from beef extract) instead of the yellow one (made from soybeans). Knowing that breakfast is usually comfort food, he would wake up early every morning to make khao tom (rice porridge) with all the fixings brought from home, also schooling the local cooks on how to make Thai omelets. He even went so far as to bring in his own green papaya, making his own som tum in the courtyard of one restaurant in a plastic basin.
There was also the requisite trip to the Thai restaurant (not once, but twice), in this case, aptly named Thai Curry.
But that cut down on a LOT of Georgian food. Eventually, after learning about our predilection for bread (and lots of wine), we were able to try what some people would term the “greatest hits” of Georgia. That meant khinklish, face-sized Georgian soup dumplings meant to be held by the stem (edible, but usually not cooked, and bad luck to eat) and bitten into, sipping the broth inside before enjoying the filling.
There was a mashed bean-filled pancake reminiscent of a quesadilla stuffed with refried beans, fresh out of the oven:
There were also pickles with every meal, which made me absolutely thrilled — I love sour pickles (sweet pickles are an abomination). One particular special pickle, apparently only available in the spring, was called jonjoli, similar to a caper berry and really delicious:
But the most popular dish ended up being none other than khachapuri, in this case Adjarian-style, in which the hot bread serves as a (delicious) boat-shaped receptacle by which you can scramble your own eggs and cheese together (or if they don’t trust you to do this properly, baking the egg completely through).
There are many types of khachapuri, incidentally: Gurian is crescent-shaped and stuffed with cheese and hard-boiled eggs; Imeretian is round and filled with cheese; Megruli is round and has even more cheese; and Meskhetian is layered and flaky. I haven’t even touched on the bread-y things that are offshoots of khachapuri. Needless to say, I gained 3 kg.
But there were things that weren’t so popular. There was satsivi, a stew made with walnuts and usually chicken, but which in this case was replaced by an extremely bony grilled fish:
But what I loved even more than the food (is that possible?) is Tblisi itself — yes, even the people, who have a ways to go to reach Thai-style “smooth as silk” service (the service was so brusque that my mother came to the conclusion that they were anti-Asian). I did not get the same feeling, but think “Chinese servers in a Kowloon tea parlor who are sick of dealing with tourists”. An acquired taste, perhaps.
The cobblestoned streets in the Old Town wind in ways you wouldn’t expect past places full of people celebrating and laughing, or simply playing music. Down one street I could distinctly hear someone playing complicated-sounding classical music — a professional hired by the cafe, I assumed, but in reality just a patron who quickly retreated to his table when he finished (who puts a piano out on the street in front of their cafe for no reason?)
Further along we hit a park, where a circle of guitar players — not busking, not looking for attention — started singing songs and strumming. It’s very Los Lobos-meets-Eastern Europe, and my husband’s aunts, suitably inspired, began to dance in the street.
“How old are you, grandma?” One of the guitar players asked from behind the gate.
“I am 86,” said Aunt Tui, the most vocal of us all. “And she is 89,” she added, pointing to her sister.
“God bless you all,” he said before he started playing again and they continued dancing for a while, eliciting smiles from passersby and their dogs (a city is either a cat city or a dog city, and Tblisi is definitely for the dogs). We would have a lot of challenging stuff in store for us later on, but at least Georgia on that day blessed us, and we blessed it back.
Bangkok Glutton 