Hi! Greetings from Pai!
Observations about art, food and play in community
Pai in Thailand has been home for the last two weeks. It is one of those vortexes on this planet where the seed of our future destiny is being planted. I don’t know exactly how many of those places exist but there are no more than a few dozen of them depending on which intensity of impact you start to count. My guides say there are 38 places on the planet where the seed is alive. Those places are so interesting because they spiral you upwards like a spaceship of consciousness but also because they are laboratories where you can get an idea of how our future life in urban spaces will look like.
My first observation is that Pai is full of play. Full of play that occurs quite organically. People just meet in the park and everyone starts to practice their fire shows, their Muay Thai exercises, or they do acro yoga. But everyone plays with a certain determination which tells me that everyone is preparing and learning. Of course, a lot of folks just hang out and smoke weed (legally!) but that atmosphere of playful ascension stuck out to me.
As a logical consequence, there are amazing artists around. Every second bar has someone making music and a lot of them are f***** amazing! One night, I basically danced my way home from one bar to the next. Amazed, one musician told me that you can make a living from your music in Pai. Right after arriving, he had three gigs to play and with a face full of surprise he said, “and they actually pay me!”
So there is playfulness and art but there is also community. It is not as organized as let’s say in Bali where someone sets up a community place and wants to turn it into a business. It is more people inviting people but being open to new arrivals. Yet, the most fascinating area of socializing is “Walking Street”. Every night, one of the main streets is being closed for cars and a myriad of food stands pop up. Now the whole town walks up and down, meets and greets, eats and giggles, and sidesteps into one of the bars where you can listen to amazing music.
Walking Street was my favorite. Against my habits, I even started to have a small and late breakfast because I started to have dinner twice! It was so delicious that I feel compelled to share one recipe from one of the food stands run by a hard-working man called Et. Et is Thai but he makes the most amazing Korean Sandwiches - I am not even sure if it’s typically Korean but that’s how he calls them. So in honor of him, I would like to share the “ET-Sandwich”:
The ET-Sandwich!
Start by making an omelett from eggs, grated carrots and corn. Fry it until it’s golden and brown.
Grate cabbage, onions, additional carrots and fry them too.
Fry a slice of ham - which I don’t think is necessary, so if you are vegetarian, just skip the ham.
Spread a sauce of mayonaise and salt (he said some add sugar also) on two pieces of toasted toast.
After everything is well fried, put the “cabbage salad”, the ham and a melted slice of cheese between two layers of omelett. Add a couple of black olives as well. All of this now is put between the two pieces of toast - et voilá!!
By the way: the musician in the video is Brian Ernst. It is truly amazing to watch him play. He records all kinds of instruments, sound-making devices, his voice, really whatever is at hand and loops it. In the end, he sounds like a one-man orchestra. If you wanna check him out, he is on Spotify as well:
I hope you enjoyed reading the text, listening to the music, and eating the sandwich. Let me know how it was!
Hugs
Tom