(Photo by Lauren Lulu Taylor)
There is a sign that shows cool people when a certain discourse or meme is no longer cool … that it has “jumped the shark”, if you will. That sign is when uncool people start having opinions about said discourse or meme. Of course, I am one of those uncool people.
Which is why I now have opinions about the Drake-Kendrick Lamar rap battle. I really, really shouldn’t. As a middle-aged Asian woman, I am probably the last person in either of these artist’s intended demographic. All the same, here I am, with my crappy opinions. Which I will now unload onto you.
Opinion number one: I have never liked Drake’s music. So there. Opinion number two: I am so out of it that I thought Kendrick Lamar already released a Drake diss track, called “King Kunta”. Apparently, it is not a Drake diss track (but I feel like I was misled, because why are you talking about a rapper with a ghost writer, wtf happened?) Opinion number three: Kendrick Lamar won. Now, obviously I am not an expert on rap beefs, and you can probably make a very good case about how I am completely wrong. But please, let me talk up in here in my own space on this subject, just like how I let white guys tell me about Thai food over street food tables at rice porridge shops in Chinatown. This is my blog, after all. Go talk about what you like on your own blog.
I decided Kendrick Lamar won, not after watching a lady performing Indian classical dance to a track called “BBL Drizzy”, or listening to a Japanese man rap over the same track, but after reading a tweet on Twitter (never X) asking Kendrick Lamar to write a diss track about the tweet writer’s own ex, and providing useful bullet points, like “he never pays for food” and “he never does his own laundry”. This is funny to me, imagining Kendrick Lamar sitting in a dusty old office in downtown LA, pen in hand, awaiting his next commission. So I’d also like to ask Kendrick to help me (in this scenario we are on a first-name basis, because this is my blog) (please don’t write a diss track about me, Mr. Lamar) diss something, but artfully. I’d like to diss Chantaburi food.
I’ve been to Chantaburi before. And I didn’t really like it. Everything was too sweet, but when I say it out loud, I remind myself of my most annoying relative. In Klaeng, we meet with really lovely people on restaurant grounds over which each table is ensconced in its own air-conditioned room. What is there not to like? There’s even stir-fried boar, better than what we get in Hua Hin, with plenty of wild ginger and green peppercorns:
For dinner, we have all the seafood we can handle, including enormous local oysters with all the trimmings; a hot-and-sweet soup of seabass; raw shrimp with seafood sauce; freshly fried pomfret with fish sauce; a creamy and disconcertingly sweet chili dip of crab eggs; and a yum of three kinds of eggs, including crab and catfish:
Mr. Lamar, I was too full to enjoy any of it. The ingredients were top-notch and the cooking was carefully considered, but it just left me with a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach. My appetite had absconded off with its secretary, unsure of whether it wanted to return. Mr. Lamar, can you find a way to diss my appetite?
The next day was little better, sent off to a restaurant that looked like it belonged in a suburban Florida strip mall and inundated with elaborate reimaginings of “royal Thai” dishes like “money bags” and mieng kum with lotus petals:
Faced with the prospect of having more of this food for dinner, I just could not do it. In Sukhothai, I had subjected myself to a litany of noodle dishes, many of them cloyingly sweet, and now I was facing the prospect of a thick massaman curry studded with durian and yet another iteration of pork stewed with cowa leaves. Imagining the meal ahead of me, I saw my face in the mirror and caught a glimpse of what Drake may have looked like while watching the reaction videos to “Not Like Us”. No more, I say!
So I simply refused to leave. It was as simple as that. We stayed at the table where we had been nursing strong (but good) mojitos, watched the sun go down, waited for Lauren to take some pictures, and stayed some more. We ordered another mojito. We watched the lights turn on by the water. And then we ordered some dishes — quesadillas stuffed with boiled chicken and cardamom shoots, garnished with an unholy heaping of sour cream, and nachos topped with pork stewed with cowa leaves, avocado, and more sour cream.
And it was exactly what we (I) needed, this nincompoop fusion of the most touristic of Tex-Mex dishes and traditional local cuisine. The nachos weren’t even tortilla chips, they were Doritos. The quesadillas came with a fresh tomato salsa that did absolutely nothing for the cardamom shoots and chicken. But here I was, savoring every bite like Kdot saying “A minorrrrrrr”. It was embarrassing but true.
The next day, my appetite returned, chastened but ready. I had pork congee for breakfast, then a second breakfast of jungle curry with deer and lots more fresh cardamom, a whole stewed Thai mackerel, and some stir-fried mustard green pickles. I devoured fish, squid and an aggressively briny fresh shrimp chili dip by the water for lunch. And now I’m about to finally tackle that massaman curry with durian. And all it took was a touch of, well, junk.
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