Reasons I’m Glad to Be Back in Bangkok: The Fresh Fruit Cart
March 22nd, 2009
Yellow Watermelon on a Fresh Fruit Cart
Bangkok, Thailand – You don’t realize how you’ve grown accustomed to something until you leave and then come back. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a single piece of fresh produce during my eleven-day stint in central Europe and I most certainly did not have fruit every single day as I do here in Thailand. I was happy to find my fresh fruit carts on returning. It’s not that hard. They’re on nearly every corner, most have sweet baby pineapple, scalloped pieces of fresh papaya, crisp slices of guava, sour green mango, juicy watermelon and fine slivers of cantaloupe.
When I was in the U.S. I scoffed at the pre-cut vegetables, plastic-wrapped and slightly dehydrated, in supermarkets. Really, how lazy can Americans get? Really lazy apparently. This one hasn’t picked up a knife in months and I blame it all on the omnipresent fresh fruit carts, doling out the perfect amount of my favorite tropical fruit at that very moment.
It is truly a privilege to watch a street cart vendor stare off in the distance as s/he rapidly hacks up a green mango with a large cleaver, slips it into a plastic bag along with a sugar-salt package and hands it over to you for 10 baht (about $0.28). At that price, I don’t think our fresh fruit vendors are getting health insurance so I would feel particularly bad if one lobbed off a finger while hacking up my 10-baht fruit. Of course, it would be worse if they had no income at all so I continue to put my money into the fruit market economy.
In recent days, I’ve caught sight of yellow watermelons, which somehow look so much more refreshing than the red, and when Bangkok starts to heat up, as it has been, we’re all looking for ways to maximize the refreshing factor. Besides the 96 degree temperature with 60% humidity, it’s good to be back so long as everyone’s digits continue to stay intact.
Fresh Fruit Cart on Sukhumvit (Green Mango, Guava, Pineapple, Watermelon, Papaya, and Sapodilla)
Papaya on the Fresh Fruit Cart
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