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Rice Noodle Luck

April 8th, 2009

Flats of Rice Noodle Sheets

Tha Bo, Thailand – After reading that Tha Bo, a small village west of Nong Khai on the Mekong, produced a whole lot of kuay tiaw (rice noodles), I boarded a bus heading to town. Even for Thailand this bus was a bit of a clunker, the floor was a bunch of wooden boards, the eggshell-blue ceiling had rust scratches and tied wires peeping out and the rusty folding doors were permanently open. Cars and other buses passed us. Motorbikes passed us. An ice cream truck passed us. I didn’t mind though. It was a sunny day and we were winding our way through tobacco plantations, small villages and patches of coconut trees in the Thai countryside.

Arriving finally in Tha Bo, I circled the town looking for kuay tiaw drying out in the sun, but my search only turned up noodle shops and, strangely enough, an international cycling race with heavy security and participants from all over the world. I took a break at a coffeeshop, where the menu was in both Thai and English, a rarity in small Issan town that sees few tourists. I struck up a conversation with the owner, 38-year old Tuk Ta, a Vietnamese-Thai woman, who was born in town, worked in Bangkok for 20 years and then moved back when she married. She offered to take me out to a rice noodle factory on her motorbike since it was a bit far to walk and I gratefully took up her offer.

Before we even got to the factory, there was a field of rice noodle sheets drying in the sun. Once rainy season comes, Tuk Ta told me, they couldn’t make rice noodles. It certainly wasn’t rainy season now. The sun reflected off the glossy white sheets nearly blinding me. This factory, 999, was the largest in town and provided sen lek (thin rice noodles) for the province.

Once inside, Tuk Ta took me around showing me the clay pots where the rice was soaking, the giant paddles for stirring the dough, the lenghty machine that rolled out the dough into flats and the machine that chopped it into noodles. The owner of the factory, another Vietnamese-Thai (Tha Bo has a large Vietnamese population), was sitting on the floor smoothing vegetable oil over each rice noodle sheet with other workers. I thanked her and, not wanting to keep Tuk Ta from her shop any longer, we headed back into town.

She dropped me off at the Tha Bo bus stop and refused my pressing to give her “gas” money. “My pleasure,” she said with a smile and motored off. I found that the bus back to Nong Khai wasn’t leaving for 35 minutes. Just enough time to grab a bowl of rice noodles across the street.