Miss Junior Thai Princess, or something like that
You have to give it up for the Thais, whose New Year's celebration manages to combine lovely dancing girls, karaoke in Thai, paying respects to Buddha, drenching kids with water and tons of amazing street food.
Birds carved out of crookneck squash at the clever fruit carving stand
All this with absolutely no aggro or attitude even after an hour of waiting at the papaya salad stand. Yes, the waits were a little out of hand this year, but that didn't stop the papaya salad ladies from patiently constructing each salad to order, adjusting the degree of spicyness requested, tossing some extra toasted peanuts on top and generally acting as if there weren't dozens of starving people queuing up in front of them.
I started out with some excellent duck noodle soup (above) and followed it up with papaya salad, Thai sausage and sticky rice and mango, all delicious and wildly fresh as usual. I'm so glad the Wat Thai temple exists, but next time I might have to hit it on a less busy weekend. Still, it would be a shame to miss the disco dancers and the one lady d'une certaine age who shakes it up with the most unusual costumes.
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