Thai food experiences from Naomi Timm

Food in Thailand- I expected this Thailand trip to be filled with extravagant elephants, zip lining adrenaline rushes, and culture shocking experiences, but the food here is one experience for which my taste buds were not prepared.  I thought that living in Texas and being familiar with Mexican food and Cajun spice would be an easy transition to the intense chili flavored Thai food. However, my meal at the elephant farm shot that theory down very quickly.  The food was served buffet style so I tried this delicious looking chicken and green bean dish. I anticipated it to be spicy-like most Thai food is, but I thought I could handle it especially after our cooking class. Nope. That green bean dish was made my entire mouth burn! My eyes were watering, my nose was running, and my throat and tongue craved some sort of liquid to calm the spice down. Only the Chang beer and water only made it worse. I tried to tame it with bread and rice, but no relief. I ran back to the buffet line with haste and blood shot eyes from the intense curry flavor-pretty sure my intolerance for spicy food was written all over my face! I grabbed a watermelon slice and threw it in my mouth before I even sat down and finally received some liberation to the hot flavor.  And of course, because I now view eating spicy Thai food as a fun challenging game, once my mouth finally got back to normal, I took another bite of that delicious looking green bean and chicken dish.  I now have a new goal: return to Texas with an outrageously high tolerance for spicy food!