Although they eat some very unusual shit in Thailand, cooking with poo is, thankfully, not literal. Its the cooking school of Poo, a lady from the Khlong Toei slum in Bangkok. Before starting her cooking school, Poo spent 14 hours a day cooking food and making money, about 200 bhat ($7usd) a day. But a bubbly personality, a pinch of tenaciousness, a dollop of help from an Australian missionary, some very clever branding, a cookbook (Cooking with Poo), and an endorsement from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver were the breadcrumbs leading her out of poverty. Despite the change in fortune, Poo didnt move the cooking school into a shiny antiseptic space on Sukhumvit (i.e., the fancy part of town where poor people wear uniforms). Instead, she takes tourists to the ‘real market and into the ‘real slum where they can experience ‘real Thailand. This is business acumen brilliance: tourists will pay dearly for the mere hint of authenticity.
I found Poo because I entertain visitors. Every morning, the Poo bus ferries people from outside the Emporium Suites hotel near our house to the Khlong Toei market. The trip starts in the shadow of the Gucci
and Cartier stores and ends at the edge of the slum. Khlong Toei is the biggest wet market in Bangkok and is where most of the food on the streets and in the restaurants starts the day. In the market, there is the expected bewildering array of known and vegetables and tropical fruits; tables heaped with raw meat, Hannibal Lecter deboned pig heads, assorted animal feet, heads, offal and other parts shunned in cooking pots in the United States; huge silvery fish, clams, mussels, squid the length of my forearm, and 10 different sizes and shapes of prawns; live chickens, dead chickens, live eels, dead eels, live frogs, dead frogs, catfish flopping around in buckets and skewered on sticks barbequing; vats of steaming stuff, charcoal and wood smoking grills; low hanging multicolored awnings, plastic buckets, heaping baskets, metal poles at eye poke level, and the usual market mix of shoppers, sellers, local drunks, monks, cats, and guys in mucking boots pushing overloaded dollies through the narrow slippery lanes filled with yelling, jostling, boiling, frying, stewing, sweating, sloshing, swearing, stacking, slaughtering and shopping.
of life, death, In other words, standard fare for cacophonous, assault on the senses, outdoor markets. The fear factor aisle has baskets of insects and grubs and (first time Ive seen this) vacuum sealed rats! Poo assures us they are from countryside farm not city farm. Taste is like chicken. Ive eaten grasshoppers and crickets and grubs, and though Id rather not eat rat, I probably have. Mystery meats on the streets of the world are not sourced from organically grass fed, antibiotic animals. More than a few cats, rats, dogs, and insects end up in the meat grinder. Nonetheless, Id greatly prefer bbq Mickey to the water bugs if I had to choose.
Walking purposefully through the lanes of the market, Poo buys things briskly, loading us up with plastic bags while giving a running explanation of all the exotic foreignness and the evolving economics of the season: Last week, she says, mangosteens cost 175 kilo and no good. This week 35 a kilo and see green leaves, not brown? Much better. After the market, we drive 5 minutes deeper into Khlong Toei slum, park, walk across the train tracks,
and follow a fetid, garbagy, grey water canal that has been partially paved over and covered with ramshackle corrugated tin and wood homes. We turn off this walkway onto a narrow lane lined with two story concrete houses. The street is pleasantly shadowy and filled with potted and hanging plants, wind chimes, small marigold garlanded shrines, and clear evidence of indoor plumbing and electricity. She points out her childhood home and leads us into the house next door. A simple sign reads Cooking with Poo.
It is a schoolhouse.
