Duck Soup

On the way back up from Koh Samed we pulled off into a grocery store in a massive tin warehouse. There was Saturday morning cartoon house beat club stomp music blasting from massive speakers everywhere. No one was around. It was too loud to talk in the grocery store. I was hungry and confused. There were strange stands selling bales of hay for lunch. Others had stainless steel buckets full of things that made no sense. Slimy buckets of flesh that reeked of violence and terror. This was not a tourist spot. There was a candy coated duck hanging by its twisted neck. The light was good on it and it looked to be the best thing going. Morg and I ordered a couple of bowls. I wandered off to look for a cold coke in a glass bottle. 28 cents will get you the coldest and best Coke you ever drank here, hand to God.

I came back and sat down in front of my soup. There was some noodles in there, some marsh vegetation, some chocolate tofu and some duck spine chunks. And if you really got a good stir in some back fat shavings would swirl up to the top. Basically, have you ever stumbled across a three day old homicide in an estuary at low tide? Right, exactly.

I asked the intern why they put chocolate tofu in duck soup but he said it was actually congealed duck blood, which I guess made more sense. In absolute terms there's really no argument why eating congealed blood is any stranger than eating back fat. I asked the intern if it was good and he said, "It tastes like blood."

I popped a severed duck vertebra in my mouth and thought it over. Blood and duck spine soup. Hell of a thing. The back fat was fine but I never did get into the tofu that much.









An hour later up the road Gar took us to McDonalds. Best Big Mac old Ronald Sahwahdeka ever cooked up in that banged up old grease furnace. And the fries. Oh god in heaven the fries.