Exploring England’s oldest Anglo-Saxon church

by Sean McLachlan on


One of England’s most alluring traits is the way its historical ages pile atop one another. This is a nation where farmers discover Roman coin hordes in their fields, where people drink in 400 year-old pubs, where people worship in churches that have been around as long as England has been Christian.

If you’re ever visiting Durham in northern England be sure to take a brief drive or bus trip to the nearby village of Escomb. In the center of town stands this church, built sometime around 670-690 AD. England was not England back then, but rather a patchwork of warring Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. In many regions, people had converted to Christianity within living memory, and there were still some who clung to the Old Religion. The crumbling remains of Roman cities, forts, and shrines could still be seen, remnants of a greater civilization that was already taking on the character of legend.

At this time some unknown individuals built this church. It has been in use almost continually ever since and is the oldest intact Anglo-Saxon church in the country. Its sturdy walls have borne the centuries well. If you look carefully you can see much of England’s history marked in its stone.

The Anglo-Saxons were actually three distinct tribes–the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes–who came from what is now Denmark and northern Germany to fill the power vacuum left by the departing Romans in the early fifth century. The Angles settled in this part of the country. They were still pagan then, and would remain so for a century. Eventually churches started to appear. The stone for this church mainly came from an abandoned Roman fort nearby. A couple of the stones even have old Roman inscriptions, one saying “Legion VI”, which had been garrisoned at the fort.

%Gallery-101095%The Angles added their own elements. A seventh century sundial sits high on the wall, decorated with a serpent and a monster’s head. The serpent symbolized the Teutonic creator god of the pagan Angles, and the serpent may be a symbol of the god of chaos and creativity. It’s interesting that the newly converted Angles kept a lot of their pagan symbolism! The sundial has only three marks, to show the times for mass. A more modern sundial with proper hours was added in the seventeenth century.

Inside the church are some early medieval crosses and a baptismal font that once had a locking cover to keep the locals from stealing the holy water to use for spells and folk medicine. Paganism died hard in this part of the country!

What’s most remarkable about this church is that it’s still being used. It was abandoned for a time and was in danger of falling into ruin in the nineteenth century, but the local parish decided to save it. Services are held here regularly, and during my visit I got to speak to the organist, who told me that priests vie with one another to be assigned to such an historic house of worship. The congregation uses a special old Gaelic prayer rooted in the Celtic tradition that fits nicely with the atmosphere of the place:

As the rain hides the stars,
As the Autumn mist hides the hills,
As the clouds veil the blue of the sky,
So the dark happenings of my lot
Hide the shining of thy face from me.
Yet, if I may hold thy hand in darkness,
It is enough,
Since I know, that though I may stumble in my going
Thou dost not fall.

Vietnamese street food tastes better by motorbike

by Laurel Miller on

There are few things I enjoy more than perching on a plastic, Playskool-size stool on a steaming sidewalk, surrounded by clouds of carbon monoxide. Why do I so enjoy impersonating a contortionist and inhaling carcinogens? Because it means I’m somewhere in Southeast Asia, eating street food.

On my first visit to Vietnam, I flew up to Nha Trang, on the South Central Coast. I found a cheap hotel several blocks off the beach, and set about giving myself a crash course in Vietnamese street food. I was familiar with staples such as pho and banh mi (baguette sandwiches with pork pate and a variety of condiments). Yet I was soon overwhelmed by the array of comestibles being hawked from carts and storefronts, despite frequent thumbing through my Vietnamese food guide.

Compounding the issue was the lack of recognizability of many of the ingredients. No one could ever accuse me of being squeamish, but I like to know what I’m eating, if only for curiosity’s sake. The mysterious, meaty hunks stewing in battered, aluminum stockpots, and hanging behind Plexi-glass shields gave no indication as to their origin. Clearly, I needed someone to help me achieve Vietnamese street food cred.

%Gallery-100653%I had already planned to visit the Evason Ana Mandara & Six Senses Spa later in the week, because they had a well-regarded “street market dinner.” Since 2003, a gaggle of local women–all food vendors known for their version of a specific dish–prepare their respective specialties at one of the property’s three restaurants. It’s a fun way to educate less-adventurous guests about traditional Vietnamese cuisine. The bi-weekly dinners provide steady income for the women and their families, which is critical during inclement weather.

The privately-owned Evason-Soneva luxury property group has a core philosophy of green building design and operations, and emphasizes the hiring of local people in order to support the economy. They also make donations of revenue proceeds to community social projects, including education and health care for children.

Much of the produce and botanicals used in the restaurants and spa treatments are from the sustainable gardens at nearby (stunning) sister property, Six Senses Hideaway at Ninh Van Bay. Ana Mandara also offers market tours and cooking classes as a way to introduce guests to regional Vietnamese cuisine and ingredients.

When I finally checked in to Ana Mandara, I asked if they offered personalized food tours through one of the local guides they contract. And that’s how I found myself on the back of a motorbike at sunset, whizzing through the back streets on my very own tasting tour of Nha Trang.

My 29-year old guide, Nguyen Quoc Nam, was born and raised in Nha Trang. He took me to some of the city’s best spots for eating regional dishes–most of them popular street foods. Our first stop was the poetically-named, sidewalk eatery Phúc, which specializes in banh canh, a fish and rice vermicelli soup. The rickety sidewalk tables were crowded with patrons enthusiastically slurping soup and fried mackerel head–the other specialty of the house.

Like most Vietnamese, Nam is obsessed with food. Throughout our three-hour feeding frenzy, he gave me the history, preparation method, and eating technique for every dish we sampled. We ate banh beo, “leaves” of rice noodles topped with succulent grilled pork, herbs, and chile; sinh to, fresh fruit and yogurt shakes; banh xeo, lacy rice flour, coconut milk, and turmeric crepes stuffed with grilled squid, shrimp, quail egg, and bean sprouts, and chao tom, grilled, seasoned, ground shrimp on sugar cane skewers.

At lively Quan 52, the sidewalk tables were wreathed in aromatic smoke from an adjacent grill. We were served a plate of still-sizzling strips of pork, which we used to make nem, a kind of DIY spring roll. We soaked crisp rice paper sheets in water, then layered them with the meat, nuoc nam, julienned cucumber and green banana, pickled shallots, rau hung (spearmint), diếp cá (fish mint), and ngo gai (saw leaf herb). I was utterly hopeless at constructing the tidy little packages made by fellow diners; even Nam seemed amazed by my lack of fine motor skills. Fortunately, my appetite compensates in these situations.

Our final stop was Pho Bo 81. Despite being painfully full, I managed to devour their heavenly pho (traditionally a beef noodle soup from Hanoi, it’s a staple throughout Vietnam and can also be made with chicken). The restorative broth was greaseless and fragrant, redolent of lime, chile, and star anise.

The next morning, Nam took me on a motorbike tour of the villages and rice paddies in the surrounding countryside. Rice is more than just the staple of Vietnamese cuisine, although it is eaten at every meal in some form. Rice is also intricately linked to the country’s culture, folklore, festivals, and social mores. Around noon, Nam pulled the bike up to a roadside shack beside the Cau Lung Bridge. There, we ate plate after plate of banh uot, a Nha Trang specialty of steamed rice noodle sheets, garnished with powdered dried shrimp and scallions.

After lunch, we visited Dien Thuy village, where I helped make rice paper at the home of a woman who supplies the local community. She soaked, then milled the rice by hand, Next, she mixed it with water to make a batter, and poured frisbee-sized circles onto a bamboo and cloth steamer fueled by the rice husks. The disks were then set to dry on woven bamboo ladders.

Next, we visited the Vinh family, who operate a small rice noodle factory out of their home. Outside of the major cities, rice paper and noodles are made in similar factories, often by hand (the Vinh’s had just purchased a machine to cut the noodles). It’s repetitive, exhausting, time-consuming work. My two-day motorbike journey took me into the origins of not just my beloved street food, but the very soul of Vietnamese culture.

Ana Mandara’s culinary motorbike tours are approximately $40.00, and are offered only by personal request. Cooking classes and market tours also available.

Click here to learn how to make banh cuon (steamed rice crepes with ground pork and mushrooms).

Durham: castles, cathedrals, and monsters in northern England

by Sean McLachlan on


Ever hear of Durham? Unless you’re British or a church historian, you probably haven’t. That’s because a disproportionate number of visitors to England never get beyond London and its neighbors Oxford, Cambridge, Bath, and Stratford-upon-Avon. This concentration on southern England means that many visitors miss out on seeing the beauties of the country’s north.

Durham is one of the north’s most important towns. Never an industrial powerhouse like Newcastle or Manchester, its influence was as a cathedral town. Durham is built on a hill dominated by a cathedral and castle, both built by the Normans. Together they’re a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The cathedral dates to the 11th century and was built on the foundations of an earlier church. It’s one of the most important pilgrimage sites in England because it houses the remains of two great church leaders. Saint Cuthbert was a seventh century missionary who performed miracles and helped spread the rule of the church over the chaos of Anglo-Saxon England. The Venerable Bede lived a generation later and was also an important religious figure as well as writing one of the earliest histories of England.

The castle has been used for various purposes over the centuries and is now part of the local university. The guided tour will take you past a collection of armor, a giant dining hall, and into a Norman chapel. This chapel is in almost perfect condition and while it’s Norman, it was decorated by Anglo-Saxon artisans. Each pillar carved with animals and warriors. The reason it’s so well preserved is that the learned scholars at the university didn’t recognize its importance and used it for years as a storage room!

The River Wear wraps around three sides of Durham and there’s an attractive river path that offers fine views of the city’s historic center rising above the trees. Don’t swim in the river, though, because you might comes across the Lambton Worm, a sort of Loch Ness Monster. While Nessie may have become extinct, keep a sharp eye out for this local beastie.

According to legend, one Sunday a long, long time ago a local boy named John Lambton went fishing instead of going to church. His only catch was a strange, ugly little thing that looked like an eel. Angry, John cursed it and threw it down a well. When John grew up he left Durham to become a soldier. The worm grew up too and started eating local children and terrorizing the city. When John came back from his military service he heard what was happening and went off to see a witch for advice on how to slay the monster. The witch gave him magical armor that would protect him from the worm’s attacks, but also warned him that after slaying the worm he must slay the first living thing he saw.

%Gallery-100819%John found the worm and after an epic battle managed to kill it. As soon as he was done his father ran up to congratulate him. John Lambton couldn’t kill his own father and ignored the witch’s warning. Since he didn’t fulfill the prophecy, the Lambton family was cursed for nine generations.

Of course you can’t believe everything these silly old folktales say. While most of the story is obviously true, it is very hard to kill the average English river monster, and so the Lambton Worm may still exist.

Durham acts as a gateway to the North of England. Newcastle is only a 15 minute train ride away, and Hadrian’s Wall can be visited on a day trip. Being close to the Scottish border there are plenty of castles and attractive countryside. So if you’re done with London, head north and check out Durham. There are high-speed trains from London’s Kings Cross station that only take three hours but get you a world away from the crowding and pollution of the big city.

Letter from Turkey: exploring Topkapi Palace, Istanbul’s pleasure palace

by Stanley Stewart on

When Selim the Sot ascended the throne of the Ottoman Empire in 1566, he proposed a new theory of royal governance. Henceforth the greatness of an emperor was to be judged not by bravery or glory, but by indulgence in comfort and pleasure. In Selim’s case this meant two things — women and drink. It was the kind of wheeze that modern leaders can only dream about.

I blame the Topkapi Palace. It seemed to have this corrupting effect on all its inhabitants. Its fragrant luxuries did not exactly encourage effective government. Once Selim had moved himself and his harem of 150 women into the Topkapi, he never seemed to want to come out again. In 1573 the French ambassador noted that in three months Selim had only left the palace twice, and that was to nip next door for prayers. What was it about this palace above the Golden Horn that seemed to cast such a spell over its princes? I hurried along to find out.

For outsiders, entrance to the Topkapi Palace was never easy. In the old days European ambassadors, who were kept waiting for weeks, vied with one another for admittance to the reception halls of the Ottoman sultans. Little has changed. In the Court of the Janissaries, I found myself in an interminable ticket queue vying with a busload of Italians to whom queuing did not come naturally. After twenty minutes I realised I was going backwards. When I finally fought my way to the ticket window, I was surprised to find it was level with my shins, obliging me to kneel and genuflect slightly to ask for an adult single.

The Topkapi sits astride the best real estate in the city, overlooking the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. Walled and secluded, it is a city within a city where, for four centuries, the Ottoman Sultans were pampered and indulged in a series of salons and pavilions that came to be known as Dar-us-Saadet, or the House of Felicities. Once through the gates, I began to feel the Selim effect. Between the splashing fountains and the swirling tilework, it suddenly seemed a good day for doing nothing.The palace is onion layered, with a succession of gateways leading deeper into further courts, in a progression from public to private. From the Court of the Janissaries, I passed through the Gate of Salutations into the Court of the Divan. In the Imperial Council Chamber in the Second Court gilded bars were set into the wall. From behind these the Sultan watched government proceedings, more a prisoner than a ruler.

In the Treasury in the Third Court I examined the famous Topkapi Dagger with its emerald-studded handle, and the Kasikci Diamond, the world’s fifth largest, found on a rubbish tip and purchased by a lucky street peddler for three spoons. Across the courtyard I inspected the imperial portraits. They began with Mehmet the Conqueror, at the end of the 15th century, who looked like a conqueror, and ended with Abdul Hamid II at the beginning of the 20th, who looked like a dishevelled ship’s steward.

As if to emphasize its separateness, the harem involved another ticket queue. Prices seemed a trifle steep but I shouldn’t complain. A hundred years ago, entrance to the harem would have cost me my testicles so twenty bucks should probably be considered a bargain. Some remnant of Ottoman security was still attached to the place, and visitors are not allowed to wander at will in the complex. The guide, a man with a permanent smirk, herded us inside in a carefully marshalled group. Bringing up the rear were two burly guards, like latter-day eunuchs, to ensure that no one strayed.

There are 400 rooms in the harem. It is a vast and bewildering complex of labyrinthine passageways, domed chambers, galleried arcades, cloistered rooms, grand salons, and intimate courtyards. The outside world intrudes only as a view through screened windows, or as squares of sky above the courtyards.

The guide led us through the eunuch quarters — a mere 50 rooms — to the courtyard of the Sultan’s Mother, the nominal head of this female world. Passing through marbled bathhouses, we arrived in the domed Imperial Chamber where the Sultan held banquets and enjoyed evening entertainment, and then in the Chamber of Murat III, the son of Selim. Gorgeous Iznik tiles swarmed across the walls between a bronze fireplace to warm the room in winter and a marble fountain to cool it in summer.

While the rest of the group were examining the architectural details, the guide sidled up to me. He had noticed I was taking notes. He had the bug-eyed look of a family retainer keen to share a few royal secrets in exchange for envelopes of well-thumbed cash. Perhaps he thought I was from the National Enquirer.

“Murat’s wife,” the guide whispered. “She was jealous.’

I must have looked surprised. A jealous wife would have gone mad in the harem.

“Murat was not like Selim, his father. Murat had only one wife when he came to the throne,” the guide said. “Safiye. He loved her. But others were wanting to diminish her influence. So they were always presenting him with new womens for his harem. For a long time he was ignoring them.”

We had arrived in the Apartments of the Princes where the Sultan’s sons were confined until their mid or late teens. Theirs was a precarious existence. When one of their brothers ascended the throne, the rest were usually strangled with silk cords by deaf mutes, unable to hear their cries.

The guide was doggedly pursuing his story. “But finally Murat’s sister found a woman to tempt him, a slave girl.” He gripped my arm. “Once he has tasted her, pheettt”– he made a sound like a firecracker fizzing — “the floodgates opened. He could not get enough womens.”

Writing in the 1580s, the Venetian envoy described Murat’s conversion. “He tried out many beautiful young girls and his life changed. Every night he sleeps with two, and often three… They fear his health is in danger.” The Topkapi had won. Murat too became a slave to pleasure. During the last years of his life, he fathered 54 children. He died in 1595, worn out but happy at the age of 48.

Selim’s grandfather, Suleyman the Magnificent, was one of the rare exceptions to the usual Topkapian decline into decadence. To his subjects, his obsession with Roxelana, who had been bought as a slave in the Istanbul market, seemed so unnatural that they feared she had cast a spell on him. To later generations it was one of the great Ottoman romances, fuelled by the poetry that the two wrote to one another. Their tombs now stand side by side in the cemetery of the Suleymaniye, the mosque that is Suleyman’s great monument to the city.

Roxelana’s great monument is the baths that still bear her name, opposite Haghia Sophia. The hamam was the center of women’s social life in Ottoman times. It was an opportunity for them to get out of the house and to let their hair down in steamy luxuriance away from the eyes of men and eunuchs. For a husband to deny his wife access to the hamam was grounds for divorce.

For the women of the harem it was also an excuse for physical intimacy, a rare experience when you have scores, possibly hundreds, of rivals. Luigi Bassano da Zara, an Italian who served as a page in the Topkapi in the 16th century, reports that “as a result of familiarity in washing and massaging one another, women fall in love with each other… I have known women, seeing a lovely young girl, seek occasion to wash with her, just to see her naked and handle her…”

Eager to experience Istanbul undressed, I hurried along to the great Cemberlitas Hamam, hard by the Grand Bazaar. The baths are segregated, so sadly I wasn’t going to get to glimpse women “naked and handling one another.”

Prices seemed a trifle steep but I shouldn’t complain. A hundred years ago, entrance to the harem would have cost me my testicles so twenty bucks should probably be considered a bargain.

In the hararet, the central steam chamber, I stretched out on the gobektasi, the round marble platform, heated from below, where customers lie like eggs on a griddle. Everyone wore a pestemal, a checked cloth, round the waist. In the male section, at any rate, it is impolite to flash. Round the marble walls were basins with hot and cold running water to sluice over oneself. Above me the dome was pierced with small holes through which light streamed in steamy shafts.

I was roused from my reverie by the arrival of my masseur. Naked but for his pestemal, Mehmet had a moustache the size of a baseball bat, a shag pile chest and shoulders that would have made the Hulk seem elfin. He attacked me with a scrubbing flannel. His method was to massage what construction work was to ballet. After a thorough soaping, followed by buckets of hot and cold water, he began to twist my limbs into positions that neither God nor I ever intended.

Post-bath I collapsed in my private cabin with a glass of sweet tea. The harem must have been like this: a good seeing to, then a cushioned divan. Life in the Topkapi was obviously lived horizontally.

The newer Dolmabahce Palace was an attempt to sit up straight. The Sultan and his harem left the Topkapi and moved into the new palace on the Bosporus in 1855. Built in the most florid European manner, it was part of the modernizing and Westernizing instincts current among the Ottomans in the 19th century. But it was not without a degree of Oriental extravagance. The bill for the furniture, as well as for European frocks for his harem, equalled the annual expenditure on the entire Ottoman army in Thrace.

I trooped through reception rooms the size of football fields, across carpets of 100-square meters, beneath chandeliers that weighed over three tons, to the harem quarters which looked no more exciting than middle-class apartments in Paris. After the Topkapi it all seemed a bit tame. Where was the beautiful tilework, the wonderful courtyards, the elegant arcades, the gorgeous pavilions where Sultans drank wine and dallied with concubines while the empire went to hell? Selim the Sot would have been disappointed.

Where to Stay: The best hotel in Istanbul is the Four Seasons Sultan Ahmet (+90 212 402 3000), which is walking distance to the Tokapi; doubles from $575. A more affordable budget option is The Empress Zoe (212 518 2504; info@emzoe.com), also near the Topkapi, where double rooms are from about $92.

Food and drink: Istanbul has always been a fabulous place to eat, but its restaurant scene is booming at the moment. Try 5 Kat (212 293 3774) on the fifth floor at No 7 Soganci Sok in Beyoglu for great atmosphere and great views. There is a proper bar as well as a restaurant; dinner from $30. G by Karaf (212 327 0707; gbykaraf@superonline.com) at 44 Muallim Naci Caddesi in Ortakoy is the place for beautiful people and beautiful food; dinner from $45. The night club next door will make you wonder where you are. Zencefil (212 243 8234) at 3 Kurabiye Sokak near Taksim is a great place for lunch, from $15. Pandeli (212 522 5534) above the entrance to the Spice Market is a creaky institution, but full of atmosphere, from $15.

Palaces: The Topkapi (212 512 0480) is open daily, except Tuesdays, from 9am to 5pm; admission is $15. There is a further charge of $9 for the harem. The Dolmabahce Palace (212 236 9000) is open from 9am to 4pm every day except Mondays and Thursdays; admission $5.50.

Hamams: Cemberlitas (212 522 7974) is one of the best hamams for novice foreigners. Close to the Grand Bazaar, it is open from 6am to midnight daily; admission with massage is $17. Nearby the Cagaloglu (212 522 2424), 7am to 10pm daily, is architecturally stunning; $18.50 with massage.

Further reading: Istanbul, Time Out Guide ($19.95) is best for services as well as sights. Check out the English language versions of Istanbul’s Time Out monthly magazine for entertainment. At No 11 Divan Yolu Caddesi you will find the best English-language bookshop in the city, simply named Bookshop.

Stanley Stewart has written three award-winning travel books – Old Serpent Nile, Frontiers of Heaven, and In the Empire of Genghis Khan. He is also the recipient of numerous awards for his magazine and newspaper articles. He was born in Ireland, grew up in Canada, and now divides his time between Rome and Dorset.

[Photos: Flickr | girolame; Wolfiewolf; sl4mmy; laszlo-photo; Kıvanç Niş]

Vegetarians in a foreign country (or, How not to eat meat in Thailand)

by Abbie Kozolchyk on

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans…are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.” — Anthony Bourdain

The Traveler’s Code of Conduct — a body of oral law etched indelibly into the collective nomadic consciousness — is very clear on matters of food: However unfamiliar, unappetizing and/or squirmy, nothing a host serves may be turned down. Especially when you’re a stranger in a strange land. To violate this rule is to violate one of the most ancient and sacred precepts of hospitality — and to reveal simultaneous provincialism and schmuckiness of the highest order.

Here, then, is one schmuck’s tale.

I became a vegetarian 25 years ago, during a 10th-grade biology lab, when my designated dissectee turned out to be the pigeon that broke the camel’s back. Deceased animals placed before me, whether as meals or science projects, had long since induced guilt and a gag reflex. And for some reason, with this one squab au jus de formaldehyde, I was done.

But alas, some 20 years later, my hosts on Yao Yai didn’t get the memo.No, really. There was a memo. Or at least a Special Dietary Requirements section of the paperwork I’d filled out for my trip to this southern Thai island. I was heading there to write about a nascent homestay program. And my friend Lon — always up for a dose of the different — was joining me.

Thus did we find ourselves the newest residents of an isolated wooden shack. It was surrounded by rice paddies and water buffaloes, propped up on stilts, and filled — in our honor — with freshly prepared fish.

Yes, our appointed island home — where two men on motorbikes had just deposited us after a dock-to-door off-road derby — harbored the ichthyological mother lode. Name the Andaman Sea subspecies, however obscure, and it was represented in our welcome buffet. Highly identifiably, in fact: Whatever had happened to these fish between their last swim and their appearance on the day’s menu, nary a scale, fin, tooth or eyeball was out of place.

So I knew Lon wouldn’t be the one to get us out of this mess. Normally, she’d act as my omnivorous wingman, making at least a respectable dent in any non-veg offerings. But anatomically correct entrées were her deal-breakers — grounds for a poker-faced declaration of vegetarianism. And I could feel one coming on any second.

I panicked. And the heat and humidity — augmented by a thousand steaming fish dishes, all enclosed in the house’s tiny central room — didn’t help. Within seconds, I felt woozy. But apparently, no one was the wiser. Our host parents — each a good decade our junior — beamed expectantly, gesturing toward what had clearly taken them hours (him, on the fishing end; her, on the cooking end) to produce. Just for us. The esteemed guests. Oy gevalt.

So as much as I hated being that tourist — the philistine who rejects such generously, lovingly, painstakingly prepared food — I saw no alternative. Especially as Lon was giving me the “can’t help you, dude” shrug.

“I’m SO sorry,” I began, looking back and forth between our new parents, who spoke next-to-no English.

“So, so, so, so sorry,” I continued. “I really can’t tell you how sorry I am. But there seems to have been a misunderstanding.”

The Traveler’s Code of Conduct is clear on matters of food: However unfamiliar, unappetizing and/or squirmy, nothing a host serves may be turned down. Especially when you’re a stranger in a strange land.

Their brows — until now eagerly raised — suddenly descended to the mildly concerned elevations. But still, not a glimmer of comprehension.

So I tried again.

“You’ve prepared SUCH a beautiful meal. So, so, so, so beautiful. Wow. Really, wow. The only problem is, sadly — very, very, very sadly — we can’t eat it.”

Still, nada.

Between the fish haze and the fear of offending — both intense to begin with, and rising at equal rates — I wasn’t sure how much lucidity I had left.

My mind raced several years back to another such episode, when Lon and I were in Frankfurt, and I was struggling to order a meat-free meal. After attempting every possible pronunciation of the word vegetarisch — only to be met with the waitress’s blank stares — I finally blurted out, kein fleisch.

No meat.

Plain and simple. Crude and desperate. The fumbling vegetarian’s version of the Hail Mary pass. But it worked.

So I thought I’d try it again.

Not knowing the Thai words for no meat, however, I resorted to pointing and mime. And in a show of solidarity, Lon soon did the same. By the time anyone got what we were saying, we had performed a veritable Macarena of we-no-eat-fish gestures.

Perhaps it was our virtuoso air swim. Or the way Lon so poignantly pursed her lips and shook her head at once. But something finally clicked — and our hosts nodded accordingly.

Even better than the hard-won understanding, however, was the hysterical laughter. Some things — the unbridled joy of watching two grown women make total asses of themselves, for example — are indeed universal.

And with this single plunge into idiocy, the group dynamic changed radically. No longer were we a collection of strangers, smiling and nodding at a polite distance. There was something familiar (and familial) about the way we were cracking each other up now — a good thing, if ever you find yourself in the otherwise awkward position of awaiting the meal that’s replacing the ridiculously elaborate one that was already cooked for you.

We had tried to convey to our hosts — in our best Pidgin ‘n mime — that there was absolutely no need to come up with a new spread. We truly would’ve been happy with plain rice. But they would hear nothing of it, or simply had no idea what we were saying.

Either way, about an hour later, meal number two showed up. The motor-bikers had been sent back to “town” (a relative term on a one-road island), where some mystery chef had devised a vegetarian bacchanalia: innumerable curries, stir-fries-and every conceivable combination of banana leaf, sticky rice, and fruit.

So we interrupted the activity in progress — a mostly failed, highly comical attempt at teaching each other a few words of Thai and English — to eat. Absent a table and chairs, which don’t come standard with Yao Yai stilt houses, we stayed exactly where we’d been: in a circle on the linoleum floor.

The food was placed in the center, along with the local version of a napkin tray: a red plastic toilet paper dispenser, the starter square already peeking out.

By now, we were famished — as were, apparently, all the neighborhood ants. They showed up as soon as we were served, and without ever breaking formation, marched fanatically over our ankles, calves and thighs to get to the goods.

Lon and I once again began exchanging glances. But to our surprise, no one else did. There was evidently nothing out of the ordinary about, oh, 100,000 ants showing up for lunch.

Failure to eat was not an option. Was it?

“No,” we silently confirmed to each other; it wasn’t.

Pretending not to notice our ant-covered bodies and plates, we’d wait for breaks in the foot traffic. Then — our chopsticks pre-cocked — we’d go in with laser-like speed and precision, hoping to minimize their insect protein content. And really, what was a little syncopated stick work given our already strange-seeming eating habits?

Soon enough, we all started chatting again — and rarely stopped during the three days we spent on top of each other in this tiny home. Of course, no one had the faintest idea what anyone else was saying, but that seemed a minor detail. And a shared joke.

A language barrier is a funny thing. Sometimes, however illogically, you decide to ignore it and say whatever you want to say to a person. Then you search his face for any trace of recognition, only to get a shrug and a smile — the international sign for “Nope, didn’t catch a goddamned syllable.” At which point both parties have to laugh. Or at least we did.

Of course, sometimes understanding what’s being said to you makes it no less funny. Take the Thai word krap. The masculine form of “yes” — and a polite if meaningless sentence ender — it’s also how you kill in front of a 35-year-old American crowd that has a 12-year-old’s sense of humor. Our host father, who clearly enjoyed having become some sort of comedic genius in our presence, obliged with the most liberal sprinkling of krap he could muster. Got us every time.

So taken were we with these absurdly warm, open, lovely people, that even activities we normally wouldn’t sign up for — the admiring of doomed and departed fish, for example — now seemed a perfectly acceptable form of bonding. When our host father and his fishing buddies took us by long-tail boat to behold the waterborne holding pens and walkways they’d set up in the middle of Phang Nga Bay, the excitement was palpable. Never mind the surreal limestone formations that protruded from blue-green waters, or the secluded, powdered sugar beaches — or any of the other greatest hits of the bay area. Though we were dutifully escorted to all of them, nothing lit the boys up the way a mackerel in a net did. So we smiled and nodded appreciatively at every last specimen.

We repeated the exercise (or a variation on it, any way) later that day, as our host mother expertly handled a succession of carcasses in the kitchen. She was so solicitous — always looking up from her work to smile at us and make sure we were having a good time — that we dared not disappoint. If we were going to commit the cardinal traveler’s sin of not eating the things, we could at least ham up our audience participation. And judging from our oohs and ahhs, you’d think fish-gutting was our favorite spectator sport.

That night, our last night on the island, Lon and I gave her a pair of earrings we knew she’d love. (They were the same enameled bohemian jobbies we had loved at her age.) And the following morning, they kept catching the sun as she waved goodbye to us from the dock. But as we waved back — our ferry slowly maneuvering out of its slip — we noticed a much subtler glimmer: There were tears running down her cheeks. Our host father’s, too.

Within seconds, Lon and I were crying ourselves. At which point we realized how quickly we’d all formed this funny little family. The process wasn’t graceful — or by Bourdainian standards, even civil — but God, was it delicious.

Abbie Kozolchyk has written for numerous publications, including National Geographic Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Forbes Traveler, concierge.com, World Hum, Real Simple and Cosmopolitan. Her website is www.abbiekozolchyk.com.

[Photos: Flickr | morrissey; jon hanson; René Erhardt; sashapo]