February 23, 2024

My Quest to Lan Thai

On Wednesday night, I wanted Thai food. I wanted Thai food the night before too but UTC was having a special event for UTC day so we decided to stay back. I’d actually been wanting Thai food since the Thursday before when my team had planned to get Thai food and go to a park and survey for our project. This plan was hijacked by the overly rational thought that going out to dinner before our weekend in Pondicherry would be a waste because our leftovers wouldn’t keep for that long. Finally, the night came, the night I would eat Lan Thai. But no, instead I receive a text that the plans changed and people were going to a movie in the opposite direction of the Thai restaurant. I wondered when I would ever get my Thai food. The one thing I believed would cure my mysterious cold. After putting out some feelers and dropping strategic hints to an audience I knew would be receptive, the tides turned and Thai food was back on the menu. The movie would have to wait. 45 minutes after I’d come out of my room for the first time that day, I had rounded up a crew to join me for Thai. I was ready, dressed with my bag packed raring to go. The only problem was my day of sickly horizontal time and sleeping through lunch left me with just enough energy to reach Lan Thai if we left right now. Rounding up this crew often resembles herding cats, and I didn’t have it in me. I announced it was time to leave, ordered an uber and hoped some of our group would make the first car. 15 minutes away the uber ETA said. Perfect! Then I remembered Bangalore has atrocious traffic that always seems to be at its worst in times of great urgency. Stuck in standstill traffic breathing in the exhaust of the auto rickshaws, motorbikes, and trucks all on their way home at the end of the workday, I watched our expected time of arrival tick later and later. 8:05 then 8:09 pm. Ooh there’s a break in the traffic and the driver manages to squeeze between two trucks. Back down to 8:04 pm. The traffic comes to a halt again, and I try not to notice the time jump up again. Instead I focus on my breathing trying to catch the slight breeze of fresh air finding its way through the smog and staring at my empty water bottle I meant to fill up before we left. We arrive at Lan Thai just in time, as my dizziness and nausea reach their peak. We look around where we’ve been dropped off confused. We’re standing in a dark alley with no restaurant in sight. Where is this amazing Thai restaurant my classmates had been raving about for weeks? Where is this restaurant which holds the Tom Yum soup I’ve determined will make me feel better than any prescription ever could? Turns out it was just around the corner. We walk into the quaint storefront with four wooden picknick tables and the family that runs the restaurant. We order tom yum soup, papaya mango mixed salad, tofu pad Thai and lots of drinking water. The food comes out and I’m so excited for the soup that I look past my life-long detest for mushrooms and eat a bowl full of them with the spicy and sour ginger coconut broth. I feel myself coming back to life one spoonful at a time. Good soup yummm. After the meal which we eat every last bite of despite my plan to have lots of leftovers, I order another order of soup for take-out. We leave with my foil bag of soup by my side, a container I personally find very ineffective as it is burning hot to the touch and seems as though my precious soup could seep out at any prod or poke. We all collectively decide a walk around the corner to an ice cream shop is an obligatory end to the meal. One brownie fudge Sunday later, I’m back in an Auto, on my way to UTC, finally having quenched my craving and with a second serving in my bag.

By Lucy

I was too hungry to take a picture of my Thai food so here is my sundae instead