The Big C

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Josiah

Contributor at Our Paradoxology

Josiah's soul finds a voice on the piano and through guitar strings and he is on his way to becoming a masterful musician. He loves to get to know the characters in the biggest, thickest book series he can get his hands on, and is now finding his place as the lead character in the epic story God is writing of his life. Stay tuned for his posts on cool creatures in Thailand and an American teenagers' take on Thai food.

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We go to The Gathering Church here in Chiang Mai. The Gathering and several other churches meet at Payap University which happens to be really close to Big C Extra. So almost every Sunday, we go to church and then leave to go to Big C for lunch and shopping for the next week.

The closest thing I can compare Big C to in America is a big Walmart, but it is completely different (like everything else in Thailand). There are several little businesses in Big C, such as, Pizza Hut, Swenson’s, Dairy Queen, Black Canyon Coffee, KFC (which is very popular here for some reason), and even some non-food related businesses, such as phone stores, jewelry stores, clothing stores, Watson’s (like Walgreen’s), and a couple small toy booths. I guess I could have compared Big C to a small mall but Big C itself is like a Walmart with a food court, and I don’t think any malls in America include a Walmart.

When we go to Big C (I am seeing how many times I can write Big C in one post), we always go straight to the food court and get our cards, each with 100 baht. In the food court, there are several booths along the side, almost every one with its own dish that the other places don’t and several individually owned booths in the middle. While my parents often get food from the middle booths, the rest of us have one or two main places or dishes we eat. Tallulah has a favorite place with a really nice lady working there. It has lots of sushi and other Japanese and Korean food, but Tallulah always gets Yakisoba, which is a dish with very thick noodles, vegetables, meat and a sweetish sauce made of soy sauce, ketchup, and other seasonings (according to Google). If you have met Tallulah, you know that she doesn’t really speak many words, but she gets Yakisoba every time so when Tallulah walks up to the booth, the lady smiles and confirms with me that she wants “one Yakisoba.” The answer is always yes. Almost nothing makes Tallulah happier than handing someone her card and bringing food back to our table.

But that’s just Tallulah. I always help her order, which works out because the yakisoba booth is in between the Pad Thai stand and the Khao Mon Gai Thot stand. My favorites.

I may have told you before, but Pad Thai is the national dish of Thailand. It is a saucy rice noodle dish with dried shrimp and always comes with bean sprouts, chives, chili flakes, sugar, and a lime. Usually it is also covered in an omelet. ข้าวไก่ทอด translated is “fried chicken with rice” and it is actually, drumroll please……..fried chicken with rice! Except the rice is cooked in the chicken broth for more flavor and I always cover the dish in a sweet chili sauce.

Jeremiah always gets BonChon chicken which I believe is Korean sweet and spicy chicken and rice. Nothing more to say there, really. Selah loves a good Pad Thai (as long as it has no dried shrimp: she has this thing about not liking to see little eyeballs on the food she’s eating. I know right? Weird.) Dad likes to get ส้มตำ or ข้าวซอย. I have told you about ส้มตำ in an other post, so check out the link. ข้าวซอย is spicy noodle soup usually with a drumstick and some crispy noodles on top, as you can see from the picture below. And mom changes everyday so she doesn’t have a usual. Although, she does like the fresh samosas that one of the middle stands make.

Now, every Sunday we have a 100 baht budget to buy whatever food we want (100 baht is about $3). All the meals above are around 45-70 baht. Unless I decide to change it up, my usual meals are both 50 baht. This means I always have 50 baht left over, which is perfect for my dessert. After we return the cards and get our cash back, I go to the smoothie guy’s booth. I do this every single time we go to Big C so, of course, I have a usual smoothie and the guy knows it. Whenever I walk up there, the man smiles and says, “Lemon-Coconut, no milk,” then I smile and nod and he makes it faster than lightning: check out the video! He has two blenders and a huge cooler full of ice behind him, along with piles of coconuts and other fruits. He also has two clean garbage cans: one full of water and the other for dumping water into. After he is done making a smoothie, he will clean the blender by quickly dipping the blender in the trash can with water, giving it a swish, then dumping the fruit residue water into the other can. That way he can make smoothies without them tasting like the ones he made before and it is super fast. My lime juice (Thai people call both lemons and limes “lemons”) and coconut water smoothie only cost 30 baht and is full to the brim so it always lasts till we get to the car. However, smoothies aren’t the only thing we can have as dessert. And I still have 20 baht left!

There are two mini waffle stands, one on the top floor and the other on the bottom. While I like the ones downstairs better, especially the cashew and and cranberry ones, they are more than double the price of the ones upstairs which has more variety. The ones upstairs are only 10 baht, no matter if you get a plain original, strawberry jelly, or chocolate filled one, while the ones downstairs are all 22 baht with no filled waffles. At both places, after you pick your waffle, they put it back into the waffle iron for a few seconds and then put it in the bag: nice and hot.

Selah’s favorite dessert, over all other Thai desserts, is Roti. There is a Roti stand right next to the smoothie stand and he is great. Roti is a kind of like a crispy crepe with countless different toppings, such as chocolate, sweet and condensed milk, bananas, sweet corn, pandan custard (made from coconut leaves and coconut milk), butter, peanut butter, etc. Roti is hard to make, but the guy at Big C is a pro and kind of a show off. I think Selah has a video of him tossing it till it almost brushes the ceiling and then folding in up on a really hot, oily pan.

There is one other dessert option that we indulge in every trip that I should mention: Ice cream! While there is a Swenson’s (which we never eat at), Dairy Queen is a cheap easy way to fill your hankering for ice cream. A small one scoop cone is only 12 baht. Upgrade it even farther and get a two scoop cone for ฿20 or a huge three scoop for ฿25 baht! Pay a little more and you can have the cone dipped in chocolate! There are also 5 different sizes of blizzard but they are a bit pricier so we only get them on special occasions. Dairy Queens are very common here but they don’t sell meals like they do in America. While some locations may offer hot dogs, the only reason to go there is for the ice cream. We always stop at Dairy Queen on our way out, but often we need to do some shopping first.

Like I said before Big C is like a Walmart. That is because it is. A big store that sells everything from clothes to food to toys to bikes. Usually after we eat we head to the store part of Big C and grab a cart which Tallulah sits in until we get to the produce on the other side of the store ’cause by then she is bored of the cart. Since we usually have Homeschool Co-op on Monday we pick up food for our picnic lunch the next day at Big C. Apples, bread, eggs, little pomelo salad kits, mama noodles (Thai ramen), etc. There are also displays of stinky raw meat like pork is but it also has tons of fish, shrimp, crab, and squid/octopus (very common).

Big C is one of our favorite places to go to eat because all the options. As a bonus, we also get all our groceries at the same time. Definitely one of my favorite places in Thailand.