Defeated: a word of caution.

It's not an easy thing to admit but I've been defeated..........by a chili (more like 5!).  You see, if you've ever eaten Thai chilies then you know it's more than an instant kick like wasabi.  The spiciness is something that lingers in your mouth, and that's what I like about it, it stays with you.  But not only will it stay, it usually ends up getting more intense as time goes on and continuously eating more of the spicy dish usually doesn't help the situation.  What can I say? It's addicting and a total rush.

This past Saturday, I went to this restaurant called Ban Khun Mae (translation: Mom's house) down near Siam Square.  Usually I'm not a fan of going somewhere so packed with tourists but I accepted as I was with a friend who was visiting and it was a 2-story traditional style Thai house with a woman playing some kind of instrument.  We ordered a couple dishes: a bowl of Tom Yum soup, some duck curry, and a Papaya Salad.  I'm thinking that because it's filled with a lot of tourists, they probably don't prepare their dishes as spicy.  OH BOY, now here's where the story gets good.  I had been eating the dishes for a bit now when I needed to stop.  Something was coming....

Remember how I talked about spiciness building up? Well, think of it like a song where it crescendo's.  Each minute that passed was more intense than the previous.  What was probably about 10-15 minutes felt double or triple the time that it actually was.  I kept drinking my ice water, sat there waiting for it to cool off but I could hardly even speak.  I muttered a couple words to my friend, "spicy...aaaahhhh....hurts...." and tried to calm it down by eating some rice.  My eyes started to quiver, on the verge of crying but no tears come out.  My mouth was burning and I knew that this one was going down in the books.  All I could do is sit and wait it out.

Finally, the spiciness started to subside and I started picking at the dishes wondering which one was the guilty for this incident.  After closely examining the Papaya Salad, I solved the mystery:

The tricky part is that the string beans often look like the chilies.  So that's my lesson to you readers: make sure to look down and see what you're eating in each bite because there might be a surprise waiting for you as there was for me! I must have eaten a couple chilies by accident, oops! Can you tell the difference between the string beans and the chilies?