Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime

Reasonably, you're going to pay at least ten baht. At least in Ban Phe.

But young coconut is my favorite thing. Stop using superlatives, you might say. What about mango sticky rice? What about karaoke?



Pish. I just really like young coconut. Let me count the ways.

1. It's in a coconut shell. Food that comes with its own vessel is better than food that doesn't. It reduces litter, and it looks cool.

2. It tastes wonderful. Before I came to Thailand, the closest I came to coconut water was the few teaspoons of water in the bottom of one of those old brown coconuts at the grocery store. But the young ones are full to the brim with sweet coconutty goodness.

3. They slaughter it in front of you. With a big, sharp thing.

4. It's also a snack.

5. Which makes it perfectly acceptable to play with your food. The soft, rubbery flesh is an extra treat that you can scrape into the coconut and drink up, or (and this is kind of my goal in life now, actually) in a young enough coconut remove in one piece from the shell. I can only imagine the satisfying "sqwlupp" sound that would probably make.

6. After consuming the flesh and juice, you can use the shell to make a mobile, helmet, canteen, fish bowl, small boat, flower pot, ash tray, trowel, spitoon, bra, pencil holder, piggy bank, egg cup, ceremonial urn, firewood, jellybean jar, rain gauge, solar oven (suitable for one muffin at a time,) or just use it as a projectile weapon.

More fun than birthday cake. (And on that note, Grandpa, happy 90 today! Have a coconut.)

The rest of the market haul pictured is a barbecue flavored spiral potato on a stick, and vegetarian spring rolls.