table for one, sir?

The food situation when travelling alone is an interesting one. Obviously, it’s a situation that I’m managing OK. I’m (ahem, splutter, gulp) hardly starving out here. On the upside, one is neither restrained nor impelled by the requirements of another’s appetite or tastes. For me, this usually licences an early lunch. I would abandon ship if I had to eat with a cowardly-bellied companion. I’m still surprised to meet people on buses and so forth who tell me that they are enjoying travelling in Asia, the people are lovely and all that, but the food’s a bit much, innit? Fools, I leave them to their baked beans on sugary toast and inane chatter.

In Thailand in particular, in restaurants rather than at streetside vendors, in smaller towns rather than cities, I have been the happy recipient of what I have come to term the Five Star Spinster Treatment. If not a truth universally acknowledged, it is a general and widespread assumption that a man travelling alone in Thailand is looking for a young wife. Whilst this may not apply in all cases, there are enough Western men of a certain age squiring Thai ladies of a certainly much younger age to give the assumption some credibility and perhaps to justify a little frostiness of treatment now and then. I’ve met more than one earnest and sensitive young man travelling in search of enlightenment and meaningful non-sexual cultural exchange who has complained that white men are unfairly stereotyped and treated as second-class citizens, all as much of a mindless lecherous cashed-up muchness. That’s terrible, I can’t imagine what that would be like at all. Gender stereotypes, how terribly, terribly awful for you. And what a perfectly dreadful thing to think of a reiki master, I coo and then I get the hell out of wherever there is so that I can dine alone and revel in Five Star Spinster Treatment. This means that you arrive at the restaurant and establish that you want a table for one. Yes, yes, just one person. As it’s low season, few establishments are heavily patronised. The menu will arrive and inevitably so will a gentle soul who will assess whether you are truly worthy of FSST. You’re travelling alone? Yes. Oh dear. Are you married? No. Oh, so you’re a spinster? Ooooh dear. You like Thailand? Yes, yes, yes. A little conference will take place between staff members, knowing and sympathetic looks will be exchanged, et voilà, forget about your book and notebook and postcards and staring vacantly into space for a shower of kindness and attention will soon fall upon you. I’ve learnt to await and answer vast numbers of questions about my family, my brassy haircolour, my bravery, my great height, my itinerary and then to submit to some basic lessons in Thai manners as well as extra fruit, lots of water and a fair amount of giggling. It’s excellent, so excellent that I’m able to ignore that much of it is kindness borne of extreme pity.

On the other hand, one of the downsides of travelling alone is that you can chicken out a little more easily on the so-called brave menu options. I walked past the insect vendors at the Chiang Rai markets three times and couldn’t quite make myself stop and buy up some worms. Had I been travelling with someone else, I know exactly what would have happened. I would said something tough like, ‘I bet you’re not game to eat those purple silk worms. Me, I’d eat a heap of them in a jiffy.’ I’d back myself into a corner and wind up chomping down handfuls of crickets and bamboo worms in order to maintain my Honour. Without an audience, eating insects almost doesn’t seem worth it. That said, I’m still regretting not sampling the spiders deep-fried and coated in sugar that I saw in Cambodia. Nothing deep-friend and coated in sugar can be all bad.