the coconut ice-cream

Sitting at the entrance of a hill shrine in quaintly Hat Yai, without wanting to walk in, without knowing what God was standing inside, I was watching the street dogs and their stamina. Came to me Alvin, my co-traveller with a glee-soaked-smile and he was asking if I want coconut water to quench my thirst. I nodded. He went to the nearby stall that had green coconuts at all its sides. He came back to me running with a slight disappointment this time saying, “Not coconut water but something else.” And we went there running to try without knowing how it was going to taste, something called the coconut ice-cream.

She slashed open a baby coconut, dried out the water and scraped the white flesh, leaving them inside as slices of drenched carnation petals. She tossed in some kidney beans, crunchy nuts, jellies of all kind, sticky rice and enriched the whole thing with scoops of vanilla ice-cream. She garnished and technically flavoured her creation with sweet milk that wasn’t so sweet. Hat Yai balances on its head the culture, world-class street food and wild stray dogs and many more. My journey continued in the land of to-a-certain-extent-orthodox, to-a-certain-extent-not, after a refreshing break in the form of a coconut ice-cream.