Papaya salad: The next edition

I never realized that there were multiple versions of papaya salad. I was completely content with the standard version – shredded papaya, tomato, green beans, chiles, peanuts, dried shrimp, lime juice, sugar…
and then we went to a little restaurant around the corner from our apartment in Bangkok and something on the menu caught my eye: Som Tham Kai Kem (Papaya Salad with Salted Egg).

Those little orange things in the foreground? Those are the yolks of salted eggs.  They take on an a delightful soft texture, and the whites lose all their rubberiness.  I wanted to investigate the secret behind these lovely eggs, and here’s what I found:

These are simply eggs cured in brine for a few weeks, then boiled when needed.  They apparently even keep at room temperature after soaking (but everyone keeps all their eggs at room temperature here, so I guess this process just gives them a longer shelf life).

The salad is a perfect lunch with my beloved sticky rice.

And some tidbits on my life in Bangkok:

Victory Monument has some of the best shopping I’ve found! I bought 2 cute pairs of flats, a skirt, a pair of pants, and sunglasses for about $30 total!

Lumpini Park is my one of my favorite places in the city! I run the loop around the park every morning (which is about a mile from my apartment – perfect warm up and cool down!) and it is the perfect place to people watch.  I can’t get enough of the giant group aerobics classes at the entrance to the park – this morning they were blasting techno Christmas carols over the loudspeakers

My job is amazing.  Yes, I work in the mall (OK, a language school in the mall), and the bus ride is about 45 minutes each way, but the kids are fantastic and the school is SO much better organized than where I worked in Chiang Mai!