Market Day (Volume 2)

In the mood for something colorful? Forget the miracle mile and aim for the Avenue of the Volcanoes, to Otovalo in the land of red macaws and technicolor ponchos. You lose yourself in Andean color as you skip from stall to stall, buying that perfect shoulder bag with blue, orange and yellow stripes. Ecuadorian women with three foot black braids sell grilled corn and fried bread. The air is sticky and clouds gather overhead--don't need any more of an excuse to buy an umbrella.

You turn towards the dock in Nyaung Shwe and a longboat whips you down the mirrored freshwater of Inle Lake towards the floating market. With closed borders, almost everything for sale in Burma is made in Burma. Sellers of baskets, hand loom fabrics, silver jewelry and every fruit in the tropical sphere are moored in a nest of dugout canoes. They float, they bargain, they persuade as you peruse, they hawk as you gawk...all in an effort to unload their cargo. A woman in a nearby boat sells parasols, your smile is a beacon for her to paddle over. The paper is made from pounded mulberry bark, colored and stretched on a bamboo frame. A parasol, or paper umbrella, is standard protocol for Burmese holymen. You figure a bit of divine shade under a blessed parapluie could do you right today. You open it up just in time for the monsoon rain to begin and ask the boatman to drop you off in Kumily. Your spice rack is empty and so its time to pay a visit to Abraham.

In Kerala, the way of spice is the way of life. The tepid air is interrupted; the reeks left in piles by holy cows and pools by homeless kids give way to the richness of vanilla, sharp cinnamon and exotic clove. Of southern India's many spice markets, there may be no better place to breathe them in than at the garden of Abraham Kallummakal. His garden is so alive that upon entering, your senses are knocked senseless. A garden so verdant that it could only be the result of a prodigy's life work. White, red, black and green peppercorn vines creep up betel trunks. Green Cardamom seeds under the canopy of coffee trees and bunches of sweet red banana's fall behind a fence where vanilla beans sprout. Your tongue explodes as you sample a tiny pepper but the fire is relinquished as you sip a mid-morning chai whose flavors are as alive as the plants they were picked from all around you. You leave with a tired nose, a dozen new spices and a growling stomach. Out the door and into the monstrous labyrinth of Chagachak, Bangkok's market to end all markets.

You stroll past the puppies, countless stalls of silverware, dealers in small light bulbs, big light bulbs, neon light bulbs, brass fittings, hello kitty memorabilia, a Thai man picking a banjo and junk, junk, junk for miles upon miles. The heat is overwhelming. You grab an icy drink with floating gel squares and what must be an illegal level of sugar and duck into an alleyway. You see a man selling racy posters across from man selling snakes and are grateful that they are not near those innocent puppies. As you walk away questioning what a person would do with a live cobra, your answer appears a few stalls ahead at a table full of old men drinking cobra wine. You learn that this Vietnamese recipe is simple: a jar of wine with a cobra coiled inside. You opt to risk diabetes from another supersaturated sugar drink than dare to drink venom. Your eyes wide from yet another bought of hyperglycemia and jaw dropped from witnessing serpent murder, its time to escape Chagachak's sensory overload. Down the alley and into Valparaiso's seafood market for a lunch you will not soon forget.

Valpo's seafood market just may have the best seafood in Chile-quite an accolade for a country that is all coastline. As you meander from menu to menu, waiters tempt you into their cafes as you pass by. After a look around, you realize that prices are the same, so you pick the one with the biggest mussels and funkiest decor. You duck into los mariscos de Valparaiso. What this pesce cafe lacks in creative naming it compensates for in decor. The ceiling, the walls, the floors, the bowls..even the soup in the bowls is all a rich rojo. You opt for the special, the pescados y mariscos guiso and when it arrives your first instinct is to ask the waiter for a weapon. Swimming in the still boiling bowl of red broth are more representatives from the mollusk phylum than could fit in the pages of your high school biology book. You recognize mussels and you think that one may be some enormous version of what you thought was clam. You put down your fork and look around for a club. And what are those curly red ones? The ones that look like they could take on a humpback? And do you see a heart in the middle of that one or did he just eat his neighbor before their plunge into the cauldron? You dip your spoon into the broth and pull it back out quickly--good sign, they didn't eat the end off. Dip in again and taste the broth--first tomato, then herb, then spice....then more spice! You drink water but the burn gets worse. Its now or never-you won't be able to taste it anyway with your tongue on fire. You plunge deep, shut your eyes, spoon landing true to mouth you take your first bite. A mussel maybe..but more firm and richer...you did it! You conquered the red humpback killer, then moved onto through the various species of bivalves until your stomach is full and in the bowl are only empty shells. Feeling like Queequeg, you give the waiter a heartfelt 'gracious' and aim for Rynek Krakowski to walk off the food coma and pick up some souvenirs.