If you order eggs for breakfast in Isan, you might like to be a little more specific. The eggs of the red ant (or "Khai mot daeng")  are a local delicacy and can be eaten in a number of ways - raw in salads, cooked in a soup, or added as a flavouring to a Thai style omelette.

Ants may often seem to appear when you least wish to encounter them, but sourcing their larvae is an entirely different challenge (unless you cheat and pick them up at the local market.) Being sociable creatures with a mind for safety, they like to build their nests on the branches of trees, masterfully exploiting pliable leaves and gluing and weaving  these together with a silken secretion  to make a protective and camouflaged home.

Much akin to foraging for honey, when you go ant egg hunting with the Thai villagers at Gecko Villa, you must first identify a suitable nest, use a knife to clip the branch or a bamboo pole to dislodge the nest, and then shake away the understandably angry ants. Unfolding the leaves, you will discover what appears to be a miniature honeycomb filled with the white larvae. If you then place this in a bucket of water, the natural reaction of the ants to clump together will separate most of the ants from the eggs (although the ants have not died but are simply playing possum) and leave you with what could pass for a miniature cassoulet.

Ant eggs are nutrionally valuable and have a gentle flavour. The sourness sometimes associated with the ingredient is often attributed to the occasional ant that many cooks like to leave in the dish, imparting crunch and depth, with the acidity of the formic acid tasting like a mild lime.

Flavouring an oil with garlic, chilies and lemongrass before adding the eggs and green onions, kaffir lime leaves and a dash of fish sauce makes a great accompaniment to a cold beer. For the more squeamish, the contents may be wrapped in a Good King Henry leaf to make a more alluring package.

The tradition of hunting for ants eggs has even given birth to the exotic Isan dance, "Serng Yae Kai Mot Daeng" or Ant Egg Gathering Dance, choreographed around hunters searching for, and harvesting, this Isaan delicacy.

We cultivate many organic  papaya trees around the grounds of both Gecko Villa and Green Gecko. In Isan, we tend to regard the fruit as a vegetable - using it as a main ingredient whilst hard and green rather than as a fruit when its flesh has sweetened and softened into reds or yellows.

The papaya plant grows rapidly. Whilst the bark and stem may be used to produce rope, the fruit is best known for its wide range of uses and inherent health benefits.

Both the green fruit and the latex in the papaya tree are rich in papain, an enzyme useful in tenderizing meat (and often used in manufactured meat tenderizers.) Papain (often produced by fermenting the flesh of the papaya) is also used as a topical application to treat cuts, rashes, stings and burns. The fruit also has a relatively high amount of pectin, which can be used to make jams.

Papayas contain high levels of folates and antioxidants, including vitamins C, E and A. These help prevent the oxidation of cholesterol, and are thus believed to be valuable in preventing atherosclerosis, stokes and heart attacks. Diets high in papaya have been proven to reduce the risk of prostate cancer by 82%, as a result of their richness in lycopenes. Juice form the leaves of the tree can increase platelet counts.

Black seeds nestle in the centre of the fruit in a hollow chamber, and are generally discarded, although they are in fact edible, with a sharp, spicy taste. They may be dried and ground and then be deployed as a substitute for black pepper.

The spicy Green Papaya Salad known as Som Tam is considered the flagship dish of the Northeast - even if it has been hijacked, sweetened and dulled down in scovilles by the central Thais in their "Som Tam Thai".  The wafting aromas of Som Tam are distinctive and seductive, marrying sour, bitter, sweet and salty notes to a dish that weds crunch with softness. The "pok-pok" sound of pestle and mortar, and the aroma concocted by the rhythmic pounding and scraping of the ingredients, creates a symphony of taste that far exceeds  its individual notes - principally shredded green papaya, cherry tomatoes, long beans, chilies, garlic  and lime juice palm sugar and fish sauce (or, specifically in Isan, fermented fish or rice paddy crab.)

So venture up the Northeast of Thailand and enjoy a freshly prepared Som Tam with some sticky rice. Juicy, spicy, healthy, fresh and crunchy, it makes a perfect summer dish beside the gurgling pool.

 Dating his communiqué the 18th July 1967, Sir Anthony Rumbold, the British Ambassador to Thailand, wrote a valedictory summary of his two and a half years in Thailand. The memo is marked "Confidential", listed as being for "Foreign Office and Whitehall Distribution" and noted to be "Property of Her Britannic Majesty's Government".

Either Sir Anthony was a droll after-dinner speaker, or times have changed (and it must be noted that the incumbent British Ambassador, Quinton Quayle, has recently distanced himself from Sir Anthony's views.)

It seems somewhat fortuitous that the CIA memo on Thailand (see earlier post) was dated just one month later than Sir Anthony's, and one cannot help feeling that a copy of this may have been leaked to the Americans, who were then quick to respond in their own more  measured summary.

A few of his succinct "insights" are listed below:

"The general level of intelligence of the Thais is rather low, a good deal lower than ours and much lower than that of the Chinese."

"It is moreover extraordinary how little the average citizen of Bangkok knows at first hand about the rest of his country."

"Thais love money...they call it Vitamin M."

"At the biggest "public school" in Bangkok the boys play fives and sing "forty years on' and at luncheon with the board of the Bank of Thailand the talk is about the country cricket championship.....But we can do more in the field of education than just benevolently encourage old school tie sentiments among the rich and privileged."

"Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all."

"It does a faded European good to spend some time among such a jolly, extrovert and anti-intellectual people. And if anybody wants to know what their culture consists of the answer is that it consists of themselves, their excellent manners, their fastidious habits, their graceful gestures and their elegant persons. If we are elephant and oxen, they are gazelles and butterflies."

If you sit at night by the pool at Gecko Villa, you may well see what appear to be bright green lights flashing in the night sky, dancing glimmering attendance on the trees and bushes. If you have not had too many Gecko Bites (our special cocktail), then you are watching magical fireflies at work (Hing Hoi as we know them.) This is one insect that does not form part of our spicy local Thai food diet! Sit still, and one may land on your lap and continue winking at you in bioluminescent green.

Perhaps the firefly is a fallen angel, a misguided light seeking its way back to the ethers: the molecule that generates this spectacular light is termed "luciferase". This has been the subject of much research by molecular biologists, trying to comprehend our circadian rhythms.

The male firefly deploys his blinking greens as a mating call, to which the female will responds with a similar flash when impressed by the show. Research shows that the faster the flash, the more popular the male. They have light generation down to the finest of arts. Whilst light bulbs typically emit 97% of their energy as heat, the firefly has this down to a mere and ecologically-minded 3%. They may not be aware of this, but do so through a chemical reaction between the molecule luciferin and the enzyme luciferase in the presence of oxygen in the firefly's abdomen, using the energy from adenosine triphosphate or ATP. Scientists have demonstrated that perhaps all animals have molecular clocks in virtually every cell of their bodies.

Fireflies in Thailand are very social creatures, and have become renowned for their ability to orchestrate their flashings, blinking in simultaneous rhythm. The logic behind these illuminated thoughts is unclear, although some believe that the males agree to dark periods the better to spy the females, whose glimmering is more faint. Others believe that the males have ganged together to imitate a “supermale”: an enormous glowing dance that cannot fail to impress!

Gene that makes them glow also makes cancer cells vulnerable to treatment. Researchers have now inserted the gene that creates bioluminescent light into modified cancer cells, to make them glow. Adding a photosensitizing agent to the cancer cells, toxic substances were generated that killed the cancer cells.

These fireflies are part of the beetle family Lampyridae (the "Shining Ones"), which morph into glowing fireflies and perform this seductive ritual dance for only the last three weeks or so of their life. Their unique show is thus a call to reproduction, a harbinger of death, and a possible clue to wiping the scourge of cancer from the world...

The Northeast of Thailand, or "Isan", was formerly part of the Kingdom of a Million Elephants (Lane Xang) - or in other words, was part of Laos. It was the French colonialists who helped demarcate the new Thai-Lao border at the frontiers of what is now known as Isan. So it is not because we eat “laap” and sticky rice and too many searing chilies that we speak oddly – it is for historical reasons!

The dialect spoken here is, fundamentally, only a "dialect" for geographical and political reasons - as elsewhere it would be called the Lao language (although admittedly over the years certain minor discrepancies between the two have emerged.) Whilst attempts were made to assimilate the Northeasterners more closely into the Thai population, with the use of the Thai alphabet and the homogenizing employment of central Thai in schools, the lilting Lao tones still linger languorously on our tongues!

Whilst visitors to Thailand will often delve into a Thai phrasebook and dabble in Thai, the chances are high - wherever they may be - that the "first' dialect of the interlocutor will be Isan or Lao. So you may like to amuse yourself and your hosts by using a Lao phrasebook instead. When used with Isan natives, this will elicit giggles and delight. When used with Thais from other regions, they will simply be as confused as if a Thai visitor to London started communicating in a heavy Scottish accent.

At Gecko Villa, we do our best to speak English but will be happy to teach you both Thai and Isan or Lao phrases. As an example of the difference between Isan/Lao and Thai, here are a few words in English with their Isan and Thai counterparts:

I - Koi -  Phom/Chan (male/female)
You -  Jao -  Khun
We  -  Hao -  Rao
Not/No -  Bo -  Mai 

What? - Ee-Yang -  Arai

Can you speak Lao/Thai? - Wao Lao Dai Bo?  - Phuut Thai Dai Mai?

Never Mind - Bo Pen Yang - Mai Pen Rai

Tasty - Saep -  Aroi 

Whilst as a Westerner you are a "Farang" in Thai, you are a "Bak SeeDa" in Isan. For a Thai you are a guava, for those in Isan you are a Mister Guava in our dialect. Perhaps the scoville units have gone to our heads after all, and the Thais of Isan are the ones separated not by one, but by two, common languages.