Don't Put Dessert in the Soup!

After a rainy afternoon and relaxing Thai massages, Doug and I were relatively unmotivated to venture far from the hotel for dinner. We headed out, took a sharp right, and walked about a block before hitting a Thai Bar-B-Q all you can eat buffet. We were the only white people in there for sure, and we sat down with no idea what was to come. They ushered us up to the buffet where there was a wide variety of meats available. I stuck to a couple of types of squid and chicken, while Doug opted for some pork, bacon, spicy baloney (seriously) and spicy chicken. We both stayed away from the liver, hearts, and other mystery meats (I'm pretty sure one was brain) - Doug had had his fill while in Vietnam and I was not "feeling it".
In the middle of the buffet were small bowls and which you could fill with cucumbers, kidney beans, barley, and a weird small slimy green noodle - so I took a bowl and piled them in. On the left side was the traditional soup fare with some greens, including the recognizable basil, clear noodles, and a variety of dumplings.
We headed back to our table where they set up the big dish - they filled the moat around the dish with broth and began sticking our meat on top of the grill. Doug quickly took on the roll of grill master, while I was in charge of the soup. I happily dumped my greens, noodles and dumplings in the moat and then fished them out when ready and refilled as needed while Doug continued to grill away. We had quite the system going and were feeling very confident in our abilities. I took a look at my bowl of barley, beans, noodles, and cucumber and thought I bet these would be great in the soup. I caught the eye of our waitress and motioned to put my bowl in the soup and looked at her questioning. She came over, saw the contents of my bowl, and immediatly called another waiter over. He looked down at my bowl and blantently laughed in my face. He began to take the cucumbers out and stick them on my plate while our watiress came over with salad dressing. He then took the rest of my bowl away and came back a few minutes later with it filled with a white, milky substance. I took a bite and relized it was condensed milk. No wonder they had been so amused. I had put salad and dessert in a bowl and then was going to pour it into my soup. Silly foreigner!
It was absolutely delicious and we got the whole thing, including bottled water for $9. If you find yourself with the opportunity, defintely go for it. Just don't pour dessert in your soup!