The Year is 2539

There we were, walking the streets of Korat in Thailand, when suddenly we stepped through a set of glass door and, for awhile, were transported to another place, another time. The place was America; the year was 2539.

Actually we had stepped into a Pizza Hut. If we ignored the fact that the menus were in both Thai and English, we could have been in any city in America. "We'll have a large vegetarian thick crust and two Pepsi's please. We don't want any meat," I said. The girl frowned at me and shook her head. She held up one finger (the universal "just a minute, I have no idea what you're trying to say" sign) and called to another girl. I repeated my order - this is where the 'I could be anywhere USA' bit starts to fall apart; this girl didn't understand me either. But a third person did understand me and wrote up the order. I thought I had done my very best with the other two girls. Perhaps the Thai arn't good with charades. I think I did a pretty darn good imitation of chicken meat. And I don't care how silly it looks to stick my hands under my arms and cluck, other people have understood.

I read the menu while we waited for our Pepsis. I read the part of it I could read. But something was wrong. The offer for free Pepsi refills expired on May 16, 2539. Pizza Hut couldn't have missed that big an error before the menus hit the presses. The sign hanging from the ceiling was wrong too. Unless, "John we've been trasnported to the future." OK, it was a silly idea. I only focused on it for a minute. In actuality, the Thai calendar is based on the year of Buddha's death. So 1996 in Thai is 2539. But I had him going there.

The pizza was great, the oregano we poured over it was great, the four glasses of Pepsi we drank were great and when we left, we couldn't understand why we didn't feel so great. Must have something to do with re-materializing into the late 20th century. Despite our tender tummies, it felt good to go out to a restaurant and actually understand the menu. Every other time we've gone to a restaurant here, we've had to guess. The menus are completely in Thai, rather useless to us. Ordering is pretty useless too, since we can't speak the language.

We did find one restaurant we could eat at. It's called Mongsavirat - someone translated the characters for us. It's totally vegetarian, so anything we order is a safe bet. The food is prepared fresh every day and laid out behind a glass counter. We just have to point to what we want and it's served up hot. Unfortunately we're not trained in detecting spicy by looks alone. Wow! did I order a smoker one time. Well soon enough we'll be in Nepal mountains eating spiceless plain rice and lentil stew every day. I suppose, knowing that, it doesn't hurt now to give my taste-buds a kick in the pants.