You'll know when you've entered a fresh market by the nauseating smell of raw pork and chicken neatly organized on tables with buckets of live fish sitting on the ground.Women will have their machetes in hand hacking away at a pig head or sorting through the intestines of the latest slaughter. When I first moved to Thailand I was shocked by the openness of the fresh market compared with the US where you aren't even allowed to see how the animals are killed. I was also shocked by how the meat lays out on tables for hours in the hot sun with the women having a contraption of a plastic bag attached to a stick swishing away flies. Along with the meats they have an incredible spread of fresh vegetables, herbs, spices, and fruits that are brought over from the local fields. Although I don't do any cooking in Thailand, since my Thai roommate so generously buys my food and cooks, I rarely actually get to purchase anything from the fresh market other than a piece of fruit for a snack. I do love walking through it looking at the latest fruits and vegetables that have come into season or the whatever strange fish or animal they have laying about. For example there was ant egg season and spread across tables where leaves with live ants and their eggs that you could scoop up and buy, quite a delicacy here.
There is nothing to hide in Thailand when it comes to food. Everything you buy and eat is killed and cooked right in front of you.
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