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Roti Khaeng for breakfast

Since I couldn’t go to KL, I had some muslim food for breakfast instead. Totally serendipitous, I happened on the Pakistani temple while doing my early morning circuit of Phitsanulok. A famous roti-khaeng shop was just a few meters away from it. Both the temple and the shop seemed much farther on the map. Although come to think of it, on a map, everything seems far away. But walking makes everything closer.
OR of course, it could just be that Phitsanulok, like any small town, IS actually small.

I love walking around small towns while it’s still waking up. You see the shops along the (usually) single main road opening one by one. And you see what, to a town, is considered important enough to have its own shop for.

Here in Phitsanulok, they apparently need a lot of cloth. Nothing exotic though, just regular stiff cotton.
Then there are the several optical shops, the obligatory ‘general store’ that carries everything from sandals to sandpaper, a single 7-11 for the whole town, a rice store, a beauty center, a bakery, a few banks.
And as I pass from one food stall to the next, I barely catch familiar scents. From that one by the corner – coriander. From the one just outside the train station – lime. From the one by the market – curry. And a very welcome one over on the left – milk. Going through the market, familiar stalls are being set-up: fruits, meats, vegetables, spices – with their several kinds of dried chili peppers by the bucket.

Then when I sit down to my warm roti, I hear someone - probably the owner’s little girl, somewhere in the back of the shop, doing finger drills on the piano. I recognize it as one of the old ones I used to practice everyday too. This one’s the key of E, over and over again, over and over, until you hit the note strong and true.

I look around, and save for the Thai script in the store signs and the occasional barefoot monk in orange, I could might as well be in Lucena, Legazpi, Camarines, Benguet, or that small town where my piano still sits waiting for me to play it again - Antipolo.