2004jun02. While I’m incessantly talking about coco-nuts ... in the Bangkok airport, the international terminal gates are laid out in one long line. So if you want to, for example, competitively price small water bottles (because there are no big water bottles in the Bangkok airport), you have to troll up and down this fifty-mile stretch of airport property, one shop at a time. So I finally found two kiosks that were only marking up the water three times the average Bangkok price (instead of like the sushi stand, which was marking up the water nine times the average Bangkok price) and I purchased a lake’s worth ‘cause plane cabins are drier than the driest desert and that’s pretty dry (Travel tip #981f: When ordering drinks on a plane, order two or three ... I’ve only had one flight attendant stop short at the request, but I still got the order). While doing this at one store, I noticed they had plastic-wrapped coco-nuts. That were whole. That means they weren’t cut open. A light goes off, which means that it turns on, inside my head, figuratively.
“If I buy this coco-nut ... you'll open it for me?”The uniformed woman behind the counter answers in the affirmative. I immediately drag out 80 Baht just for the pleasure of the next minute or so, and I’m not disappointed. She fishes behind the counter and pulls out a HUGE cleaver – the other clerks at the kiosk are amused by just how wide my eyes go at this point – and starts hacking the coco-nut open. Deft chops, five or six, then she grabs a straw for me and we’re done. Big knife action in a sterile poorly-designed international airport. Best coco-nut I’ve ever had.