Bangkok, Thailand, Chinatown on crisp Friday night is the only place to be for an extended family dinner. All the buildings are squished tight, like books squished onto a bookshelf, making them thin and tall. The night was lit by the bright, glowing, yellow and red Chinese signs inviting you to come and eat in their restaurant. The restaurants overflowed onto the street, each came with a new smell, good and bad. The stench of rotten trash hit like a truck and the soothing smell of Chinese cooked duck would trickle its way through the stink into my nose making my stomach growl. After walking through the crowded sidewalk we finally sat down and got ready for dinner. We sat at large circular tables, so conversations didn’t have to be confined to the person right across from you. We had to sit at more than one table for the whole family to be able to fit and sit comfortably. In the middle of the table was a circular piece of glass that spun around making food easily accessible with just the flick of a wrist.

As the adults began to order the food, the waitress brought and laid out small bowls and plates with chopsticks and spoons for everyone, these utensils were all plastic of course. After the adults had finished ordering, steaming hot rice was brought right away and all the bowls would be filled, as rice was the base of the meal. There were five sauces, each necessary, poured into small sauce bowls and placed neatly onto the spinning contraption in the middle of the table. They were sweet, sour, salty sauces for each splendid dish that was served. One was black which glowed whenever the light shined onto it. While the one right next to it was a mix of greens and white with a sour taste that made your face tense up when you ate it alone. On the other side of the sour goodness was the queen sauce of salty sauces. It had sliced green and red peppers in a clear brown liquid. Farther along was the red, sticky, sweet sauce, which, I personally believe, is abused by those who don’t know how to properly use it. The last sauce was a white sauce that at first glance would deceive you into thinking it doesn't taste good. However, this sauce was a seemingly wonderful mixture of sweet, salty, and sour.

The first dish would be brought out and put down and all the children would stop playing to admire the long awaited food, its smell spread just as the steam spread, swiftly through our noses. The dish was spun around the table and everyone picked up the food with their chopsticks a bit at a time. One must remember that while eating a Chinese dinner to not eat too quickly. There would be only one or two dishes in front of you at a time. Therefore, you must strategically plan out the proportions of your food. One shouldn’t eat too much at the beginning; otherwise they would be full when the best dish was yet to come. I only took a small amount, a couple of bites, a few times. The juicy, garlic, steamed plants mixed with the magical sauce that made everything taste good, made my taste buds dance with joy. Each dish brought a different dance to my mouth. The spicy dishes brought them to jump like a kid on a trampoline. The soup brought a ballroom waltz into my very own mouth. As a dish would come and go and a new plate of food would come, one thing always remained the same, the loud conversation.

Since my extended family was a mix of Chinese, Thai, American, and French the conversation never seemed to be in just one language. The loudest were my Chinese grandparents, whom over the many years I have grown accustomed to being loud. As they were speaking Chinese, my mother and her siblings and their children would be speaking Thai to one another, while French conversation would be going on between my aunt and uncle and their children, where as I would be speaking English to my father and two siblings. Everyone could speak Thai, which became our main language for conversation. To add to the loudness of the conversation the busy, bustling cars driving through crazy, Bangkok traffic added another dimension to the volume.

After over three hours of eating and engaging in conversation the time crept up on us and it was time for us to walk back home. Although it seemed late the city made the night seem young and alive. The Chinese signs stilled glowed with pride and the smells still filled our noses. However, as we walked back through the streets, our stomachs didn't growl.