In which I almost die

Bankok, Thailand 2/2

Megan and I discovered a western grocery store above Central World Shopping Mall and stopped to have a look. Needless to say, being stuck in Asia for the last five months and then suddenly being surrounded by all the comforts of home, we went a little crazy. We wound up planning dinner around what we found at the store. So dinner was turning into soup and grilled cheese, with oatmeal cookies for dessert.

We had been staying at this apartment in Bangkok which has a stove. The stove had been working perfectly well for us for boiling water, so we assumed it would be ok to do what we wanted for dinner. I went to borrow a cookie sheet from the landlord, who when he found out what we were doing, warned us that he had never used the stove and didn't know if it worked. We should have heeded his advice.

Megan cooked her minestrone soup with no problem, and since she makes her grilled cheese with a mixture of the toaster and a microwave, she had no problem. But I like to use the stove to make my grilled cheese. The stove has four burners, so I figured it would be ok to use two of them, one for my soup and one for my sandwhich. I also turned on the oven to preheat. Everything seemed to be going well. My grilled cheese was cooking beautifully, and the tomato soup was just starting to steam. I was busy off to the side preparing the cookies and I noticed that my grilled cheese was done, so I reached over to turn off the burner. Click. BOOM!!!!!!!! The stove exploded! Sending a ball of flames in every direction. Think: small mushroom cloud of flame. The force was enough to blow the top of the stove off kilter (and I mean the ENTIRE top, not just the burner), blow the knobs off the stove, blow the oven door open, and disconnect the water pipes in the sink. Megan and I just stood there in shock for a few seconds. Did that seriously just happen? I hurriedly turned off everything I could before something else happend and went and got the landlord. He really didn't know what to do except clean up the mess I had made and offer to bake the cookies in his oven. I don't think I've ever felt so bad in my entire life. I think our little stove explosion was the landlord's last straw in a series of bad events. I went to tell him about the sink (we didn't find out about the sink disconnection until we started to wash dishes and water came pouring out the cupboard), and I found him with his head in his hands at the kitchen table. I didn't have the heart to tell him. He sent his boyfriend over to bring us the cookies and we told the boyfriend, who was able to reconnect the sink and turn off the gas. There was no way we wanted the gas on while we were still in the apartment.

A little later I happened to look down at my arm. There were blackened bits of something sitting on it. When I looked a little closer, I noticed it was my arm hair! The explosion took my arm hair off! I now look like a shaved poodle. Thank goodness I wasn't wearing a long sleeved t-shirt or something because I don't think I could have taken starting on fire along with the explosion.

The lesson I learned? Don't use gas stoves. They explode when you're least expecting it.