As in other Southeast Asian countries, food stalls are everywhere in the streets, markets and festivals of Thailand, which is an endless smorgasbord of aromas, colors, sounds and flavors - food in Thailand a feast for the senses.
Picture a barbecue hotdog stand in front of a U.S. sports stadium. Now, instead of hot dogs and buns sizzling on the grill, the food basket of fresh bananas, which are laden fried in batter and coated in a huge wok until golden, thenscooped into a paper bag, like a super-size order of extra thick homecut french fries. This is my first breakfast in Thailand while I watched hundreds of elephants beautifully costumed play soccer and tug-of-war in an annual Elephant Roundup in Surin in the extreme northeast of the country!
The next "hot dog stand" does have a grill, placed over a large bin of charcoal, with flattened chicken quarters sizzling on sticks that you eat like an ice lolly, among others, the remaining steelCart loaded with fresh, ripe pineapple, mango and papaya, and sporting a large mortar and for transforming the greener papayas into a crunchy, sweet-sour-spicy salad with morsels of shrimp or squid, ram, chilli, garlic and sugar.
What makes Thai food so delicious and distinctive among other Southeast Asian food is this unique blend of fresh herbs, spices and other ingredients that combine for a perfect balance between sweet, sour, salty, and heat makes your mouth feel cleanYou and your taste buds popping in the afterglow.
Fresh fruits, salads and even soups and noodles are scooped into plastic bags with a skewer, fork, spoon or straw for eating on the go or on a folding chair in a nearby metal table perched on the market.
Thai moving buses and trains to picnic, with all the chatting, eating and sharing the fare through the window of the vehicle stopped on the street and offered for sale terminals: Gai Yang, the flattened Barbecue Chicken on a stick,skewered meat and fish balls and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves.
Carnival and the markets over huge woks at knee height, bubbling with fried creatures of all kinds, many unidentifiable. Are they grasshoppers? Crickets? Spiders? Baby birds? small frogs? - My mouth and eyes were constantly wide open in wonder and amazement!
I spent an inordinate amount of time in the fresh produce and night food markets - exuberantly fascinated and often visibly discombobulated to thegreat pleasure of suppliers and buyers.
After a journey to find every aisle of food carts and woks on my mission, the fresh, interesting and delicious-looking dishes, I was often met with severe shaking, or "No, you do not want - the Thai food!" By English-speaking cooks or bystanders when I pointed and waved and tried for a meal I knew I really wanted to ask. On my first such adventure, I do not know that the custom of the cooking show was on the frying panspecify the amount of garlic and chili for you, how much do you want: Do they simply asked if I wanted to Thai ingredients, I nodded vigorously at the heaped-up display, and it all went! Yes, it was Thai food, and I enjoyed every sizzling touch to my lips under the watchful, laughing eyes of suppliers and spectators that had gathered.
I spent much time learning to admire and enjoy the food as I did with the main tourist attractions,walk for hours through the streets and markets taking in the sights and smells and sounds: quiet clucking rising from a pile of brightly colored roosters and chickens tied together by the feet - a Thai rooster plumage is extraordinarily beautiful, plastic tubs and buckets just full enough of murky gray water to the fish, frogs and turtles until a sale has taken hold, hills and mountains of green and red and purple and orange, the pleasant smell of the durian andJackfruit - pleasant because I was so excited and in awe of it all!
I tried deep-fried grasshoppers at a carnival in Kanchanaburi during a sound and light show of "The Bridge On The River Kwai" that ended with a fabulous fireworks display recreating the allied bombing campaign that the bridges of the Death Railway destroyed in 1945. I tried to be a few small roasted wood worms offered by a very thin host in a northern hill tribe village near the Myanmar border, and fears that IEating his family out of the house and home. I discovered countless traditional dishes I had never tried and enjoyed authentic versions of some I had in Toronto, newly arrived Thai restaurants. As often as I could, I saw their creation, so I try to replicate it when I go home came and got a kitchen could be.
Many people are, how brave I was alerted to my stomach. During two years traveling around the world, including six months in Southeast Asia, I had only onetiny bout of queasiness over a couple of days on Sumatra in Indonesia. In fact, I had never eaten so well or felt so healthy in my life. I must have found the perfect balance of common sense and adventure, or, some might argue, I was just lucky.
I don't recommend trying everything, and I do recommend a few common sense tips for sampling the full range of the food on offer throughout your travels:
at street and market stalls, do watch the cooking for awhile to ensure that have the ingredients are fresh and the food is cooked well is if you have any doubts, go to another seller
Select vendors that have a good steady stream of customers - not just the food is probably very good, but the sales of fresh food
ask your host board and other residents you meet for their favorite places to eat, and for recommendations on dishes to order
follow the other safe eating tips you find in travel guides, such as recommendations on water, ice cubes,and peeling fruit and vegetables
Of course, you will find an endless selection of sit-down restaurants, where some of the most famous Thai dishes in restaurants around the world found: green curry with chicken, red curry with beef, pad Thai and other noodle dishes, to enjoy and wonderful fragrant basil dishes.
Whether you keep the sample the fabulous food from street vendors and markets, or what you plan to learn a few tipsDeciphering a menu or a request for some kind of dish with a few Thai Food Terms.
Many supermarkets now carry a range of prepared sauces, curries and other Asian products, but if you enjoy adventure and creativity in your own kitchen, many Thai recipes are fairly easy to create, if you've mastered a few basics. Gai Yang, after is all really just a grilled chicken with a Thai twist! A good reference book or eating cookbook with a glossary of Asian ingredientswill help you win, the perfect balance between sour, sweet, salt and heat, the Thai cuisine is unique.
© 2005 recipe-for-travel.com
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