The Salivating Adventures of Culinary Conneisseurs

---

---

First off, everybody can relax, our sojourn in Krung Thep has had a happy ending. We are now sitting at a charming garden terrace enjoying a chilled lassi at altitude of 1400 meters with no immediate risk of getting our feet wet. Having said that, just before departing Bangkok, the city on a verge of becoming a disaster zone, we were provided an excellent opportunity to exercise the famous Thai patience, as our flight to Kathmandu was slightly, read 10h, delayed. The reason apparently being an important Hindu festival in Nepal that the crew didn't want to miss out. Mai pen rai.

We promised to tell you about Thai food in our next blog post. Without further ado, let's bring on the star of the show - Thai cuisine. A word of warning to our dear French and Italian friends, you may want to skip the next couple of paragraphs as you might find them unsettling for your stomach. In case you carry on reading, don't blame us, if you spill your glass of chianti or start choking on a baguette, you have been warned. Allow us to spell it out for you - Thai cuisine is the most complex, diverse, subtle and all in all the best in the world. Period. D'accord? It knocks the socks off pretentious French haute cuisine as well as overrated Italian cuisine. All Italians did was to copy noodles from the Chinese and rename them as pasta. Not to mention they have the Greeks to thank for olive oil. Capisci? To our charming English readers, you were not spared out of kindness, your cuisine is simply not worth mentioning, steak and kidney pie notwithstanding. No offense meant chaps. For fairness sake, there might be some room for subjectivity regarding the above statement.

The basic facts established, we can continue praising the best food in the world. For a culinary conneisseur, Bangkok is a gold mine of gastronomic delights. A stunning array of Thai ingredients available means a stunning array of Thai dishes served. Another great aspect is that the best food is still found on streets with dirt cheap prices, dishes usually costing between one and two euro. There are staggering half a million street vendors keeping the busy people of the megalopolis fed and happy, most of the ten million inhabitants eat at least once a day at food stalls. In the spirit of our guiding travel principle - when in Rome do as the Romans do - during our two weeks in Bangkok, we set forth to forage the food stalls found on sideways and small markets, grazing, sampling, introducing our tastebuds to new luscious sensations. We came across many serendipitous discoveries, which we are happy to share with you. Furthermore, eating is probably the most innocent of the numerous bacchanal and carnal pleasures Bangkok, the epicenter of debauchery, has to offer and the only one we will discuss in the blogosphere. No juicy bits here, pun intended.

What makes the Thai food uneartly good is its perfect harmony of three to four fundamental elements of taste in each dish: sour, sweet, salty, and occasionally bitter. A dish, which is a perfect example of this harmony is tom sum, green papaya salad, a tangy mix of green papayas, dried shrimps, lime, fish sauce and palm sugar, without forgetting chili. A dish to be handled with care though, as it can have up to twelve different crushed chilies in it. Our first encounter with this dish was nearly fatal, we were breathing fire for ages after the chili made itself known to our palates. However, once you get through the firewall of chili, you have a whole new culinary world to relish.

To overcome our almost dragon-transforming papaya salad encounter during our last visit to Thailand, we started our tasting again with a papaya salad, on a soi closest to our hotel. It was a real pleasure, the taste, by the time our plates were almost empty, became flaming, but its development was so smooth that we were ready to enjoy it. After eating on a street and not having any problems within our bodies, we felt ready to follow our food stalls guide book. One of the first dishes, and still remembered fondly till now was a pork noodle soup, Guay Jab. There were many differents parts of pork all prepared differently, all in savory broth with hand-rolled long noodles. No salt, instead, small pieces of deep fried salted pork fat. A-roy maak we said to the old man, and he smiled back. Then we could not miss a dish well known even in Europe, Pad Thai, fried noodles with chicken and prawns, served in a bit sweet version. It was a family business, the wife was mixing all the ingridients, the husband was by the fire, finishing up a perfect dish. We will go there again! We were indulging ourselves with a few dishes per day, preferably in different parts of the city, but we are not giving you our full reference list, so you'll have something to discover next time you are in Bangkok. But just two more, two whose taste and texture are still on the tip of the tongue. Kanom Jeeb Jiao Gow, guessed what it means ? Ravioli in Italian, пельмени in Russian, Momo in Nepali, and Chinese dumplings originally. They were just the best in the world, tender filling made of pork, shrimp and herbs, topped up with deep fried garlic and homemade soya sauce. Pure goodness. We went back twice, we might have gone even for a third time, but our boat was at the pier. One day was a fish day, well, sort of tricky to buy fish from a street stall, when it is 33 degrees outside, but we spotted one stall where locals were queuing up for fried fish. Big Fish, coated in salt and stuffed with some unknown herb, just out of the fire. Served with hot chili sauce and papaya salad, it was melting in the mouth.

Those of you who might be pondering whether it is safe to eat the street food, you can breathe a sigh of relief, the food is completely safe and is up to high, frequently controlled hygiene standards. In two weeks, while having food from tens of different food stalls, sometimes not even knowing what we were ordering, we never got any whatsoever problems with our stomachs. Obviously, to avoid getting a curry tummy you also have to take care of yourself, always before a meal, apply antibacterial hand gel since most street joints do not have bathrooms where you could wash your hands. Secondly, do observe, if a stall has no customers, there must be a reason for it, skip the place and find another one, preferably one swarmed by the locals.

Thus ends our delicious story of the salivating adventures in Bangkok, hopefully you have enjoyed reading about them as much as we have enjoyed eating our way through the sultry streets of Krung Thep.

---

Comments

[cba]

crispy or not ?
They look very crispy in the picture... was it the case or were they fresh and alive ??? Well, enjoy your 6 last days before sacred union. Best Regards, CBa

[Anastasiya and Kalle]

tastes are different
yep, they were crispy ... brrr , and apparently not so bad to taste. Just thinking, what was the motivation of the first person when he , I am sure it was a man ! , fried and ate his first maggot ... there were also cockroaches, crickets, and scorpions , all fried and served with spices. anastasiya.

[nature BOY]

really?
great blog, but one simple question..why did you post it in this section instead of Thailand !?

[Anastasiya and Kalle]

At the time of writing that blog, we were already in Nepal and chose Nepal as a location to let our friends know where we were. Sorry for any confusion and glad to hear you liked it!