Travel Destination: Sout-East Asia, Street Food in Thailand
Like other Southeast Asian countries, food stalls are everywhere in the streets, markets and festivals of Thailand, providing an endless smorgasbord of aromas, color and flavors - food in Thailand is a feast for all of the senses.
Picture a barbecue hotdog stand outside a North American sports stadium. Now, instead of hotdogs and buns sizzling on a grill, the food cart is laden with fresh bananas, which are slathered in batter and deep-fried to golden in a giant wok, then scooped into a paper bag like a super size order of extra thick homecut french fries. That was my first breakfast in Thailand while I watched hundreds of beautifully costumed elephants play soccer and tug-of-war in an annual Elephant Round-up in Surin, in the far northeast of the country!
The next ‘hotdog stand’ does have a grill, placed over a large bin of charcoal, with flattened chicken quarters sizzling on sticks that you eat like a Popsicle; next door to that is yet another steel cart heaped with fresh, ripe pineapple, mango and papaya, and sporting a huge mortar and pestle for transforming the greener papayas into a crunchy, sweet-sour-spicy salad with morsels of shrimp or squid, chiles, garlic and sugar.
What makes Thai food so delicious and distinctive among other Southeast Asian food is this unique blending of fresh herbs, spices and other ingredients that combine for a perfect balance of sweet, sour, salt and heat that leaves your mouth feeling clean and your tastebuds popping in the afterglow.
Lonely Planet World Food Guides
Fresh fruit, salads and even soups and noodles are ladled into plastic bags with a skewer, fork, spoon or straw for eating on the go or perched on a folding chair at a nearby metal card table in the market.
Thai buses and trains become moving picnic grounds, with everyone chatting, eating and sharing the fare hawked through the vehicles’ windows at roadside stops and terminals: Gai Yang, the flattened barbecue chicken on a stick, skewered meat and fish balls and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves.
Carnivals and markets feature huge woks at knee-height, bubbling with deep-fried critters of all sorts, 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 the great amusement of the vendors and shoppers.