Thai food - Travel Writing from Travel Insights

Thai Style

February 21st, 2000
Chiang Mai, Thailand
WHAT a great thing cooking is - not only do you get all the fun of making something, but you get to eat and share it afterwards! Chiang Mai is Thailand's second city

When I'm not asleep, the kitchen is where you're most likely to find me. I've been kitchenless for almost a month now - the food I've eaten on route has been, with few exceptions, delicious, but it just ain't the same as cooking your own.

It was with this deficiency in mind that I spent the morning learning how to cook Thai style. Besides the teacher and her assistant (who did all the behind-the-scenes chopping and peeling) there was only myself and a Swiss guy doing the actual learning.

First stop was the local market where spicy sweet smells filled the air. Familiar and unfamiliar vegetables and herbs were laid out on the ground. There was the most astonishing range of aubergines I'd ever seen - from long thin chilli-like white ones to small round tomato-like green ones; there were sweets and cakes, flies and buckets of gasping catfish. A chef's larder to be sure.

As we wandered, our teacher pointed out this and that while her assistant scurried about chatting to stall holders and accumulating a large sack of ingredients. After a small snack of sweet rice and coconut pancakes topped with spring onion we hopped in the van and sped back to the kitchen. The kitchen was a small open-fronted affair tucked away down a small soi. A couple of bottled-gas powered rings, a table, a couple of woks and pans and a jar of fearsome looking knives and cleavers was all we apparently needed to convert our sack of ingredients to tasty Thai tucker.

We chatted and chopped our way through ginger and galangal, lime leaves and lemon grass and mountains of chilli and garlic. We conjured up spring rolls, fried tofu canapés, red curry and Thai soup and were suitably stuffed by 2pm. I took away a carrier bag of uneaten food that could last me three days! It was one of the best mornings I've had in Thailand so far - the teacher was cheerful and enthusiastic (she took my strange eating habits in her stride) and my Swiss co-chef was wry and talkative. I came away with a recipe book and a handful of knowledge - all I need now is a kitchen, a few ingredients and some willing volunteers!

Language Lesson

GREETINGS/HELLO. HOW ARE YOU? I'M FINE THANK
YOU. YOU, peers, YOU [people in authority] YOU,
[men], YOU, [women] WHAT'S YOUR NAME?
MY NAME IS, MY NAME IS ........ men, women. DO
YOU HAVE? DO YOU HAVE NOODLES? I,YOU, HE,SHE,
IT, DOES NOT HAVE. NO. NO? WHEN? IT DOESN'T
MATTER. WHAT IS THIS? WHAT DO YOU CALL THIS? (I)
UNDERSTAND. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? (I) DON'T UN-
DERSTAND. A LITTLE. GO, WILL GO. COME, WILL COME.
I LIKE ..... I DO NOT LIKE [....]
I WOULD LIKE ... I WOULD NOT LIKE .. I WOULD LIKE A
TICKET. I WOULD LIKE TO GO. WHERE IS [THE] .. WHERE
IS THE MOTORCYCLE? WHERE IS THE TRAIN? WHERE IS
THE BUS? WHERE IS THE CAR? WHERE IS THE STATION?
WHERE IS THE POST OFFICE? WHERE IS THE RESTAURANT
WHERE IS THE HOSPITAL? WHERE IS THE AIRPORT? HOW
MUCH? HOW MUCH IS THIS? TOO EXPENSIVE.
TOO CHEAP/INEXPENSIVE. (I) NEED A DOCTOR

TODAY            TOMMOROW          YESTERDAY

(Verbatim from one of two posters in my 101 room - the other has what is presumably the Thai for these expressions - unfortunately in Thai script and without any punctuation so it is tricky to work out what means what - a nice thought though, and kind of poetic.)

I came to Chiang Mai (or should that be "I came to in Chiang Mai?") yesterday morning - I took a cool and luxurious sleeper from Bangkok on Saturday night. I was sold a rather expensive ticket by the touts in Bangkok station who caught me off guard (I paid a whole £11 for a 14-hour 600 km journey!) but on reflection it was probably worth it. Chiang Mai is a lot quieter than Bangkok - which doesn't really mean a lot, in the sense that you could also say that it's a lot colder here than it is on the surface of the sun. But it is also more relaxed than the capital, and a few degrees cooler although still pretty humid. Tourism is still very present ("hill treks to guaranteed non-touristic areas", say ironic signs around town), but it hasn't reached the heights - or plumbed the depths - of Khao San Road. In Bangkok my 6'x8' room cost me £3 a night, here for £2 a night I get a large room in a row of wooden bungalows with a big double bed and a shower, bargain! Despite being in room number 101 it's very calm and peaceful - only a confused cockerel crowing, the whirr of a fridge and someone engaged in flute practice breaks the silence.

I now feel the need to burn off the wadge of calories I have consumed.

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Chiang Mai is where the Songkran festival is taken most seriously