Good Eats and Bizarre Foods

Hello, everyone.  So sorry for not posting to the blog yesterday.  The hotel that we were staying at in Sukhothai had very, very shaky WiFi - that is, when they had any WiFi at all - so let me catch you up with what’s been happening here in Thailand.  The last couple of days have been long bus days with minimal sightseeing.  We are traveling from Bangkok to Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai in the far north of the country.  We’ve stopped to see a couple of temple ruins that look almost exactly like the temple ruins that I’ve already posted, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about the food in Thailand.  

I absolutely love Thai food.  In the States, there are many options for me to eat when we go to our favorite Thai place, but I was warned that that would not be the case here in Thailand because they pour soy sauce on everything and also use other sauces that Thai restaurants in the U.S. don’t use, all of which contain gluten.  I was prepared to come here and only be able to eat curry, rice, green papaya salad and fruit, all of which I love and would have been okay with eating for 15 days, although I’m sure it would have gotten old at some point. Surprisingly, that has not been the case.   I have been pleasantly surprised at the willingness of the Thai people to accommodate my dietary restrictions and I have been able to eat many different things, some expected, some surprising, some shocking. 

All four of us have been loving the food and loving the experience of trying new things.  And it’s not been the same food experience that we had when we went to China.  When you go to China and are served Chinese food, what you get bears about as much resemblance to American Chinese food as a mouse resembles a moose - they’re both animals and their names sound similar, but  the resemblance ends there.  Not so in Thailand.  Everything that we’ve eaten here has looked and tasted like what we get in America. Panang curry looks and tastes like the panang curry we get at Kacha.  

So does the pad thai (except for last night’s dinner)

Here are a few pictures of some of the more ordinary and expected things that we’ve been eating here in Thailand. 

Looks good, right?  And that fish! Brenda ordered that amazing fish on our last night eating at our favorite Thai place in Bangkok.  

We liked the food there so much that we went back three days in a row.  We were there so much that we really bonded with our waitress, Chom.  She was absolutely adorable.  I think we may have adopted her. Ashley, get ready to meet your new big sister. 😉😘

Not all of the food that we’ve been eating has been what you would call “expected” or “ordinary.”  We’ve tried a couple of things that were - hmmm,  how to say this? -  a little unusual,  We’ll refer to it as a wallk on the wild side.  We are now entering the “On this episode of Bizarre Foods” portion of our blog post.  Some of you have seen one of these culinary experiences on my Instagram account. The rest of you, hold on to your hats - and your lunches.

I’ll start you all off nice and easy. This was served for lunch today and it was absolutely delicious.  Probably one of our favorite things we have eaten to date in Thailand.  Below are pictures of the battered and fried version and the no-batter, deep-fried gluten-free version.  Any guesses as to what it is?

It’s morning glory greens.  Yes, morning glory, the flower.  It was wonderful.  Light, crispy and salty with a very faint floral note at the end and served with a pepper dipping sauce.  They should seriously consider packaging this stuff and selling it like potato chips.  I, for one, would be in!

Moving up the shock-o-meter a bit, our next item is something that we tasted yesterday.  Our guide, Kit, had our bus pull over to a little barbecue stand by the roadside for some “culture shock” as she calls it.  Any guesses as to what’s cookin’?  Hint:  There’s no shrimp on this barbie!

Are you ready?  This is the moment when you’ll want to hold on to your lunches.  It’s rat.  YES, I said “rat.”  And what’s more, we ate it!  Yessiree, we all went there.  No joke.  I know the pictures don’t look like it (they were posed for the blog, people) but we all really did eat rat.  And what’s more, we liked it.  

I’m sure there are many questions running through your minds right now:  Why on earth were these people cooking rat?  What did it taste like?  Why would we eat it?  Has the intense heat of Thailand not only melted our faces but also melted our brains?

In answer to the first question, the people cooking these rats are rice farmers.  Many farm families in Thailand are poor and need to supplement their incomes.  To do this, they catch anything and everything they can find living in their rice paddies - rats, frogs, lizards, snakes - you get the idea - and cook it up and sell it as street food along the roadside. It’s taking the whole lemonade stand idea to a whole new and rather uncomfortable level.

In answer to the second question, rat tastes a lot like chicken.  No, really.  It was really bony, though, and hardly worth the effort for the little meat you could get off the chunks it was cut up into.  But surprisingly, it was really tasty.  The saying that everything tastes good when grilled on the barbecue has been proven true!

In answer to the third question of why we would eat it, all I can say is, “Why not?”  We’re always up for a little adventure.  When in Thailand....

In answer to the fourth question of whether the heat of Thailand has melted our brains, I’ll let you be the judges.

And now for the Fear Factor portion of our program.  As we got off the bus to go to the restaurant where we were going to have lunch today, Kit motioned us all over to a little streetside cooking station for a little more “culture shock.”  The ingredients were all laid out neatly and Kit took her position behind the table and began assembling something that to the uninitiated would seem to be the beginnings of something yummy - green onions, shallots, fish sauce, chilis, lemon grass, lime juice.  Seems safe enough, but I coulnd’t help but stand there cringing as I took photos, just waiting for the secret ingredient to drop....

Can you tell what it is?  They are teeny-tiny freshwater shrimp.  Not bad, you say.  Not shocking.  Where’s the promised Fear Factor moment?   The shrimp were alive!  And hopping all over the place.  Several of them hopped right out of the bowl as she was stirring this crazy concoction up.  And then Kit spooned it up and took a giant bite, squirming, twitching, hopping shrimp and all.  Yeah, I’ve got your Fear Factor right here, baby.  

I know you’re all wondering if any of us were crazy enough to eat it.  We’ve proven that we can go there.  But I draw the line at eating something that’s still alive.  If it’s dead, I’ll probably try it, but I can’t bring myself to kill it in order to eat it.  Mom and Jill took a pass on this, too, but Brenda - she went for it!  Anthony Bourdain would have been so proud!

And she lived to tell the tale!

So tonight we have finally arrived in Chiang Rai after ten and a half hours on the road and we are exhausted.  The one good thing about long bus days is it allows me to get most of the day’s blog post written, and that, in turn, means mama gets to go to bed before 11:30 tonight.  YAY!!!!!!!!  We’ve been getting up around 5:00 every mornin (4:30 today) because we have such full days and long distances to travel.  Tomorrow is another 5:00 wake-up call, so it will be good to get to bed early for once.  Tomorrow we are off to tour the area and will be crossing into Myanmar. (Burma) for a few hours, followed by a boat ride and a crossing into Laos, topping things off with a visit to an orphanage.  Busy, busy day tomorrow.  It might be a couple of days before I can write that post, but tomorrow I’ll share with you our experience visiting an elementary school this morning.  Cute kids alert!