Red curries, yellow curries, green curries,
mild curries, spicy curries! We have reached Thailand again, Southeast Asia’s
motherland of spicy, flavorsome and delicious curries.
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| Massaman curry |
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| One of our more unusually presented curries- Coconut Curry! |
It still has to be said our favourite Thai
curry has got to be Massaman, a beautiful blend of creamy coconuts, tomatoes,
potatoes, peanuts and enough spice to just warm your mouth.
On a mixture of trains, buses and minivans, we travelled our way down through the length of Thailand making stops at the bustling cities of Chang Mai and Chang Rai in Northern Thailand.
Chang Mai night market was endless, selling
an array of tourist nik-naks, clothes, watches, handbags, sunglasses, DVDs and all sorts of wonderful foodie
delights. There were alluring smells of sweet, mouthwatering spices and garlic coming from every corner.
We also stopped at the hippy capital of Pai
nestled in the heart of Thailand’s Northern highlands. After a 3 hour hair-raising mini bus journey from Chang Mai into the hills, you enter Pai and
suddenly you fall into a different pace of life. Pai is a true mecca for
hippies. You learn yoga, drink fruit shakes and eat vegetarian dishes whilst listening
to live music. It is really chilled.
Whilst in Pai we also fitted in a fantastic
2-day rafting trip and although our jungle location for eating and sleeping the
night didn’t quite top our tree house in Laos, it was still pretty damn good!
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| Dinner in the jungle |
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| Sleeping in the jungle |
After a quick stop in the high-energy, chaotic and crazy city of Bangkok for a Pad Thai or two, it was time to move on to the Tsunami hit area of Khao Lak to teach English in a school for 3 weeks. This experience gave us an incredible insight into the true life of Thai people and their cuisine.
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| Pad Thai |
The school we taught in was in Kok Loi, a mid-sized local town and although only 30 minutes walk from an outstandingly beautiful beach, there were no tourists at all in the town.
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| The beautiful beach in Kok Loi |
This town had a number of local restaurants serving the best food we have experienced in Thailand.
Two of our favourite restaurants:
Nightly, as a group we
feasted on freshly cooked Pad Thai, pepper and garlic with beef, ginger with
chicken, curries of all descriptions, chicken and cashew nuts, sweet and sour
chicken, fried rice with anything and everything and fried noodles with
anything and everything. Sometimes there were no English menus so we had to use
sign language to order our meals. One night we even experienced our Buddhist
chef getting a ghost out of her body in a ritual that consisted in lots of
screaming and her proceeding to pass out in front of Buddha...this all taking place as we were eating our delicious Thai meals that she'd cooked a few minutes before.
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| Waiting eagerly for dinner to be served in a restaurant in Kok Loi |
When we returned to Khao Lak at the weekends the motto was:
We couldn't object..
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| Fresh, Barbecued shrimp, served overlooking the sea- devine. |
Close to our weekend location of Khao Lak lay the stunningly beautiful Khao Sok National park and one of the best restaurant positions in the world!
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| A floating restaurant on a lake in Koh Sok National Park |
On our last week at the school, our English
teacher invited us around to her house for dinner. For me this was the foodie
highlight of Thailand.
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The English Teacher's kitchen
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| The teacher's hob |
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| The main cooker in the teacher's house |
She sat us in the Kitchen and produced some
beautiful fresh prawns, which she had brought from the daily prawn delivery lady
at school.
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| The prawn delivery lady |
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| Fresh prawns brought from the prawn deliver lady at school that day |
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| Making the amazing sauce that accompanied the prawns |
She lightly cooked them in garlic and butter before making a mouthwatering
sauce with garlic, chili, fish sauce, salt, lime and sugar to accompany them.
This was our starter!!
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| The starter- truly delicious! |
And the meal continued to delight as she
took us and the prawns outside and to the village café/shop where the local
villagers presented us with delicious dish after delicious dish followed by a
very interesting dessert! The villagers all came with their children to
introduce themselves and take photos with us.
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| Eating in the heart of the village |
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| Demolishing the starter! |
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| More food arriving- Thai salad |
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| And more food!! Chicken Laap |
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| The interesting dessert!!! |
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| The village cafe/ shop |
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| Villagers |
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| Villagers |
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| The local children |
After dinner the English teacher showered
us with gifts…well a few huge bunches of bananas to go home with and her
husband took us back to our hotel stopping at the nearby picturesque beach to
gaze in wonder at the glorious sunset…so the whole evening was throughly enjoyable and very special and memorable!
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| Packing up our bananas |
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| The beautiful beach |
Every day at the school we had been
provided with lunch consisting of fried chicken and rice, duck in plum sauce with
rice or sweet and sour pork with rice. All the meals were very tasty. However,
on our last day the English teacher awoke at 5am and cooked us up a special
feast of freshly caught fish and homegrown vegetables for lunch.
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| Freshly caught fish that our English teacher cooked up for us for lunch |
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| Our final lunch |
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| Rice, fresh fish, egg plant and chicken |
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| Longan (lamyai) a popular Thai fruit, similar to Lychee in flavour. This and Lychees were regularly given to us to eat in school. |
We were really sad to leave the school, the
children and our very kind, motherly English teacher.
After living in Thailand as a local for 3 weeks, it's given me a really interesting insight into how Thailand's growing wealth is directly affecting the food consumption and a change in diets. With the wealth of Thailand growing, so is
the fast food. With more and more fast food and junk food chains expanding over
the country such as MacDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Burger King and Dunkin Donuts, it's
clearly having an effect on the health of the country. On top of this, Tesco
Lotus has expanded more into the Thai market place and now has a presence in most
towns including Kok Loi where we were teaching. There seems to be little
to no regulations around what goes into the processed food sold in Thailand.
With the growth of the middle class in Thailand eating fast food and processed
food, obesity is on the rise and in every class we taught about 10% were obese.
The obese children stand out in Thailand as most children who have home cooked
foods are very slim.
Unfortunately there seem to be no regulations on any food in Thailand so the food being served daily to those that can afford school dinners is cheaply produced and jam packed with MSG and artificial flavouring and colourings. The children who can't afford the luxury of school dinners have much healthier diets. Sadly, I think obesity will become a massive problem for Thailand in the future.
Lunchtime in Thailand:
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| Food in the Canteen |
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| Fried meat in the canteen |
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| Children can opt for chicken and rice but most don't |
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| Children eating much healthier pack lunches in the canteen |
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| Children bring hot food from home to school for lunch in tiffin lunch boxes |
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| At school teachers dry fresh fish and prawns in the sun to snack on. |
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| Pack lunches |
The school we have been teaching in Thailand was not a wealthy school and the English teacher, although lovely, could hardly say a sentence in English. This is why it is so important to have English volunteers at the school to help children with their spoken English. Teaching in Thailand has been a massively different experience to Cambodia as the children in Cambodia had so little, whereas Thailand’s economy is definitely on the rise so for me it has been really interesting to see the change in a country’s health and food as they rise from developing to developed worlds.
After finishing our teaching we made a
quick stop at the beautiful island of Koh Phi Phi before heading to Malaysia.
Malaysia promises to be the diamond in the
South East Asian foodie crown.
