Delightful Confusion

"I LOVE IT!!!" Ailyn exclaimed after trying a sip of Emily's beer.

"I LOVE IT!!!" after a sip of coffee

"I LOVE IT!" after her first sip of Thai iced tea.

Really, aside from durian, there hasn't been anything Ailyn hasn't liked.  Not everything rates on the scale of beer, coffee and Thai iced tea, but a lot of things do – and those that don't are usually still well liked. She's weary of anything too spicy – which is understandable for a three-year-old.

Almost every country we travel to gets a food blog post at some point. I almost didn't do one this time because I've done it before – in 2011 and again last year. At the same time, Thailand is our absolute #1 eating country (France is a close second). So, seems practically like an insult to ignore the role of Thai cuisine on our experience.

Everyone travels differently, and it would be easy to come to Thailand and have a handful of dishes you may have experienced many times over in your local Thai restaurant. After all, in America the number of Thai restaurants is actually far greater than the proportion of the population Thai immigrants and ethnics represent – so most people have some experience with Pad Thai, green curry and tom yum. These things are good – and you can find them and all of your Thai favorites in the hotels, guest houses, bungalow establishments and restaurants of the tourist hotspots of Thailand. But generally, that's not how this family rolls.

We eat our way through Thailand at street carts, outdoor markets, roadside food stalls and the occasional mall food court or snack stand when we're in the mood for clean and orderly – but it's usually still street food selections. 

Even in high-end resort-filled Khao Lak with its landscape of overpriced, under-delivering Thai food geared toward German and Russian tastebuds, we manage to seek out the most real and down-to-earth Thai food possible.

"This is a sign that this is going to be a great day!" Emily said as a boi-tee-ow (noodle soup) cart came rolling down the road right toward us this morning. She had been wanting exactly that soup and as if she had called for takeout, a street vendor appeared. For 110 Baht ($3,33 USD – almost three times what we would have paid in Bangkok, but about a sixth of what we might have paid for a sit-down meal in Khao Lak), we enjoyed two very full and delicious bowls of noodle soup on the steps of the Ramada. 

For dinner tonight, we took the kids and Matheus to the local night market where the kids gorgeous on fried jumbo prawns and fried rice, while the rest of us also enjoyed barbecued chicken, chicken satay, sticky rice, crispy fried chicken, and skewered spiral potatoes deep fried on sticks for about 330 Baht ($10 USD). We then capped it off with dessert – Nutella and banana crepes for the kids and Matheus, and an indescribable number of local Thai dessert delicacies to take home for Emily, me and likely Matheus later. Without going into each one, we hastily bought a mountain of coconut custards and bars, coconut filled cakes, mung bean cakes and candies, pandan custards, bualloy (sweet coconut soup with puffed lotus seeds); and coconut cream pudding cups. Because our eyes were bigger than our stomachs – in part caused by the lack of the infrequency of these delights in a tourist town – we paid as much as our meal for our dessert orgy.

I bring up price because while $20 to feed five very well seems like nothing, but in Bangkok we were having street food FEASTS for dinner for a mere $15 and the selection and quality were superior: som tam (spicy papaya salad), Khao soy, phad mee, garlic sausages, Isaan BBQ chicken, phad see-ou (fried wide rice noodles), glass noodles of various kinds, steamed buns, whole barbecued fish, medium boiled eggs, seafood stews and soups I can't even name. Desserts – and if I love dessert elsewhere, I especially love it in Thailand – included coconut sticky rice, coconut sticky rice with mango, Thai iced tea filled cakes, chou a la creme of various flavors, Macanese egg tarts, pandan custard, Thai iced tea custard, matcha mousse cakes, moon cakes, pandan jellies, coconut custard, roti pancakes, Thai iced tea soft-serve and more.

All of this assumes that Thai iced team itself isn't a dessert – which the three adults had at least once a day. It also precludes tons of fresh fruit which we bought mostly from street stands and devoured regularly – especially the mini-pineapples.

And our children?

"I want that!" is their almost reflexive phrase whenever they see anyone eating or drinking anything. We have to either give them tastes or shoo them away like puppies.

The only consistently home-like thing we've had are breakfasts. We've mostly eaten breakfast in the condo/house and had things like yogurt, toast and eggs. But even then, the kids' favorite yogurt is coconut, they liked tropical fruit jelly on their toasts and sometimes they also liked tropical fruit yogurt. Mango, watermelon and pineapple are the preferred fruits.

All of this abbreviated encapsulation of the spectrum and volume of Thai foods leaves me feeling I have somehow done an injustice to this incredibly complex and varied cuisine – reducing it to quick names and general categories. I could easily write for hours on it – not just because of how delicious it all is – but because it represents the complex favors and subtleties of Thai culture itself. Seemingly contrasting flavors reside in every Thai food – sweet and salty; spicy and refreshing; acid and sweet – pulling and pushing the tastebuds into a delightful confusion. A food can be fishy, then spicy, then rich – all within seconds. 

Thailand is itself that delightful confusion – a place where richness, sweetness, acid and spicy are the flavors of life itself and you frequently experience some or all of them – like when you see elephants being forcibly marched many miles down an incredible busy highway as they return from their bathing spot to their sanctuary on forest land. You untangle that.