Thoughts on Thai Cooking

I love Thai food. I mean, I liked it a lot before but it’s a full on affair now. The only regular Western food I’ve had since we touched ground is yoghurt and muesli (thank you, German travelers!). Otherwise, it’s soups, stir fries, curries, and yes, lots of street food.

Let me start with the why on this new love. Being a Thai cook is an all-in deal. You get a workout, first at the market collecting your garlic, chilies, scallions, meat, mushrooms, and various shrimp pastes, pates, and parts. Then, you go to your garden or patio to collect the rest – basil, kaffir lime, ginger, galangal, ginseng, and who knows what other culinary and medicinal plants that take seed in this verdant country. The women, from what I understand, are primarily the ones that make the curry pastes. After washing, chopping, and carefully deciding correct proportions for the curries (apparently Thai’s don’t use recipes, they follow what has been passed down), they put it all in their huge mortal and start pounding away. It is said that a good wife can be determined by the sound of her curry making. Seriously. In any case, this is about a 15 minute intense arm workout for just one curry, which potentially explains why so many tiny Thai women also give damn good Thai massages.

Zak and I took a cooking class to test our prowess at Thai cooking, and I’d say we didn’t do so bad! We made papaya salad, egg rolls, Pad See Ew, chicken & cashew stirfry, and two curries: green and Masaman, an Indian influenced curry (by the inclusion of turmeric).

Korea is coming up for us all too quickly, and though I am sure that we’ll enjoy good food there too I will be taking my new Thai skills for some good home cooking! ~Ashley

More photos here!

Life in Pai

Two weeks into our trip and we’re in a completely different place. The urban roosters have been replaced by crickets and frogs here in Pai, a small village about 4 hours north of Chiang Mai. We traveled by train 18 hours, 4 longer than scheduled, to get from Bangkok, and spent four days wandering the walled old city of Chiang Mai before taking a van further up the mountains. If there’s anywhere to slow down and get off the grid, it’s here. Our grass-roofed, bamboo-walled bungalow sits below the mountains overlooking rice fields.  Getting here requires walking down a muddy rutted out drive way but it’s actually not bad since we plan on ditching these shoes when we leave here anyway.  At this point, we have no choice in the matter. 

If you think everything is bigger in Texas, you’re wrong because the mosquitos here are the size of humming birds.  Not really, but almost.  They are huge, and not deterred by Ashley’s natural insect repellant.  We need DEET…like 80% if that’s even available but we all know that’s not going to happen.  I think Ashley would rather risk getting Dengue fever than grow a 3^rd arm and on that point, I have to agree.  So no DEET. 

We decided to rent a scooter to get around the area since Pai is really just a small village and most of the cool stuff to do is in the 5-10 km distance from town.  As we all know, if it were up to Ashley we would have walked the 20+ km per day, but lucky for me she agreed to the scooter.   Yes that’s right, a scooter, but here everyone rides them and don’t worry, I opted for the one with the big 125cc motor and negotiated what I thought was a very fair price. We managed to see and do a lot more in the 5 days here than if we were hoofing it all over.  Considering the scooter is only $3 per day to rent and about the same to fill up it was really a no brainer.   I also agreed to pose on the scooter so don’t judge.  At least I’m not sitting shirtless on top of a jeep, that would be totally unacceptable <-– that one’s for you Mike.  Let’s hope that photo stays lost. 

Anyway, check out the recent photos from the area and stay tuned for the next update from Chiang Mai!  - Zak    

A Day in Bangkok

It’s 6:00 a.m., the sun is up, and about 20 roosters are crowing outside our teak style Thai guesthouse window. No rest for the weary. We got in at 2:00 a.m. after three days of travel via Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai. A nice pre-tour of Asia. A few hours’ rest on a comfy bed and we’re ready to go. Though we spent four days total in Bangkok, we’ll treat it as one in this entry. It fits, really, with the bustling madness that is Bangkok that we’ve already come to love.

We step out our gate. About twenty mopeds whiz by, weaving through trucks, tuk tuks, and cars. They see the camera hanging off Zak’s shoulder and offer up rides, but we are ready to walk. Breakfast time, stomachs are grumbling.  Soon we will brave street food, but for the first couple of days we take it easy. We find a coffee shop whose owner, Pae, sources her beans from north in Chaing Mai and roasts them herself. What a find! On to explorations, starting with Wat Pho, “wat” meaning temple. They are everywhere here, many hundreds of years old and all with ornate decorations, steeped roofs, and orange-robed monks. Trekking from one wat to another in Bangkok is a sweaty, grime inducing venture so we hop on a bus. We are taken through a labyrinth of smells. Curries, flowers, sewage, fried garlic, Chinese herbs. Time to eat, Pad Thai, a hotpot of pork in medicinal sauce, fresh grated papaya salad so hot our eyes water. The sweat cools us down. Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn, rises above the water as we go by river taxi and head closer to home. Massage time. Two hours for 200 baht - $6? We can handle that! Back at the guesthouse we shower and rub balm on our blistered feet. Shouldn’t have bought those $2 shoes at the market, they were just so cute. Night falls quickly here, we don’t even need dinner tonight, we just crash into bed and dream of tomorrow’s adventures. ~Ashley

See more photos here!

Wat Pho

Wat Pho

Happy Buddha!

Bangkok Photos

Bangkok, a set on Flickr.

Our first days in Bangkok! Temples, markets, massages, and lots of walking. We loved it!