Thai food as a lifestyle

Deciding to come to Thailand was a critical decision of my travel. Suddenly, due to the instable situation of Japan earthquake and the following tsunami. I started looking for the most concrete alternative. When I found a direct trip from Siberia to Bangkok, my doubts went away.

Pavlos, a Greek friend making a phd about ethnobotany invited me to follow his research with local tribes in the tropical forest invited me to follow his research for a few weeks. All I will write next is the result of my first week in Northern Thailand.

Here we are in the dry season, is very hot! Food in Thailand is surely very different from what I’ve experience up to Russia, where the climate do not allow people to grow a wide number of fruits and vegetables all around the year.

Here people have a diet based essentially on Rice, noodle (rice or egg), pork, chicken and fish. Almost all is spicy. Sweet and sour.

What I’ve found really surprising is that never when you eat you need a knife. Everyone eat with a fork in one hand and a spoon in the other. To be honest this approach is very new for me, it happened to me to forget one of those in the serving plate. Now I feel a little bit more confortable with this, the diversity of this food culture is high. Even if, more and more Thai cuisine receive influences from far and close countries. Tourism is very big over here. Big shock for me was to pass from being the only tourist (in Siberia) to be just one of the thousands western faces around.

Food arrives on the table differently: salads are mostly shared and often contains different ingredients. Nuts, meat, fruits, vegetables and spices. Noodle soup is typically for breakfast. With veggis, mushrooms and different kinds of meat most of the time. On the table usually people add different kinds of chili’s, nuts and Sugar. To add sugar in a soup? I my Italian mind, never could be possible to even imagine to do something like this. With my surprise, sugar helps in creating a balance in taste. If you not add anything in your soup, it will not taste so much…

Slowly slowly my palate is getting use to spices and this for me represent a very positive sensation!

Street food is everywhere. You can find from fresh catted and refrigerated fruits  like pineapples coconut, guava, mango… a big variety of grilled meat is offered: chicken, sausages, pork, pork skins… and not very often you can also find friend insects, from little worms to big fling animals that to be honest look a bit wired. That’s in my opinion is the beauty!

At certain hours of the day big lines of students and workers find in the street food what they need, a perfect snack or even a complete meal!

A lot of dishes are fried. At every time of the day and the night, you can smell many flavors in the air. Milk is not even taken in consideration. And is served in international restaurants and cafes for foreign tourist.

This, is a first approach to this very diverse and complex food culture. Is a joy everyday try different things, explore different levels of spicy food. A different approach from our delicate palate.