I'm really missing the Thai yummy-in-my-tummy

I can always talk and write about food. When you are abroad a lot, very often the topic turns into food and how the food is in your homecountry. What the typical dishes are which you grew up with. Always when this question pops up I feel a bit stepping a bit back, because Dutch food is not really the real thing you would be travelling for.

Pancakes, salted herring, frikandel, all kinds of mashed potatoe and greenpea soup is the thing which immediately comes to mind. All nice, but not something to write home about.

But when I think about Thai food which I recently had while visiting. That turns into a different story and immediately I smile and think about the good memories about this. Because to me...good food = memories. So I think about food always in combination with where this was and how the vibe was. Let's have a look!

Hot and Spicy

Let's start with this badboy. Fresh squid with was so tender it nearly fell apart in your mouth. Accompanied by cilantro, red onion and red pepper (to me a bit on the boundary of too hot, but the man likes food on fire, so that is why we go spicy) I can remember this was a dish we just took on the beach after arrival for lunch. It was raining and this was the perfect snack to warm up with!

It doesn't get any more tourist than this

In the iconic Railey Beach where you can only reach by boat there are tons of tourist traps waiting for you. Because we were on the beach itself, we had some more time to stay away from the traps and walk a bit more too the back where it was calmer. This fried rice n pineapple and green curry in a coconut are ofcourse nothing traditinal but still damn good in taste.

Let's head over to a bit of fusion

The combination of Thai and Indian food under one roof? Yes please! A seafood stew which was a lot more spicy as intended (Indian levels) and some clamps on the side (the whole beach of Ao Nang was filled with clamps) was a genius dish to walk into.

Something sucky happened while we were eating here. A scooter was passing by and another scooter was parking out and they hit each other leaving the local girl to crash onto the road. As a nurse my initial thought is always to run out and help but I saw so many people running out and doing useful stuff that I sat myself down again. The girl turned out fine thankfully but there was so much going on, I won't forget this meal and that was not only because of the food.

More fusion..or con-fusion?

Wait...were these fritters served on a plate of ice?? Yes they were, and this was an appetizer even. I did get the feeling that appetizers were a good way to get rid of the left over that were almost overdue as everyone was getting different appetizers. But actually the concept of laying it onto something nice?

Isn't that genius?

The unexpected winner

Did it ever happen to you that you go to a bay which is only reachable by boat, and there is no atm in this bay and you didn't bring a lot of cash? Well, uhhh...these kinds of things happen to me.

Because of this we ended up in some small family place on the beach which was actually a supermarket but it put tables outside in the evening. Cooking was being done by the family on a table with a heater under it. Loving the family business going on there, but I was a little bit sceptical about if I would end up with a belly ache the next day.

But nothing was like that. This super fresh fish turned up with some hot pepper sauce on the side as an addition and it was lovely and fit the budget of having nearly nothing on cash with us.

It is about the memories right?

So when I think about Thai food...these are my memories. Not that much streetfood this time, but that doesn't matter if you have these winners in your head when thinking about a country!