Thailand Food Adventure

After many years of almost weeping from jealousy while watching inspiring footage of Rick Stein sampling street food in Thai markets, I finally made it there myself. Sadly, the experience was rather ...difficult. I did manage to thoroughly enjoy the food that I had, and explored what was on offer as much as possible, under the circumstances. A combination of frequent rain (it was not supposed to be rainy season), all my money being nicked from my room (my insurance wouldn't pay up) and - worst of all - a truly terrible tropical skin infection, conspired to make enjoying anything a challenge. The best bit was the food, of course, but I was so ill from the skin thing that I couldn't even face the fried insects that I'd normally be dying to try.

So, for once I won't bore you with a long story about the beautiful places I stayed in (e.g. beach shack on Ko Chang island), the elephant ride, the warm sea and the mountains covered in lush tropical greenery, or other colourful descriptions about every part of the adventure. I'll just stick up the food photos below and succinctly annotate.

The skin thing, by the way, was finally diagnosed in the UK 3 weeks after my return as the moving larvae of dog hookworm. Lovely. You pick it up from damp tropical beaches.

Ko Samet Island



First meal in Thailand was lunch at a beach restaurant, of squid salad so hot with chili my eyes were streaming. "Yes!", I thought, "This is what I was after". That evening we went to a restaurant that doubled as a tattoo parlour and contained a moped. This was the kitchen, where the lady made a delicious tasty prawn dish in literally about two minutes. Fresh ingredients, oil, spices and pastes, wok, heat, finito.


Resulting dish - fast food Thai style




There were food sellers that walked up and down the beaches carrying their wares or ingredients on each end of bendy bamboo sticks. This guy was making spicy papaya salad, with shredded green papaya, roasted peanuts, fresh chilies and garlic, dried shrimps, green 'snake' beans, palm sugar, limes, tomato and a mix of oil and ginger. Wonderful!


Papaya salad


On the other end of the papaya salad makers' bamboo are full-on barbecues with marinated chicken cooking over them



Barbecued chicken served with sweet chili sauce



Another beach food-seller. This time, dried barbecued squid and hard-boiled eggs. Really tasty snack!



Ko Samet greengrocers





Deep fried morning glory, with seafood salad



Spicy squid dish



Selection of bugs. Want to try them now, but couldn't stomach them at the time due to feel under the weather - I really wasn't myself!



I did manage to eat a chicken foot before I was too ill, but it wasn't crispy how I like them; flacid fat horrible batter with barely cooked boney old foot inside. Bugs would have been a better option!


Ko Chang Island



The best restaurant at Lonely Beach:


Grilled catfish



Lovely stash of ingredients in the open kitchen. The kitchen and grill were at the front, tables and chairs behind.



Kitchen



Pickled crab in papaya salad, with squid, prawns and morning glory in a spicy sauce.

By 'pickled' I think they mean 'put in salt water for a few seconds'. I attempted pickled crab a couple times, but would never choose it again. It's just really hard-shelled raw crab with no trace of any meat! Impossible to get a taste for these inedible little bastards, pretending to be food. Everything else served with them was great, though.


Photo taken just before the elephant sprayed me with water from her nose. Nice.




Brilliant Bang Bao fishing village, all built on stilts



Fishing boats


Bangkok



I had a day of looking at numerous temples, crossing the river by ferry and searching out food stalls. Had a good time at the beautiful Flower Market - which also contains a food market.


Garlic stalls that put France to shame



Ginger



Galangal



Dried fish stall



Thai roti is like a cross between an english pancake and a Caribbean roti. It was fried in loads of ghee and very nice too.





My last meal in Thailand; street food. Fantastic, extremely hot fish dish. The big chunks of white fish (no idea what species) were so tough, I had to get out my swiss army knife to eat it. I don't know how locals managed with the bendy plastic cutlery or chop sticks. Really enjoyed it though.

Freshly Roasted Peanuts

Since my visit to Sierra Leone, about 4 years ago, I've been keeping an eye out for fresh, uncooked peanuts. The roasted peanuts I had there were sooo much tastier than those you buy in a packet in Europe, and I was hoping to recreate the flavour. I wondered if they needed boiling first (they are often served simply boiled in Sierra Leone, when they are served warm, crunchy, slightly sweet and juicy) or weather simply toasting would transform their translucent flesh into the waxy nut we are familiar with in The West. I finally found out when I was rewarded for my regular greengrocer searches by these fresh peanuts (AKA groundnuts) in a Grand Frais supermarket in France.


The first attempt at recreation was to grill them, skin on, until thoroughly browned. And it worked! The papery skin came away easily, and I was left with delicious African-style roasted peanuts, to dip in flakey salt. Yes, I may have to work on evenness of toasting, but the flavour was spot-on.

Beach Boys & Biscuit; Lobster Heaven - 24th August 2007

Beach Boys & Biscuit

Hung around in Lumley, where the hotel was, and walked on the beach, while my dad went to work. I got approached quite a lot by young men, who were mainly friendly and wanted to offer their services as ‘THE main beach boy’, who could help with arranging… well, anything touristy, really; trips, barbecues, drumming shows. I also got some minor hassle from guys who wanted to chat. Individually they were no problem, leaving me alone as soon as I said I wanted to walk on my own. But it was a little tiresome just because of the numbers of people I had to tell to go away, which I don’t like doing, and I did have to be firm with a couple of them, who argued the point of wanting to be my friend – “You no want to be my friend? Why you no like me?”

The hugely long beach takes quite a while to walk along and back again, so I was pleased to snack on boiled peanuts (slightly sweet and juicy) and a sweet deep-fried pastry for my lunch. They were sold to me from plastic tubs, which two small children, of about four and seven, carried on their heads.

Lobster Heaven

The evening was the moment I had been waiting for, for months; lobster at Paul’s…



Before the war, the beach resort at Lakka, down the coast from Freetown, was a tropical paradise. It still is, except that the restaurants, bars and places to stay are falling to pieces. Since the war, tourists have stayed away, and the failure of the government to maintain the road to Lakka has compounded the problem, because locals are not willing to spend hours navigating the ‘road’, whilst ruining their cars. The road is so appalling it has become a national joke, and it is exhausting just to sit as a passenger and be continually jolted for the hours it takes to drive a few kilometres.

Anyway, after being thrown around on this stretch of mud, ponds and rocks, we finally got to Lakka, where I was going to stay in a beach shack for the weekend. ‘Pierre’s Resort’ used to be the classy, French-frequented Cotton Club, but its collapsed clubhouse and collection of wooden cabins are now slowly mouldering into the beach. It is still charming, though, and the scruffy paintwork in amongst palm trees and overgrown paths, has an appeal that would be wiped out by maintenance, a refit, redecoration and – in the case of fallen-in roofs – a rebuild. My shack was full of colonial styling, which had clearly once been gorgeous and quite luxurious. Salty sea air, torrential rainy seasons and neglect have eaten away at the fixtures and fittings, the paint and the furnishings. But there’s the possibility of outside investors taking over the management and revitalization of the old Cotton Club, so if you want to experience this magical place as it is, you’ll have to visit soon.





There was no time to hang out in my home for the weekend; we had a reservation at Paul’s place, a couple of hundred metres’ walk down the beach. A call that morning had assured that a large lobster was caught and kept alive in the sea, ready for our evening meal. Paul doesn’t have customers very often (rainy season, effects of war, lack of road), and we were the only ones eating that night, so I was able to watch the meal’s preparation.





It went like this: massive lobster killed and cut in half lengthways, it’s glistening flesh and shell smothered in secret recipe garlicky seasoning. Fire lit, chips cut, oil heated and chips cooked over fire, lobster grilled over fire, helper sent to Pierre’s Resort for Star beer. What could be better? as Rick would say.





I felt amazingly lucky, gorging on the best lobster possible (for about €10 each), perfectly cooked, with salty chips, lime on the side and cold beer to drink, whilst sitting at a makeshift, tie-dye tableclothed table, in candlelight, on a beach, in a warm breeze, with palm trees swaying and friendly locals chilling out nearby! Absolutely nothing could be better! The lobster was slightly charred on the outside, cooked right through, and had moist, tender flesh.







Pillows and covers that smelled powerfully of damp somehow didn’t seem a problem, as I fell straight to sleep, with the sound of waves crashing just metres away, and warm rain thrumming on the roof.

Beer in Bumbuna - 28th August 2007

My morning dip in the huge, deserted pool, surrounded by rain forest-covered mountains and cloud, gave me a good appetite for the large Italian lunch.



The evening mission to find Mabinti Johnny’s was not successful. Well, actually, we did find it, but the lady herself was not there. A boy waited with us and assured us she was on her way, but we hadn’t seen anybody else and weren’t sure that anyone was taking Mabinti a message that she had customers. It later turned out she had rushed back but just missed us. After a few minutes, we decided to come back another time, and went instead to the U & Me Pub (‘Da Place to Be’), which had a picture of a black and a white person shaking hands on the brightly painted sign.

I had wanted to try Maltina – a non-alcoholic malt drink - or palm wine, which is drained directly from the tree, but they didn’t have either, so we drank Star. We asked for peanuts, too. After about 45 minutes of drinking our beer, the groundnuts were ready. This was remarkably quick, seeing as a child had to be sent to buy them, a fire was lit and allowed to come up to temperature, a pot of water heated up, and the nuts washed and finally boiled. After another beer with the juicy, sweet nuts, we dashed back up to the camp just in time for our Italian canteen supper.

Laughing Barman; Proper Night Out - 30th August 2007

Laughing Barman

Today we headed back to Freetown, and it was a relief not to consume a heavy Italian lunch and dinner. Breakfast was a cappuccino with Mabinti’s grapefruit, and then we snacked on her peanuts and some bananas during the journey.





When we got back to the hotel, we had a shower, and then went to the seafront poolside bar for drinks (pa – beer, me - Campari and lemonade. Too sweet but they didn’t have tonic). There was good local music playing, and I asked the barman about it. Then the barman turned out to be completely hilarious, because he kept erupting into uncontrollable laughter, waving his arms in amusement, at the most unfunny things – generally the lyrics of songs; “hahaha – he say he love her – hahaha – he say she beautiful and he want to be wid her – hahahahaha!” He kept doing this until I had the giggles so badly that the tears were running down my face, and I gave up trying not to appear to be laughing at him. He didn’t seem to notice or mind.



We then had supper at the hotel. I ate delicately fried snapper fillets and chips, while my dad had steak. Meat is not great in Sierra Leone, because the livestock numbers have not recovered since the hardship and pillaging of war. Now a lot of the available meat is imported, so a fresh, juicy, rare steak is not really a possibility – rare would be unwise for a start.

Proper Night Out

That evening, I had arranged to meet the foreign students in Paddy’s for night-long drinking and dancing. So, after supper my dad gave me a lift down there, and I met up with the students and their colleagues at the bar. The evening consisted of numerous bottles of Star, games of table football, hot, spicy chicken kebabs, handed out by bar staff, and dancing. The music started off as house music and techno, which seemed totally out of place, but thankfully moved on to reggae and African tunes half way through the night. I really enjoyed hearing Sierra Leonean music.

It was one of the student’s last night, and they all got absolutely rat-arsed – even more so than me! But I was supposed to be getting a taxi back with them, until they all got too drunk and drifted off. Luckily, I had been talking to some locals who knew the student’s colleagues, and who lived in the shanty town behind my hotel, called Sho-Sho Village. We all got a taxi back together, and I got to bed at about 7a.m – 45 mins before my father allegedly tried to wake me for breakfast.