Paa Suk

  It's been far too long and I apologize. I've been working furiously on the next edition of Lonely Planet's Thailand, and simply haven't had the time to blog. I am in Chiang Rai at the moment, doing research for Thailand, and will do my best to share the food discoveries I've been making up here.

Guided by an old issue of the Thai-language food magazine Khrua, my first great food find here in Chiang Rai is a local noodle restaurant called Paa Suk.

The signature dish here is naam ngiaw, a thin broth (usually pork, but here they also do a beef version) flavoured with a local chili paste and tomatoes, typically served over fresh khanom jeen noodles ('northern spaghetti', if you will) . The pork version (pictured at the top of this post) was deliciously meaty, although I personally prefer the type served in Mae Hong Son that emphasizes sour tomatoes over meat. The dark cubes you see are coagulated blood, and the dish is served with sides of bean sprouts, pickled mustard cabbage and slices of lime.

They also do a very northern dish called khao kan jin:

This is rice that has been mixed with (again) blood, wrapped in a banana leaf, then steamed. The result is drizzled with garlic oil and served with fresh coriander, cucumber and green onion. Very nice, and you wouldn't know there was blood involved unless I told you.

The restaurant is currently being run by the third generation of the same family, and now they even have a branch on Soi 3, Th Silom, in Bangkok, which I'll be sure to investigate as soon as I get back.

Paa Suk Th Sankhongnoi, Chiang Rai 053 752 471 7am-3pm

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The Last Chinatown

After many, many visits to Bangkok's Chinatown in the last year, my seemingly aimless wanderings have culminated in this; beginning on December 6th, 15 of the images I captured there will be exhibited at Kathmandu, the Bangkok photography gallery owned by famed Thai photographer, Manit Sriwanichpoom. The official press release:

The Last Chinatown

A photographic exhibition by

Austin Bush

6 December 2008 – 25 January 2009

[Opening party on Sat 6 Dec at 6.30 - 9 pm]

American photographer Austin Bush spent a year exploring the back streets and main drags of Yaowarat, Bangkok's Chinatown. His cinematic images depict the realities and oddities of life in one of Bangkok's oldest neighbourhoods: the tiny alleyways with creepy old men and smoking teapots; the clacking of Chinese chess pieces and choppy conversations in Tae Chew; tired prostitutes and lotus bud-shaped coffins; bespectacled dogs and beggars. Unlike other Chinatowns around the world, which often seem little more than culturally-themed shopping centers, Bangkok's clings to its roots and continues to be a living, breathing, albeit gritty community.

Austin Bush

After graduating from the University of Oregon in 1999, Austin Bush received a scholarship to study Thai at Chiang Mai University, and has remained in Thailand ever since. Austin photographs for various publications and writes guidebooks for Lonely Planet. Samples of his work can be seen at www.austinbushphotography.com. This is his first photographic exhibition. Kathmandu is located on 87 Th Pan, virtually across the street from the Hindu temple on Th Silom (see map below). Additional details can be obtained at the Kathmandu website. I hope those of you in Bangkok who read this blog can all make it to the opening!

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Jay 2008

  Jay is the Chinese/Thai word for vegetarian, and from now until October 9th is the annual Ngaan Jay, Vegetarian Festival. To be honest though, it is quite possibly the most innacurately-named festival around. Although everything for sale in Thailand's various Chinese districts during this period is entirely meat free, you'll actually find very few, if any, actual vegetables. Just about everything is either some form of starch (noodles, rice, potatoes) or protein (soy).

In addition to a lack of vegetables, virtually everything is fried:

Another odd aspect of the festival is that Bangkok's entire Chinese community seems to collectively decide that it's not capable of cooking at home during the 10 days, and instead buys every meal 'to go' from a truly remarkable number of street stalls:

Nonetheless, if you're willing to brave the potentially detrimental health risks of the Vegetarian Festival, it's heaps of fun, and in Chinatown, everybody is involved. In Talat Mai, the main market alley, vendors who normally sell meat instead sell soy-based meat substitutes:

If you look closely, you'll see veggie ground pork, veggie scallops, and even veggie pork stomach and intestines!

Across the way, even Nay Uan, normally one of the meatiest stalls around, goes jay, serving up tofu, soy protein and mushrooms in place of pork offal:

Just next door, OK Phat Thai has ditched the epynomous dish and makes a variety of meat-free noodle stir-fries and vegtarian hoy jor:

But my favourite Vegetarian Festival dish is fried yellow wheat noodles, phat mee leuang:

Fried yes, but also one of the only dishes that actually includes vegetables.

Khanom tup tap

It's that time of year again: Thailand's annual Vegetarian Festival is in full swing, and as always, the best place to eat is the Chinatown area. Most people come for the various meat-free noodle and fried dishes, but I personally can't wait for khanom tup tap. This is an old-school snack made from peanuts, sugar and a bit of salt pounded into a flaky roll--via a pretty amazing process.

It all begins by cooking roasted peanuts in boiling syrup:

The resulting mixture, which resembles still-warm peanut brittle, is cooled then thoroughly blended by two men working wooden mallets. During the pounding, the peanut mixture is repeatedly folded onto itself, giving the dish the phyllo-like layers you can see in the first pic. The sound (tup tap, tup tap) made by the pounding is the origin of the snack's name:

The paste is then stretched out into a long thin sheet and is filled with even more ground peanuts, with the sheet serving as a wrapper of sorts. The whole lot melts together and the long tubes are cut into bite-sized pieces:

The result is simultaneously savoury, sweet and crispy, and is remarkably similar in taste and texture to the the American candy bar, Butterfinger. As Phil Lees can confirm, khanom tup tap are also incredibly addictive. Get your tup tap on from now until October 9th, at the shrine described below.

Available during Bangkok's annual Vegetarian Festival, late September/early October, at the Jo Sue Kong Shrine, Talat Noi (see map below).

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Uan Phochana

Kuay jap, a thick broth with deep-fried crispy pork, pork offal and thick noodles is not a dish I thought I would like. In general, I try to keep my meat consumption to a minium, and I like noodles well enough, but rarely crave them. However with kuay jap it's the broth that keeps drawing me back... The thick liquid is so laden with pepper that it's positively spicy.

Uan Phochana ('Fat Nutrition'--don't ask) is one of a couple very, very popular stalls in Bangkok's Chinatown selling this dish. Naay Uan ('Mr Fat', you sense a trend here?), just up the road, is probably more popular, but my latest discovery had a couple touches I really liked. There seems to be less emphasis on the offal at Uan Phochana (although it could be they just prepared it that way for the White Guy), the crispy pork could shatter a tooth, and the dish is served with tiny, crispy fingers of deep-fried dough:

But best of all, there's that pepper burn...

Uan Phochana (Google Maps link) Th Yaowarat 02 812 0640 6.30pm-4am

Sorndaeng

  I've eaten at many, if not most of the upscale Thai restaurants in Bangkok, and have rarely, if ever, had a good meal. Nothing I ate at these restaurants was necessarily bad--no hairs were found, no surly service, nothing rotten--but rather, the food left no impression whatsoever. The general phenomenon seems to be that the more you pay for Thai food, the less flavourful it is, and the more predictable the menu tends to be.

Exploring Banglamphu with friends on a recent Sunday, it didn't take us very long to realize that on Sunday, in Banglamphu, absolutely nothing is open. Luckily, a few days previously, I was reminded of an upscale Thai restaurant that I've always suspected might be different from the rest, so we made it up Th Dinso to Sorndaeng.

A sign out front claims that Sorndaeng has been around since 1957.  A glance into the dining room shows that very little appears to have changed in 51 years: the service staff dress like soldiers, there are doilys and frumpy furniture, live lounge music (appropriately, a mild version of 'Sukiyaki' was sung at one point), and of course that most telling sign of old-school Thai elitism, a table dominated by several big-haired, silk-wearing Thai-Chinese women:

A had been eating here since she was young, and suggested we order krathong thong:

'golden baskets' with a sweet/savoury filling.

I ordered lon kapi, a savoury 'dip' served with fresh vegetables and herbs:

and yam som oh, pomelo salad:

The former was a very good take on a dish that's somewhat hard to find, and the latter was simple but delicious, incorporating no more than five ingredients including deep-fried cashews, and if I remember correctly, roasted coconut.

A ordered fish maw fried with egg and bean sprouts:

a dish I didn't think I would like, but which was actually very nice, deliciously eggy and smokey, a lot like or suan.

P ordered mee krop, just to see how it would stand up to that of Chote Chitr:

It wasn't bad, but not nearly as rich, citrusy and complex as Chot Chitr's.

We had a couple other things as well, including a soup with duck and pickled lime, and the yummy crab-filled hor mok shown at the top of the post. Virtually every dish was excellent.

Sorndaeng also proved to be one of the few places I was actuallly inspired to order a dessert:

Mango and sticky rice--a Thai cliche, but still very nice, even if it wasn't peak mango season.

Finally: highly recommendable upscale Thai food.

Sorndaeng (Google Maps link) 78/2 Th Ratchadamnoen Klang 02 224 3088 10am-11pm

Free meal

If you're hungry, in Bangkok, and don't happen to have any money, I'd suggest stopping by Government House. At the moment there's a crazy party going on there with heaps of free nosh:

It's been said somewhere that you always end up paying for free things, and I reckon the cost here would be having to eat your free pork and sticky rice while being forced to listen to somebody screaming about the current Prime Minister must 'die'. I lost my appetite, which was really too bad, as the selection of food was pretty impressive: curries, stir-fries, an abundance of omelets, candy and buns. If you wait long enough, an expensive German car will inevitably pull up and and unload even more food:

And when you're full, there are lots of pleasant places to relax:

It's the hottest party in town. And it's all free. Details here.

Get cooking

It's been a while since I've featured any recipes on these pages, and unfortunately, I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to do that anytime soon. Luckily, thanks to Maytel, I was recently reminded of a couple good Thai recipes sites that I'd forgotten about along the way:

Appon's Thai Food features nearly 1,000 authentic and well-organized Thai food recipes, all put together by a native of Thailand. She even has short audio clips of her pronouncing the various dishes and ingredients. Very cool.

And Thai Food Tonight has a recipe page featuring videos (and recipes) of quite a wide spectrum of Thai dishes. The woman featured in the videos, Dim Geefay, previously hosted a Thai cooking programme on US television.

Phitsanulok, August 16, 2008

A Chinese temple in Phitsanulok. I like the colours and the reflection of light off the puddles and the bus.

Northern noodles

Noodles are ubiquitous across all of Thailand, but they often take slightly different forms depending on where in the country you are. I was surprised to find quite a few different kinds of noodles on my recent trip up north. Of course, there's the famous khao soi:

and khanom jeen:

Paa Pong, the restaurant above, is in Lampang and is only open Saturday and Sunday. You can easily identify the shop by the long row of bubbling curries, which are served over the fresh rice noodles.

Paa Pong (Google Maps link) 125 Th Talat Kao, Lampang 085 706 7748 7am-10pm, Sat-Sun

But there are also some relatively unknown noodle dishes up north. The bowl at the top of this post is from Kamphaeng Phet. They make their own bamee, wheat noodles at this restaurant, which were slightly thinner and firmer than those elsewhere. The dish combines several types of pork and is served with par-boiled sliced green beans and bean sprouts on the side. The 'dry' (served without broth) version was excellent, and included just enough oily broth to moisten the noodles.

Bamee Chakangrao (Google Maps link) Th Ratchadamnoen, Kamphaeng Phet 8:30am-3pm In Phitsaunlok, there are a few noodle restaurants known for their seating, rather than their food:

Known has kuaytiaw hoy khaa ('hanging leg' noodles), you sit on the floor with your feet hanging over the edge, all the while looking over the Nan River. The noodles aren't too exceptional, but it actually was a fun way to sit and eat. One of the better restaurants (but not the one shown above) was:

Rim Nan (Google Maps link) 5/4 Th Phaya Sua, Phitsanulok 081 379 3172 9am-4pm

Sukhothai is known for its noodles that, like those of Kamphaeng Phet, combine several variations on pork, including an optional pork crackling topping:

as well a slightly sweet broth with more par-boiled sliced green beans and ground peanuts. Sukhothai noodles are usually, but not always, served with rice, rather than wheat noodles.

Jay Hae, the popular restaurant where I had the above bowl, also fries the noodles in the form of 'old fashioned' phat thai:

Jay Hae (Google Maps link) Th Jarot Withithong, Sukhothai 05 561 1901 7am-4pm

Hot off the presses!

  In addition to the previously-mentioned writing work, I did the photos (but not the covers) to two new Lonely Planet guides, Phuket Encounter and Bangkok Encounter.

Buy them at Lonely Planet or Amazon.

Hot off the presses!

Several months' work has finally taken a tangible form. Lonely Planet's Bangkok, which I co-authored with Andrew Burke, and Thailand's Islands & Beaches, of which I wrote several chapters including Food, have finally been printed.

Buy them at Lonely Planet or Amazon.

Likay

A performer waiting to go onstage at a likay performance, Kamphaeng Phet.  

While in Kamphaeng Phet I was lucky enough to come across a performance of likay. Lucky because there's not a whole lot to do in Kamphaeng Phet and also because likay is incredibly photogenic. Likay is, (taking from the upcoming Lonely Planet Bangkok) 'a colourful mixture of folk and classical music, outrageous costumes, melodrama, slapstick comedy, sexual innuendo and sociopolitical commentary'. It's quite a bit like ngiw, the Chinese drama which I've shown here previously.

The light was very irregular and it was at night, so I shot everything at ISO 800, the first time I've really shot that high with any of my cameras. The results seem to have come out OK, with less noise than I expected, and I actually kinda like the contrasty, saturated look of the images. I didn't get too many pics of the actual performance, as I found the backstage action a lot more interesting.

Getting reading for a likay performance, Kamphaeng Phet.  

Musicians playing at a likay performance, Kamphaeng Phet.

Getting reading for a likay performance, Kamphaeng Phet.  

Performing and offstage at a likay performance, Kamphaeng Phet.  

Performers waiting to go onstage at a likay performance, Kamphaeng Phet.  

Getting reading for a likay performance, Kamphaeng Phet.  

Performers waiting to go onstage at a likay performance, Kamphaeng Phet.  

Lampang's evening market

I've been in northern Thailand for two weeks now, but Lampang is as far north as I've made it. As one goes further south within phaak nuea (northern Thailand), the language, culture and food become more like those of central Thailand, so Lampang was really my only chance to get my hands on good, authentic northern-style Thai food.

Luckily it's a pretty good place to do this. There aren't too many restaurant serving local food, but the city's night market is terrific, although everything is take-away only. Luckily the folks at Riverside Guest House were kind enough to let me use their dishes.

It was very wet when I was in Lampang, and the market had lots of rainy season goodies such as bamboo:

and mushrooms:

Typical of northern Thai markets are the pre-portioned bundles of veggies and herbs for the various soups and curries. The one below is to make kaeng khae, the famous northern Thai herb-laden soup:

This woman made one of the best kaeng hangleh (a Burmese-style pork curry) I've had:

And the pic at the top of the post? The chilies, garlic and shallots will be peeled then pounded up with fish sauce to make naam phrik num, the famous northern Thai chili 'dip'.

Primitive photography

Definitely an pic that requires a bit of explanation...

The above is a camera obscura image of Wat Phra That Lampang Luang, a 700-year old temple compound outside the northern Thai city of Lampang. On the grounds of this temple is tiny elevated room with a small hole in the door. A white sheet hangs inside, and the light projected through the hole creates the (upside down) image shown at the top. For some reason, women are not allowed in this particular part of the temple.

Here's what the temple looks like:

For larger version of this image, go here.

I put my camera on a tripod and used a 15 second exposure (at ISO 400, f/4.5) to get the pic at the top. Would be fun to put a piece of photographic paper in place of the sheet; I'll bet the colours and textures would result in a fascinating image, perhaps something like this:

Phitsanulok, August 16, 2008

Guess it wasn't that important of a prayer.

Here's the same woman again, still yakking on her mobile phone, while coming out of the temple--one of Thailand's most sacred:

Just curious, in the country where you're reading this, do people talk on mobile phones while in mosque/synagogue/church? One sees it here quite often.

Cutting board meatballs

It was at Lampang's night market that I first came across look chin khiang, 'cutting board meatballs' (shown above). Several vendors were selling them, and just about everybody was eating them. Initially I was impressed by their size--roughly equivalent to a child's fist. But I also really loved how they were served. After being grilled:

the gigantic meatballs were served with a steak knife, the porcine cutting board shown above, and a sweet bottled-tasting sauce. Unskewer, cut, dip and eat.

They tasted about as good as they look.

Khun Manee

Khun Manee is a respected maker of khao taen (pictured above), rice cakes that are deep-fried and drizzled with palm sugar, in Lampang, a city in northern Thailand that is known for the sweet.

To make khao taen, sticky rice (both the white and 'black' varieties) is steamed then mixed with watermelon juice. This gives the rice a slightly pink colour and sweet flavour. The still soft rice is then pressed into rings:

and the cakes are then left in the sun to dry, which I was told usually takes a couple days, depending on the weather:

When sufficiently dry, the cakes are deep-fried. Khun Manee does this herself:

The cakes puff up amazingly fast, and a batch is done in less than 15 seconds.

The rice cakes are allowed to cool, then they are drizzled with a mixture of warm palm sugar, sesame seeds and a tiny bit of salt:

Khao taen were probably the first Thai sweets I ever tried (I was a student in Chiang Mai where they're also popular), and are still among my favourite, although I usually prefer the kind topped with sugarcane sugar. Nonetheless, I still downed a (rather large) bag of Khun Manee's in 1 1/2 sittings.

Khun Manee (Google Maps link) 35 Th Ratsada, Lampang (054) 312 272

In transit

  Am currently in northern Thailand, where khao soi (pictured above) has been flowing through my veins for the last few days.  Will follow up soon with exciting, action-packed dispatches from Lampang, Sukhothai and elsewhere...

Chinatown, August 1, 2008

A resident of Bangkok's Chinatown in front of his home

Barber shop in Bangkok's Chinatown 

Th Yaowarat, the main street in Bangkok's Chinatown 

Along Th Charoeng Krung, Bangkok's Chinatown 

A tea vendor in Bangkok's Chinatown 

Checking out Buddhist amulets in Bangkok's Chinatown 

For entire photoset go here.