Thailand: Street Markets and Street Food

We are all foodies in our traveling trio. We loves us a delicious meal that we can savor and relive through stories. Part of the allure for picking Thailand was the promise of exotic, tasty (not to mention cheap) street food. It’s so legendary in fact that a couple street ‘chefs’ have been awarded the Michelin Star. You might be forgiven for thinking that Michelin must be a culinary institution, but no, it really is the company that has a giant white tire-covered mascot. Don’t ask me why a tire company is the standard bearer for fine cuisine but apparently it’s a big deal.

Today we spent the afternoon wandering two different street markets – the Train Market and the Amphawa Floating Market. Both were a feast for the eyes, an assault on the nose and a delight for the taste-buds.

The Train Market

The train market is so-called because half of it exists on actual train tracks – and when the train pulls through town a few times a day, the vendors must pull back their booths and tables, and the shoppers clear out. The train passes and in moments, all is as it was – the dried fish, fruit, and trinket tables, shanty shade structures and never ending stream of shoppers.

Amphawa Floating Market

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The floating market ran alongside a dock (of sorts) with booth vendors on the land side and boats (complete with grills and menus) in the water. Unlike the train market which was loaded with dried seafood, here it was mostly fresh – sometimes extremely fresh like the lobsters that kept jumping out of their basket trying to get back to the water.

Eat first, ask questions later

It was Zephyr who kicked off our adventure with grilled skewered chicken and a big block of sticky rice from a cart. He loved it, and thus began our omnivorous odyssey.

What an amazing assortment! I wanted to try things but I didn’t know where to start and honestly most of it frightened me. Fortunately Nai – who is an amazing guide with a keen eye to each of our sensibilities – found all kinds of exotic fruits and sticky rice dishes for us to try along the way. We bought and sampled fruits we never see in markets back home: rambutan, longes, queens fruit, dragon fruit, rose apples, green tart mangoes, tiny apple bananas. We ate a handful of little grated coconut/sweet rice cakes. He noticed me eyeing a skewer with 3 large roasted frogs, encouraged my curiosity and helped me purchase it. When we passed a woman throwing large squid onto her wood burning makeshift grille, I was made to buy a couple of them.

Stasia had mentioned her affinity for noodle dishes and so when we passed this little place, he recognized the quality and got us a table. We ordered extra-spicy Tom Yum (pretty much the standard go-to for locals) and some kind of pink seafood soup. The tom yum – which I ordered extra-spicy – was delectable. Stasia’s pink thing soup was also tasty but she passed some of the more unrecognizable ingredients into my bowl – fish balls and cubes of congealed blood among them.

This was a deeply satisfying episode for us all – an experience as exotic and strangely wonderful as they come!