Evil Jungle Curry

Huen Phen

2005-12-14T16:35:00.000-08:00

Huen Phen lunch is unfuckwithable... check out that menu... and yeah, those prices are in Bahts (40B=$1) so it's damn cheap!

Kao Soy (#5) - "Chiang Mai-style curry noodles" - a source of local pride. You might as well not go there, if you're not gonna taste it... This dish is an egg-noodle beef curry with more noodles on top, fried nice and crispy. The broth is pretty hearty with some serious spice! It's served with pickled cabbage, lime, challotte onion and chili in oil on the side. This became my favorite from this point on.

Kanom Jen (#1) Round Noodles with Northern Style Curry Sauce.

Another look at Kao Soy!

Northern Thai - Chiang Mai

2005-12-14T15:51:00.000-08:00

This was the real schit right here! We went to Huen Phen for dinner. The appetizers were some of the Northern specialties - pork sausage; fried pork skin; some spicy, minced, pork - basically all pork... nothing wrong with that! there was also some Taro root slices, fried - probably in pork fat, as well as some cabbage and cucumber. That pink sausage in the upper right corner was damn tasty. I didn't see that anywhere else we went though, so I wonder if it was a house specialty. At night, this place serves dinner inside a converted house filled with various knick-knacks. Lunch is outside on the covered patio facing the street.

This was Jenny's main dish - some kind of noodle soup... those are big noodles! I had the same thing I had for lunch: Gai Pad Gra Pow. This one looked similar, including the cut green beans - similar taste too. At this point it seemed I was on a quest to try every possible incarnation of Gai Pad Gra Pow.

Cheap lunch

2005-12-14T11:43:00.000-08:00

The first place we ate at in Chiang Mai was a little Chinese place in the old part of the city, a short walk from our hotel. I think we read about it in lonely planet - I guess we weren't really feeling adventurous yet... The food was good and cheap - probably about a dollar, combined. Fried rice and Gai Pad Gra Pow - minced chicken w/ basil and chili.

Young Coconut

2005-12-14T11:21:00.000-08:00

Let me start with the Young Coconut. I'm referring to the drink, made from a fresh coconut right off the tree. Chop the top off, insert straw, drink! The outside of the coconut is green - not brown like the ones you usually see in the stores; in fact, those are really the inside of the coconut, the outside having been removed (to be able to ship more, I assume). Because the coconut is young, it is filled with juice. If you've ever had coconut juice from a can - that stuff is crap compared to the real deal. The white flesh is so soft that you can scrape it off with the end of the straw, or a spoon. This has got to be the most refreshing drink when you're in the tropics. This picture is from Angkor Wat in Cambodia (our first stop on our travels). S.F. to Siem Reap, Cambodia was a 24-hr ordeal, with a plane change in Taipei, and another 5-hr layover in Bangkok before being picked up at the airport, checking in at our hotel, and promtly starting an all-day tour of the massive Angkor Wat temple complex.

Hi...

2005-12-14T10:04:00.000-08:00

I've finally managed to start this pictorial of my trip to Thailand. It's primarily about the food there, at least initially.
Thai food is so much more than Pad Thai, Curry and chicken Satay... in fact, I didn't really eat a lot of that when I was there.
The different regions of Thailand are all known for different specialties, and we got to taste some of the variety; from Chiang Mai in the north, to Central Bangkok, and the southern islands.
I'll be pretty much chronological in my illustrations, as a way of documenting this as a travel diary.
Enjoy!