Chiang Mai Street Food Tour

At exactly 6:30pm, Dewey, our food tour guide, showed up in the hotel lobby to take us on an eating adventure. People had cautioned us about Thai street food, you know, “be sure you know what it is before you put it in your mouth” kind of things, so we thought a guided tour would be a good way to avoid a tour of Chiang Mai Municipal Hospital.

Short drive to the street market and time to jump right in. Dewey handed us a cheat sheet of phrases and food descriptions to take our mind off what the vendors were really preparing.

Fresh veggies!

Cowgirl Cooker

I can’t begin to recall all the foods we tried but I can tell you that it was all tasty, fresh and something I’d eat again. There were a couple of items that came close to the “nope, not again” category. First durian fruit. Mature durian fruit smells so bad, it’s against the law in Thailand to bring it on public transportation. Our hotel had a sign stating anyone with durian in their room would be fined! Second is Jackfruit, but it’s a real close race! Dewey was kind enough to let us smell both of these fruits wrapped in plastic, God awful!

Durian fruit (Jackfruit is the yellow stuff in the wrapper)

We did try some very young durian which wasn’t bad, very slight smell and a little stringy. Something must happen as they age, they get smelly! No jokes!!!!!

Young Durian with rice

After everyone recovered their appetites, Dewey moved us on to more eating. This lasted until about 9:30pm with a desert finale, sticky rice/mango/sweetened coconut milk & sticky rice pancakes & fried banana/egg crepes. Probably one of the best investments we made on this trip. The cost for all 5 of us was 3500THB ($100USD / $20ea) for transportation, food and a bit of learning about Thai food.

Dewey describing “morning glory” (yes, the flower) to Jess & Betsy. It tastes like, “green”.

Col. Sanders is rolling over in his gravy!

They said the coating was salt?????

Frog with rice. Problem was the whole frog was ground up, including bones!

Coconut milk with rice flower and a coconut custard, YUMMY!

Done with eating, rolled out of the van and into our room. I shouldn’t need to eat again for a month!