Destination Thailand #2: Aroon Rai in Chiang Mai

Eastern Gate to the Old City of Chiang Mai

My favorite Thai food I had in Thailand was a popular restaurant outside the imposing old city gates of Chiang Mai. Following the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand, my co-adventurers and I ventured from our lodging to the highly recommended Aroon Rai restaurant.

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My buddies scoping out the place

Besides Quán Ăn Ngon in Saigon, Aroon Rai was my second favorite restaurant meal of the entire trip to Southeast Asia. Billed as the "best curry in town," the restaurant probably gets its fair share of foreign press. In fact, it sells packets of its secret curry mix for visitors to bring the flavors of Northern Thailand back home. Upon arrival, first thing I noticed was abundance of foreigners in the open air location. It looked like the restaurant had been vastly expanded, as the dining room opened into another building. Generally, I am a bit skeptical of local restaurants that have too many non-native faces, but so much of Thailand is tourist-centric, I'd gotten over my foreign-phobia.

Actually, this was the first time we ventured outside the old city gates during our time in Chiang Mai, not withstanding our jungle excursion. The central portion of the city is guarded by high walls and a moat that had since been converted into fountains and lagoons. Our hostel, T.K. Hostel, was located within the old city. I'll pause to give a shout-out for the air-conditioning discount we received and hospitality by the friendly Australian-educated caretaker, T. In fourteenth century, Chiang Mai was actually the capital of the Lanna Kingdom, separate from the Siamese Thai of the South. The culture, and hence the food, remained relatively distinct for many years.




Some of the regional specialties include the above-pictured pork curry and Chiang Mai sausage. Looking at some recipes for Chiang Mai sausage, I can't see what makes them distinct. The ingredients are typical of Thai cuisine in general: galangal, lemon grass, chilies, coriander, fish sauce. They had a tough outer crust, but gave way to flavorful fillings. The accompaniment of coconut cream in the pork curry made the sauce lip-smacking and luxuriant to the tongue.




Speaking of coconut, the rice commonly used in Northern Thailand is short grain sticky rice. Often it is flavored with coconut milk. Aroon Rai served rice individually in little steamers, but I suspect that one steamer held less than one bowl. Additionally, since my friends were in an adventurous mood, we ordered deep-fried frog. As always, frog was somewhat of a letdown since there was hardly any meat on those bones and the flavor is as indistinct as chicken. In fact, on Chinese menus, frog is called "field chicken."

Each dish was cheap enough ($1-2) that you can easily pig out on everything on the menu. The portions were small enough that you could order a sufficient variety. Writing this entry now makes me regret not bringing home one of those curry packets.


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Destination Thailand #1: Street Food in Thailand

Griddle of pad thai in Chiang Mai

Previously, I had written about the banh mi on the streets in Vietnam, but the crown of street food in Southeast Asia would have to be in Thailand. Some of the delicacies, and not so delicacies, were outstanding and easily better than any hot dog or halal cart you'd find in New York.

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As you can imagine, pad thai is relatively prevalent throughout Thailand. While I'm not entirely sure how authentic it is, the country's reliance on the tourism industry means that there's likely to be a pad thai around every corner. This plate, from the above cart, was from the Chiang Mai Sunday Night Street Bazaar. A small town, if you're in Chiang Mai on Sunday night, you'll surely stumble upon it. The cart actually served two types of noodles. This is the thick type commonly seen in America, but they also offered thin noodles, which reminded me more of Korean jap jae.


A local student group sold homemade mochi with fillings of apple, blueberry, and strawberry jelly. Though admittedly I don't know if mochi is prevalent in Thai cuisine, they were delightful.


Often for a quick meal at home, I'd fry an egg with oyster sauce. With runny yolk on top of a bowl of rice, this is simple and satisfying. In Chiang Mai, I found miniature fried quail eggs. Packed with flavor and easy to pop into your mouth, these make a fast snack.


Satays and skewers are common in both Thailand and Vietnam. The flavors of the Thai skewer closely match the ones found in the appetizer section of local American restaurants. Often I found the satay with chunks of pineapple and a sweet sauce.

The smoothie lady from my "Fruits in Southeast Asia" post was also at the Chiang Mai street fair. But any of those dishes could be equally paired with a refreshing chrysanthemum tea served in a bamboo cup.



Upon arrival in Bangkok, we hit one of the temples for a mediation class led by a transsexual Buddhist nun. Though I don't think I got anywhere closer to enlightenment, I was certainly hungry after sitting on the floor with my eyes closed for a few hours. We walked near the river and found omelet rice with red pepper flakes and fried noodles that weren't pad thai. These noodles lacked the sweetness and tartness of tamarind, and reminded me more of yakisoba than anything Thai I've had.




Though technically not "street" food, I spent my one day on the Pattaya beach with fried rice and pad thai served under umbrellas on plastic furniture. Though the food was good, beware for the hidden "beach sitting fee" tagged onto the bill.


Of course don't assume that street food must be served on a street. I'd consider boat food off a neighboring boat grill in the floating market of Damnoen Saduak. Various dispensers of cooked and uncooked treats cruise by available to be flagged and patronized.


These glutinous rice balls filled with peanuts and served on a banana leaf came from the next passing boat. An old woman with a propane powered stove steamed these dumplings on the stern of her boat.

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Destination Vietnam #6: Bia Hơi

As inescapable as hot, humid weather is in Vietnam, bad beer is just as unavoidable. As I previously mentioned in my dog meat entry, there is still not a universal custom to serve cold beer. So the already bland and tasteless beer is often made worse by serving warmer than room temperature. Just avoid all the Vietnamese beers: 333, Bia Hanoi, Bia Saigon, Halida, they're all fairly terrible. Vietnam is really not a beer country. But they do have a hidden ace up their sleeve, the local fresh beer--Bia Hơi.

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So what is this bia hơi? It is a fresh draft beer brewed daily. I'm not a brewmaster, so I don't know what effect this may have on the beer, but the taste is extremely light. You can easily drink this like water. By itself, there would be little appeal, but bia hơi has the power to bring together loud Vietnamese men. Sitting in one of the bia hơi halls with a couple of dishes and some pitchers of beer gives you an unparalleled cultural experience.



Word of warning: bia hơi is not regulated at all. Though you'll be able to find it everywhere in Hanoi, I'd stick to the places that are well-populated to be safe. You never know what kind of antifreeze they pour into the beer.

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Destination Vietnam #5: The Dog Meat Entry (Thịt Chó)

Just follow the signs or ask the taxi drivers. Where do you go when you want to find dog in Vietnam? Search out the words thịt chó, Vietnamese for dog meat. However, there is a superstition that eating dog in the first half of the lunar month is considered unlucky. So on those days, the restaurants might all be abandoned, or even closed. My friends certainly had their moral reservations, but I was more concerned about the sanitation of the meat than the origin. In fact, I was right. Either we faced cosmic punishment for eating man's best friend, or the dog restaurant was the dirtiest place we ate at the entire trip.

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Having not grown up with any type of cuddly family pet, I didn't have any reservations about dog dining. If you've read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, you'd have a sense of the argument that eating meat in general makes you a "specist." Essentially, indulging in carnal pleasure makes you guilty of discriminating against certain species as "food." Despite my contentment with this label, I won't discriminate against dogs as another source of food. In fact, I feel better about eating dog than any one of the myriad of endangered species commonly degustated at high-end restaurants now. Eating an unsustainable species and further removing them from existence, or eating an animal that some cultures tend to raise as pets? What's the real moral dilemma? Judge me all you want, but I'm giving you the chance to eat vicariously through me if you can't stomach the animal.



Since I didn't go to Vietnam planning to eat dog, I hadn't done any prior research. I took a chance, jumped into a taxi and asked for thịt chó. I'm sure that the driver took me to his kickback restaurant for a slice of the receipt, but I had no other reference to go off. We ended up on the side of the highway at Anh Tú Béo, a lofted restaurant with dining seating on the top floor above the kitchen. We sat on mats on the ground around a low table and proceeded to order some lukewarm Vietnamese beer. As bad as Vietnamese beer is already, they don't serve it cold. Besides taking the drink order, the server proceeded to start bringing out side dishes. They probably figured that we would only come all the way out there just for one thing.



From the bill we received at the end of the meal, I can try to piece out the dishes we received. On the table are a few bottles of Bia Hà Nội, the better of the Vietnamese beers. The first things we received were a plate of cucumbers (dưa chuột) and a basket of lemongrass, lime and basil. We started suspiciously nibbling on a big sesame cracker (bánh đa), my friends worried that somehow the Vietnamese and baked a puppy into the cracker.


Thịt hấp - steamed dog meat

First to arrive were the dog cold cuts, similar to the cold cut appetizers I've had at Cantonese restaurants. Since this was the simplest dish, it would be most appropriate to explicate the taste of dog meat here. If you're looking for something mysterious or mystical, you'll be disappointed. Dog tastes like a cross between beef and pork. That's all. It didn't taste like game, exoticism, nor tears. It is exactly you'd imagine a boring meat to be. The dish also had slices of liver. And dog liver tastes just as offensive to me as pork or beef liver.


Dồi nướng - dog sausage

Tasted like overcooked sausage. Tough, overcooked sausage. Whatever the casing was made out of (I suspect dog intestine), it harden in the grilling process. Biting into it was actually somewhat crunchy. Tastewise, there was much more going on in the sausage than in the steamed dog. Seasonings were added, and other dog parts I'd rather not know about (likely dog blood and fat).


Chả nướng - grilled dog

The final dish we had was the most mysterious. Since we actually were heading to the Snake Village for a meal of snake (which failed to materialize), we cut the dog degustation after this plate. I can't tell how many more were going to come, but this was too much meat, dog or not. I want to say this was a dish of dog belly, with thick fatty pieces of skin on the small bits of meat. But I can't tell you much beyond that. I can't even identify the crumbled yellow stuff on top of the meat. As inscrutable as it was, this was my favorite of the three dishes.

Even in Vietnam, dog is a novelty. You should have no fears of accidentally ordering a dog dish by pointing at a menu. It just isn't that common, though dog restaurants occur more in the North than South. From what I could tell, all the dog I saw was only served in special dog restaurants. So unless you're intentionally searching it out, you won't find it easily. Each of the plates we had were 40K đong, about $2.20 at the time of my trip.

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Destination Vietnam #4: Fruit in Southeast Asia

A fruit seller in Thailand

For all the agrotechnology we have in this country, it's amazing to think we can't produce fruit as delicious as in tropical areas. Of course, barring considerations of growing conditions and transportation, American fruit is mediocre at best. Especially after my move from California to New York, I realized I lucky I was to have the plentiful produce of sunny Cali. But still, California's got nothing on Southeast Asia in terms of fruit.

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In Hanoi's old district, the streets are still known by the commodity that they sell. All the metal workers gather together and make a tin street. A little further is the leather street. Got an itch for stone Buddha statues? There's a street for that too. For the more food inclined, I'd suggest searching for the fruit "smoothie" street.


As you can see, they are not exactly smoothies. It's just a collection of fresh tropical fruit with crushed ice and condensed milk. I'm not sure what it is with Asians and condensed milk, but we love the stuff. Milk teas, mango pudding, toast, we'll eat it over anything. In this case, the milk just adds to the well-documented Vietnamese sweet tooth.

As far as eating fresh fruit on the street with questionablely produced ice, I'll again say that I ate without getting sick. And given the cheapness and abundance of tropical fruit, you'll really miss out if you neglect the street.

For the actual fruit, there is papaya, watermelon, dragonfruit (probably the coolest named and looking fruit, though incredible bland), mango, rambutan, longan and tapioca. Though you could certainly go to town on the fruit plain, the milk and ice made a pleasant dessert to cut through the sweltering heat of Vietnam.

The following are photos of fruit I encountered throughout the trip.


Rambutan, the most alien looking fruit. Tastes extremely similar to lychee.


Smoothie lady on street in Chiang Mai. Select the cup with the fruit, she blends it with ice and hands you a straw. Delicious.


My friends' first encounter with durian. Amused Vietnamese in background not pictured.


Most set meals finished with a dessert of fresh fruit like this pineapple and watermelon.


This was one fruit I had not encountered before the trip. I was determined to buy and try one of these mangosteen.


Mangosteen tastes like lychee too, though it has a certain tartness similar to cranberries. Be careful, it stains.


Miniature watermelon. Who knew?


Custard apples were more custard than apple. They have a soft, fragrant flesh like durian without any offensive odor.


Fruit seller in floating market in Thailand. From left to right: longan, starfruit, pomelo, custard apples, and a fruit I could never identify that looked like small hair yams.


Dragonfruit. I'd compare it to kiwi, but more like kiwi's plainer cousin that nobody asks out. Don't get me wrong, it's an awesome looking fruit, but doesn't taste like much. Wandering Chopsticks grew dragonfruit.

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Destination Vietnam #3: Bánh Mì

Bánh Mì from a Bakery in Sa Pa

As you can imagine, I encountered many Vietnamese sandwiches on my journey through the country. I discovered, much to my ordering difficulties, that bánh mì typically refers to only the baguette in Northern Vietnam and not an entire sandwich. I didn't have too many difficulties getting sandwiches in Saigon, but in Hanoi, I typically had to ask for bánh mì thịt nướng for bánh mì with grilled pork, or bánh mì patê for bánh mì with pate mixture.

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So how are bánh mì different in Vietnam? Well for one thing, the ingredients vary much more widely. Here in the States, you can find the pate, but more commonly is grilled pork, chicken, or even char-siu, pickled carrots and daikon, cilantro, cucumber, jalepeños, and seasonings, which may include soy sauce, Maggi sauce, mayonnaise, etc. That makes up the sandwich at my all-time favorite bánh mì location in Oakland.

While in Vietnam, you'll commonly see carts on the streets with the Laughing Cow logo, indicating the use of Laughing Cow cheese spread in its sandwiches.

Besides Laughing Cow, I also saw bánh mì ladies (they are always women) use Camembert. Beyond the cheese spread, some sandwiches had sweet chili sauce, grilled chicken, pate, cucumbers, pickles, tomatoes, and other unidentifiable ingredients.


Our resident bánh mì lady

When we were in Hanoi, we actually frequented our bánh mì lady on the street quite often. Her sandwiches were simple, delicious, and satisfying. However, we were in a backpackers' touristy area and so she was selling them for about $1.75 USD. Around town though, they can be found for much less than that. Still, seeing her out on that corner day and night, even in torrential rains, shows just how hard it is to earn a living in that country. As for as sanitation, it's best a topic to try to keep out of your mind when eating on the street. The ingredients aren't refrigerated, she doesn't wash her hands, and you have no idea how old the food is. If this is all a major concern to you, get up early in the morning and buy a sandwich fresh to reduce chance of contamination. But as with all food in Vietnam, you'll miss out if you don't take chances.


Bánh mì from the bánh mì lady

If you're looking for a bánh mì location somewhat more trackable than "the woman on the corner," try Như Lan in District 1 of Saigon, near the river. I would hazard to guess that every taxi driver knows of this restaurant, but it wouldn't hurt to provide the name and address written down, given the difficulties of Vietnamese pronounciation. It's an open-air bakery, deli, and restaurant. There is a wide, relatively easily accessible menu. Given the layout, if you don't know what you'd like, you can always walk up and point to items in the display cases.


Nhu Lan
66 Ham Nghi, Ho Chi Minh City


Anyone know what's the deal with the Star of David?


Cucumbers, ham, tomato, onions, mayo, and spicy peppers

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Destination Vietnam #2: Pho 24

I learned much about myself on this trip to South East Asia. For one thing, I discovered that my personality is just not the backpacking type. On my travels, my friends and I continually encountered teachers, social workers, students, and other free spirits (read: unemployed), youth touring countries on one-way tickets. They showed a bravery of risk, roaming with no set plans, waking up at three in the afternoon. Nope, that kind of guideless meandering isn't for me. Just open my Lonely Planet and point me towards the nearest recommended restaurant.

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As far as I could tell, Pho 24 is the largest pho chain in Vietnam. With locations scattered throughout Hanoi and Saigon, it's difficult to explore either of the large cities without running into the green neon sign of glowing bowl and chopsticks. Due to my experience in the States, I was completely accustomed to eating my pho in numerically distinguishable restaurants.

I'll save a big lesson on what pho actually is. Suffice it to say, these noodles have become so common that even those with a cursory exposure to Vietnamese food is familiar with pho. I will make a note on pronounciation though. Pho is easiest pronounced as an approximation of "fuh" rather than "fo" as in "photo."


I tried the pho bo, the most common beef broth pictured above. Impressions? It really is reminiscent of the pho available in the US. I really couldn't distinguish any major differences in flavors. Even the plate of accoutrements consisted of familiar items. I've heard that the difference between Northern and Southern pho is in the purity of the broth in the North. What's purity to one palate, may be blandness to another. However, I couldn't tell any big differences between North and South to be honest.


On another occasion I also tried the pho ga, chicken broth pho. This was actually my first encounter with chicken noodles. I can easily say that my preference is bovine. Pho ga has a much lighter flavor, not really what I look for in pho.

Of course, as a chain, Pho 24 has all the benefits and all the drawbacks of a franchise. Each one I encountered were clean, had an English menu, and helpfully trained staff. There is certainly consistency bowl by bowl. In exchange, you pay a premium compared to the street. Is it worth the extra cost for some comfort and peace of mind? Depending on the circumstances, I'd say so. Just don't rely only on chains for your food experience.

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