Our Best Eats - Thailand

Altogether, we were in Thailand for about 6/7 weeks. We left and re-entered the country so many times that I have almost a full page in my passport of just Thailand stamps.

From our first meal, a delicious red curry on the train from the Malaysian border to Bangkok, I just knew that when I got round to writing it, my food post would be like me: bursting at the seams.

Red Curry – we found an amazing place in Bangkok, near Khao San Road (backpacker district) called apple, which served some of the best Thai food we had on the whole trip. Our favourite was the red curry, filled with yummy crunchy vegetables like Thai aubergine, and so spicy that it made my lips numb.


Whiskey shakes – another tasty offering from apple. When I first saw it on the menu, I’ll admit I was dubious. But when the table next to us ordered a pitcher, I quickly changed my mind. It’s basically a fruit shake (fruit blended with ice) and whiskey. The blueberry and lychee flavours were best, and came with juicy little jelly sweets. We couldn’t resist going back for these again on our final visit to Bangkok.

Pad Thai – for anyone who isn’t familiar with this, it’s a popular egg-fried noodle dish with peanutty-tamarind flavours. You can have it with tofu, chicken or prawns, and Bangkok’s swanky mall Siam Paragon does an awesome one.

Market food – Once a week in Chiang Mai, everyone flocks to the Sunday walking market for dinner. There’s a huge variety of food, and our favourites included barbequed Thai sausage, pork kebabs with a garlic, chilli and green-pepper marinade, and steamed pork buns.


Fruit shakes – Couldn’t get enough of these. At the Sunday walking market we found the most mindblowingly good passion fruit shakes. Meanwhile, the little restaurant round the corner from massage school did incredible watermelon shakes. In both cases, the drinks are made simply by blending fruit with ice until it becomes a thick shake. It’s so simple, but the fruit flavours are so intense that every time I took that first sip, I just couldn’t get over how amazing they were. Definitely on my list of things to recreate when I get home! The only downside was the brain freeze from drinking them too fast…


Mango & Sticky Rice – Sounds dull, I know. But the rice is coconut rice, and it’s topped with a slightly sweet coconut sauce, and the mango is fresh and sweet. We learnt how to make it in our cookery course, so I can (hopefully) prove that it’s delicious when I get back!

Everything we made at our Thai cookery class – if we do say so ourselves. No, seriously though, it was really freaking good.


Deep fried pork special homemade – I love this not just for it’s ridiculous name. It’s chunks of pork, deep fried so that they're crispy on the outside but moist and delicious within. It comes with a sort of tangy mayonnaise-like dipping sauce, a spicy chilli sauce, and a selection of crunchy pickled vegetables. Really really good.

Roast chicken sandwiches – not really Thai food, I know. But the roast chicken sarnies I had in Pai following an afternoon at a waterfall are definitely amongst the best meals I had in Thailand.


Homemade Thai food – On our last night in Chiang Mai, Karl’s kickboxing trainer Krupong invited us for dinner at his house. His wife cooked the best meal we had in Thailand. There were plates of beautifully stir-fried vegetables, pork mince flavoured with Thai basil, bowls of Tom Yum soup (spicy and tangy, our two favourite flavours) and so much more.

Pandan cake – Five minutes down the road from Krupong’s house, our bike ran out of petrol. Karl and Krupong went to buy some more fuel while I watched a terrible Thai soap with his wife and kids (they’re SO cute!). About 15 minutes later they returned with bags of small, light green cakes for dessert. Pandan is a leaf used for flavouring and colouring Thai desserts. The cakes were lovely and soft, and came with a Pandan-flavoured custard too. Plus they’d bought some bags of a hot milky drink – no idea what it was, but it was the perfect pre-bedtime drink.

Wasabi spinach – I had this at Tianzi’s, the macrobiotic restaurant where I went with my massage class on our graduation day. It’s basically spinach cooked with sesame and wasabi. The wasabi was like a punch in the nose, but I absolutely loved it.

Papaya salad – This was one of our favourite Thai dishes before we even left London, but the one we had in Bangkok was mindblowing. It was a dinky restaurant that specialises in this one salad, and it does it really well. Grated green papaya, mixed with green beans and shredded carrot, with a spicy and tangy dressing. Topped with crushed peanuts. This one had salted fish added to it for extra flavour, which was surprisingly good.


Hot herbal drink – Karl discovered this through his kickboxing teacher, who took them to a little stall after their morning running session for a mug of hot herbal drink. We don't actually know what's in it, but it's spicy, and I suspect black pepper is one of the key ingredients. We liked it so much that it became part of our daily routine – we'd ride along for a mug of herbal tea, hop back on the bike to grab some breakfast, and then Karl would drop me off to massage school.


Banana fritters – why don’t we have these at home? I had them on two occasions. We made them in our cookery class, and I also bought a batch for breakfast one morning in Pai. Slices of banana, battered and deep fried, then sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds.