SPICEGASM.COM My travel tales and food hunting

I haven’t been updating my blog for quite a while. One of the main reason is that I’ve been busy with work and also changing my lifestyle for a bit. I will blog about it ( I hope ) in the near future.

Good friends of mine will know that whenever I am living or traveling abroad, visiting famous monuments and buildings are not really my kinda thing. I just prefer to live like the locals and basically do normal stuff daily. My schedule is never hectic and I do not go in and out of a tour bus visiting places after places. Instead I will wake up whenever my eyes opened and just go to some coffee shops or cafes that are popular among the locals.

I would normally order my food and drinks, and just chill in the coffee shop for an hour or two. Most of the time I am alone and I just enjoy observing people. Sometimes some locals who can communicate in English will talk to me and I’ve always enjoyed that. But most of the time I would be approached by locals who can’t speak in English who will still make an effort to talk to me. I enjoyed that too even though most of the time we do not understand each other. It involves a lot of head nodding ( pretending that we understood ) and short sentences in our own language, food being pointed and the famous thumbs up sign with the word “GOOD” being expressed in many different ways. I’ve done that more than a thousand times and it still never gets old for me.

Deep fried chicken, would be nice if juicier.

I am currently back in Chiangmai after an absence of almost 6-7 years. I am staying in a small hotel near the old city. The caretaker of the hotel is one really nice guy and he loves that everybody addresses him as Mr. Man ( pronounce as in He-Man ). I would blog more details about him and his hotel soon. He has brought me out on his truck and motorbike a few times to go eat food that is preferred by the people of Chiangmai. One night, he brought me to a place to eat at 9pm around the night bazaar area. He then told me that few meters down the road where we were having our meal, is a very popular food stall call the “Midnight Fried Chicken”. The stall is also popular for it’s special chili paste that is call “Namprik Num”. It is a special chili paste made of young green chili from the Chiangmai region. It opens only at 11.30pm daily and you have to stand in line to be seated.

Yesterday night at 11.35pm, I felt a little bit hungry and the image of crispy fried chicken was circulating on my mind. Add in the reputation of the stall “Midnight Fried Chicken” told gloriously by Mr Man, I really set my heart on to give it a try. The problem was that I do not know where exactly is the place and Mr Man was already sleeping. But when I set my heart on tasting the food that I am craving for, nothing will deter me from achieving that.

Deep fried pork intestine and special Chiangmai sausage with herbs

The weather in Chiangmai now is really cold and yesterday night was 20 C. I decided to look for the place on a bicycle that Mr Man provided for my daily usage. It would be fun cycling around Chiangmai town on a cool night. Equipped with my broken Thai, I was very determine to find the “Midnight Fried Chicken” stall at all cost.

Let me spare out the details of my screw ups in recognizing the roads and buildings and get straight to the point. It took me 1 hour and the half to locate the place, and asking about 7 random people about the location of the food stall. Two out of the seven Thai people never heard of the place and this was pretty encouraging. Finally I found the place and it was exactly like what Mr Man described. The tables were all full and I had to stand in line to either take out or to dine in. After 10 minutes of waiting, I finally got a table.

Pictures I took when the shop is getting ready for business and there’s more seats inside.

Look at the crowd!

This is where I ordered my food by pointing.

Special Chiangmai chili paste Namprik Num

Sticky rice, boiled egg with Nam Prik Num, love the taste of it.

To order, the customers need to write down what they want. Since I cannot write in Thai, I told one of the workers if I could just go to the counter and point what I wanted. She nodded her head and I went and ordered my food via pointing my fingers, mixed with my broken Thai language. Ordered one big fried chicken leg, some deep fried pork intestines, boiled egg ( according to Mr Man, boiled egg and Nam Prik Num goes really good together ), a plate of boiled vegetables with Nam Prik Num and lastly a plate of sticky rice.

I ate it quickly as they were still many customers waiting to get their seats. It cost me 107 BHT for my meal and I think the price is rather reasonable. If you were to ask me “is the 1 hour 10 minutes bicycle ride worth it and will I ever come back again?” The answer is YES! Besides the ride back to my hotel took me only 15 minutes.