7 written upWhat you eat

Khao soi at the morning market, nam ngiao in Shan country, sticky rice in a basket, and the thing your hands smell of afterwards.

Grilled by the road

ของย่างริมทาง

The roadside grill is the most reliable good meal between towns, and you smell it before you see it.

Kanom jeen nam ngiao

ขนมจีนน้ำเงี้ยว

Fermented rice vermicelli under a thin, sour, red broth of tomato and pork, with dried kapok flower, pork blood cubes and a pork rib.

Khao soi

ข้าวซอย

A coconut curry noodle soup of upper northern Thailand, Laos and the Shan States. Chicken or beef, pickled mustard greens, shallot, lime, chilli…

Sticky rice

ข้าวเหนียว

Glutinous rice, steamed rather than boiled, eaten with the right hand in small pressed balls. The everyday grain of the north and the northeast.

The Yunnanese table at Ban Rak Thai

อาหารยูนนานที่บ้านรักไทย

Chinese Yunnanese food, on a reservoir, a few kilometres from the Myanmar border, at the end of a road that goes nowhere else.

The morning market

ตลาดเช้า

Every town on this loop has one. Rice, curries in bags, grilled things, sticky rice, coffee, and whatever the hills sent down that morning.

Thua nao

ถั่วเน่า

Soybeans fermented, mashed, pressed flat and sun-dried into thin discs, then toasted or fried and crumbled into food. The name means rotten bean and…