I’ve been in Asia for six and a half months now, and weird things are beginning to seem normal. Included in that category of normal is the amount of foods I think of as normal, that are most definitely not. I’ve eaten so many new things and haven’t thought twice about most of them…until now.
There are three categories of new foods I’ve tried over the course of the last 6.5 months:
1. Foods we don’t have (or choose to eat) in the states. This includes durian, lychee, chicken knuckles, and tarantulas.
2. Foods we don’t normally combine in the states. This includes ice cream on a hot dog bun, mayonnaise on pizza, and shrimp and bean sprouts on pancakes.
3. Foods the states just can’t master, or make nearly as good as Asia can. This includes pad thai, chapati, pho, and roti.
We’ve had seven months of food, and a lot of creativity. Some months we go out to eat for almost every meal, capitalizing on the fact that most of Southeast Asia has meals for $1-$2 from vendors on almost every street. Some months we cook for ourselves, and get really good at making one or two basic dishes per month (aka oatmeal and sautéed vegetables). Nevertheless, adventure is out there with Asian food!
India: We helped our contacts cook approximately 7 different meals of rice, on rotation all month. We ate rice, rice, chapati (a kind of Indian tortilla), more rice, and chai tea.
^^Chapati
Nepal: During all-squad month, we ate out almost every meal. We ate momos (a type of dumpling, popular in Nepal), rice and noodles, chai tea, oatmeal for breakfast.
^^Momos
Thailand: Almost every day, I had cornflakes with fresh mango for breakfast. We ate out for lunch and dinner — lots of pad thai, Thai tea, basil beef with rice and fried egg, and roti (a thin crepe-like pancake folded into square envelope-looking thing, filled mostly with chocolate and banana). Ate a lot of dinners at the fun night market down the road.
^^Pad thai: Buy from a street vendor for best (and cheapest) results. Everything good in life exists in this dish.
^^Roti, with chocolate and sweetened condensed milk on top!
Laos: We drove to a small outdoor market in town to buy our sticky rice, eggs, and vegetables for the whole month. Nescafe instant coffee and scrambled eggs were our morning staples. Our kitchen was outside on a porch next to a fish pond.
^^When you live on a farm and your Laotian farm friends catch their dinner in the field next to your porch…you end up with some extra crunchy protein for dinner!
Cambodia: Our contacts cooked for us this month, so we ate a ton of fruit and vegetables! It was awesome. Fried chicken, Indian food (including curry hot pockets), and more fruit and veggies. We also tried tarantulas.
^^Durian: a fruit that “smells like hell, tastes like heaven” (or so they say). It’s not allowed in stores, offices, public transportation, airports, etc for a reason. It smells like cat pee, has the consistency of rotten apples, and tastes…not like heaven. Not at all.
Vietnam: With no way to cook, we ate every meal on the streets. Pho (Vietnamese soup), ca phe sua da (shot of espresso with sweetened condensed milk), smoothies for breakfast (mango + passionfruit + avocado for me). We also had a few potlucks with our students, where we got to try a bunch of different traditional Vietnamese foods.
^^Pho: (pronounced “fuh”); you get noodles, meat (usually beef), and broth in the bowl, and add your own bean sprouts, basil, lime, and other green leaves
^^Ca phe sua da (plus the accents that make Vietnamese a confusing language): a few shots of strong espresso with sweetened condensed milk. Best found for about $.50 USD from the sweet little ladies on the side of the road.
Malaysia: We eat out every lunch and dinner. Nasi goreng (fried rice), roti (same as Thailand, but mostly eaten plain, with curry to dip in), and in general, a lot of Indian buffets. We drink teh ais (iced Malay tea, kind of like a chai or milk tea) in a plastic bag at least once a day.
And sometimes, home is just one meal away. In Thailand, our team and contacts and friends from the community came together to make a traditional American Thanksgiving meal!
And now…the moment we’ve all been waiting for… I have another video for you! While I’m getting all sentimental about the last 6 months of food, might as well recap the entire 6 months for you. In 1 minute and 11 seconds…the first half of my World Race!
