Didn’t Crave a Burger Once: Thai Food, Flavor, and Community

The Thai people care a lot about food, and it shows. Not just in the preparation of their meals, but in their appreciation of what it takes to even grow the ingredients that make these dishes. I got to go right to the source when we visited Patom Organic Living, an organic farm just outside of Bangkok. I got to roll up my pant legs and get down and dirty planting rice in the paddies with local farmers.

Patom is dedicated to providing sustainable food options to the local community and educating others on the importance of knowing where your food comes from. This awareness is ingrained (rice pun intended) into the minds of Thai people from a very young age. Our group’s tour director, Jing, told us that her mother used to warn her that she would get a pimple for every grain of rice she left behind on her plate, so she better eat up and be grateful for the food she had. I’m happy that was an old wives’ tale, otherwise I would have been heading back to the States with a face-full of acne—I left a lot of unusable grains in that paddy. But while our group may not have a future in planting rice, we had a great time laughing with each other and diving into the practice of sustainable farming.

With a newfound appreciation for the origin of our ingredients, our group took a cooking class with a renowned chef in Chiang Rai. She had us gather on the floor to grind our own curry paste and learn the proper technique for cooking in a wok. We learned how Thai food is all up to your own taste preferences. Don’t like how spicy or sweet something is? Change it, you deserve to be happy eating your food. Though it wasn’t exactly my self-care intention to accidentally dump half a bottle of fish sauce into my Som Tom (green papaya salad), it made the group laugh and I realized that the act of gathering over a meal was the real magic of that evening.

That was only one out of dozens of instances where we would laugh over a shared meal. Thai culture is very communal, and Jing invited us to dine the real Thai way. We would go out to dinner together and she would order her favorite dishes for the table to eat family style. She would excitedly point out dishes she thought we would love and soon our table was overflowing with plates of rice noodles and cashew chicken, bowls of spicy green curry and creamy Tom Kah Gai soup, and vibrantly-green sauteed morning glory. Our eyes were inevitably larger than our stomachs, but there was no stopping us. We would eat to our hearts content, until our bellies and hearts were both full from the nourishment of a good meal with friends.

Exploring the food culture in Thailand can be thrilling, too. Taking to the streets of Bangkok’s famous Chinatown is a scavenger hunt for the taste buds. Everywhere you look there’s a food stall hawking dumplings, pad see ew, and pork satay. Some of the more adventurous in our group opted to try the viral goong ten—live jumping shrimp that bounce right from your spoon and into your mouth. For those who want a viral moment that didn’t just come off the set of the Little Mermaid, you can try Roti Siam, basically a Thai cotton candy burrito, which was one of my favorite sweet treats.

I could go on for hours talking about all the dishes I tasted during my trip, but I’m making myself too hungry right now. While my trip to Thailand certainly ruined my local Thai takeout restaurant forever, it left me with incredible memories that all seem to center around the meals I ate. And though the food is amazing, I think it’s the conversations with new friends over a shared meal that really left a good taste in my mouth.