Traveling Thailand Part 2 – What to Eat in Chiang Mai (and a few other things to do)

With a recipe for the local dish Khao Soi.

The people of Chiang Mai are obsessed with Chiang Mai. It’s got a little of a Philly vibe…more blue-collar than Bangkok, and much smaller. We talked to so many locals originally from Bangkok who went on and on about how much better life was in Chiang Mai.

Now, I have big sparkly stars in my eyes for Bangkok, which I already mentioned in the intro of this little travel series, (and will talk about more,) but despite that, looking back on the trip to Thailand I took with my mom recently, we had our most memorable experiences in Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai is perfect for older travelers, and though it was halfway through our trip, it’s where my mom and I found our travel groove. There are treasures there, particularly of the culinary sort. It all starts with the local dish, Khao Soi, and that is where we began our adventure. Lots of “Best Khao Soi in Chiang Mai” googling and a hundred reddit threads later we settled on our first meal in Chiang Mai, conveniently stationed near the Night Market, at Lemongrass.

We started out on foot from our AirBnB. A 20-minute walk seemed like a nice way to get the lay of the land. By the time we reached Lemongrass, a hole in the wall known for the dish, sweat was pouring off us in little streams. It was over 90 degrees every day we were in Chiang Mai, and we are from the Pacific Northwest, where it hovers in the mid-40’s for most of the year. Even a 20-minute walk turned us into frizzy, pink, wet people. Everyone else looks normal, we look like we’ve been through something. There’s a freedom in this. We do not blend. We are not, and cannot be, anything but tourists. Polite, grateful guests. There is no trying to be cool, or cute, or to live like the locals.

Icy Beer and Chewy Noodles

We walked into the sweet, sweet air conditioning at Lemongrass. On the menu: Icy beer. Icy beer is just what it sounds like: Singha, the Thai lager, that is partially frozen, needing to be coaxed in solid batches from the bottle to the glass, and it was a miracle. We ordered papaya salad, (usually one of my favorites,) some other wide noodle dish, and Khao Soi. The papaya salad was unnecessary, the wide noodle dish glompy. But the Khao Soi was delicious. The broth creamy and earthy, thick noodles with lots of bite, topped with crispy fried noodles. I had a sous chef who once who said, “not everything has to have all five of the flavors,” frustrated as I told them to keep working a dish to coax out salty, sweet, spicy, tangy, and umami. Maybe true but try Khao Soi and it will be quite clear: It’s so much tastier if it does. Turmeric, Lime, Palm Sugar, Thai Chili, and Coconut Milk are all necessary instruments in the orchestra of Khao Soi.

After dinner we wandered the night market a bit, but we were stuffed and tuckered from a travel day, with an early morning ahead of us. We hired a tuk-tuk for the short distance home.

Thai Farm School Cooking Class

The next morning, we loaded into a van bright and early to head to our cooking class at an organic farm just outside of Chiang Mai. This was, without a doubt, the highlight of our trip. First, we stopped at a produce market on the outskirts of town. Nothing makes me happier than a food market. I could have stayed there gawking at the unfamiliar vegetables, piles of crickets, an open-air butcher all day. My mom and I hadn’t quite gotten our feet under us that morning, (travel delirium had planted the wrong start time in my head, and we were late,) and we hadn’t eaten breakfast. Starving, we stopped at a “meat on stick” stall, and my mom did what she does best: charm strangers. She swooned over her sausage in porky ecstasy, (“This might be the best thing I’ve ever eaten!”) which so delighted the purveyor, (he laughed and laughed in a very Thai way,) he insisted on her trying his other varieties. Our hands and lips were greasy with many a free sausage by the time we made it back to the van.

I could wander these stalls all day.

The Thai Farm Cooking School is gorgeous. I’ve never taken another cooking class in Asia, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I’ve both taught and taken a lot of cooking classes in the States, and this experience was exceptional. We started with a tour of the farm, familiarizing ourselves with how the ingredients we would be cooking with grow. Our teacher, Wass, was a total pro. Knowledgeable and hilarious, (you know she tells the same jokes twice a day, but somehow, they didn’t seem stale,) she picked a bit of each thing we would be cooking with so that we could taste it right out of the ground. Galangal, Turmeric, Thai Chilis, Lemongrass.

Wass walking us through the farm, Turmeric!, goofy hats are required.

Walking back to the classroom to begin the actual cooking part of the day, I looked at my mom and said, “I’m having the best time!!!” I think rarely do you know you are having the best time when you are having it. But this is our happy place. In the kitchen together my mom and I are at our best. We love making food, we love eating food. Eight days of unfamiliar places, too close quarters, and mother-daughter immersion melted away as we rolled spring rolls, pounded aromatics with a mortar and pestle, and joked with our fellow students, travelers from Hungary, Italy, England, and Costa Rica.

We made Tom Yum, Tom Kha, Pad See-Ew, Fried Spring Rolls, Mango Sticky Rice, and, of course, Khao Soi. We ate, and ate, and ate, and returned to Chiang Mai exhausted and happy.

We got back to the AirBnB, collapsing on the couch, and, as my mom says, “closed our eyes for a few minutes.” I left her to relax and went down the street to get a massage.

A sidebar about massages: In Thailand, massages are cheap and great. Get them as often as possible. This was the best massage I had, at a place called Health Land, which is a chain with locations in Bangkok as well. But let’s get back to the food.

Hello Wine, Goodbye Problems

Thailand culture is beer culture, and Thai tourist culture is cocktail culture. Wine is not a local priority. But I have a preternatural radar for a great wine bar, it’s a gift. I’m like a divining rod, compelled by some internal force. Into the old city. Down this alley. Up these stairs. Tired from the busy day, and the heat, and a bit travel weary but still a little peckish there it was: Cru Wine Bar. A daily assortment of delicious wines written on a chalkboard. A tiny, low-lit bar, busy but not crowded with people speaking all different languages. And the most darling staff, not only passionate about all the wines on offer, but the food on offer, all sourced in the immediate vicinity of Chiang Mai. If you have never been to Thailand it may not have ever clocked for you, but there is no cheese or dairy in Thai cuisine. But Cru works with a Thai artisan cheesemaker who is making some bangin’ cheeses. If you’ve read much of this Substack you know I am dairy intolerant and that I do not always make good decisions, so we tried four of them. They ranged from Earthy and mellow to spicy and punchy, all had a great texture and a unique profile. The charcuterie was local too, and the tomatoes that were so sweet I was transported to late August. It’s hard to describe what an odd and delightful outlier of a meal this was, perfect after we had eaten so much at our cooking class, we thought we may never want a curry again.

Sushi?

The next day was silly. It was our big whoopsie daisy day, where we thought we were going to meet elephants at a humane sanctuary and instead ended up buying elephant pants, a strange inevitability I had heretofore avoided in previous trips to Thailand. But that’s a story for another time, one about our adventure to the temples and our un-recruited tour guide. Wat Pha Lat is particularly gorgeous, and I’d like to go back to Chiang Mai just for a temple tour. And to see the elephants. And eat some more great sushi.

Infamous Elephant Pants.

When my body says “nothing but raw fish today, please,” I listen. This has resulted in some of my worst meals, (I’m looking at you, Puerto Vallarta,) and certainly some of my best. I had heard about an amazing Omakase place in Chiang Mai, but (and this might not make a ton of sense,) we were just too hot to spend that much money. A long, drawn-out meal sounded exhausting. So instead, we found this treasure: Musashi. Maybe we were there early, but it was very empty, we were the only ones there. This is mysterious. The design of the place was so cool, and the sushi was two things that never cross in the sushi Venn diagram: exceptional and affordable. We had an assortment of sashimi and a few different rolls, (my mom’s a roll gal,) and left all aglow.

We wandered Chiang Mai’s old town for a bit, past a municipal building whose grand staircase and entrance was a busy skate park by night, (some things are the same all over this great big world,) and eventually made our way back to where we started, the night market, where we sat outside with a mediocre bottle of rosé and watched the world go by. This is, perhaps, my favorite thing to do in any city, anywhere.

Khao Soi Recipe

The only thing that makes this recipe not a 20-minute weeknight meal is the frying of the noodles. For some reason deep frying kicks things over to the pain in the you-know-what department, but it is totally essential to have the crispy noodles on top. Beyond that, this recipe is shockingly easy. You can complicate it, if you want to, toasting spices, marinating chicken, etc, but this is how they taught us to make it, and it was absolutely delicious.