Thailand

 EatingBritish was lucky enough to have the chance to visit Thailand recently, which was great! 

 This, of course, provided the perfect opportunity to try all sorts of new food, which was quite an adventure in itself.  There is a strong street food culture in Thailand, with vendors setting up stalls and cooking all sorts of wonderful things right there, in front of everyone.  Many of these stalls also provide a seating area for those wishing to 'dine-in', but many people seem to get food to 'take-away'.  This is a whole world away from the kind of take-away that we think of here in the UK.

 This particular street vendor was making Pad Mee Korat, which is noodles with egg and pork made with a sweet sauce, mixed with soy sauce.  I can personally vouch for the quality of this food - it was amazing!

 We also had breakfast at a traditional restaurant one morning, which was really good.  Especially for the price, just 35 Baht (less than £1 GBP), including a drink of freshly squeezed orange juice.

For that money, you get two eggs, deep fried pork and bread with two kinds of deep fried pork inside.  It really did the job.

 There are also so many different types of noodles available, I think I lost count of all the different types I had.  However, these were particularly good:

 This was actually at a Japanese restaurant, but this is a pork noodle soup, with egg, bamboo and bean sprouts.  Again, it was truly excellent!

 I was also fascinated to see bananas growing in people's gardens!  I don't know why, but somehow the banana still seems to be almost the definition of an exotic fruit, despite being so widely available.  Somehow, seeing them growing on trees seems quite irrationally exciting.  Thai people like to grow bananas because they believe that having them in the house can bring well being and good fortune.

 Sadly, these were not ripe at the time of visiting, so I couldn't try them.  Oh well, hopefully next time!  Of course, other interesting fruits grow quite readily in the garden in Thailand, such as chili peppers:

 The trip wasn't entirely about food of course, we did see and visit some non-food places as well!  Such as the Phu Pi Man resort in Korat, close to Bangkok, which provided some lovely views in the early morning:

 We also visited the Pimai Historical Park, which protects one of the most important Khmer temples in Thailand.  Most of the buildings here date from around the 11th century.

 It was great trip!  I do rather wish I had got more photographs of food though, as we really did have a great many wonderful dishes.  Just from a food perspective, Thailand is worth visiting, but there is a lot more than that!