Chiang Mai’s mobile food carts sell all manner of food – including some culinary surprises you might not be ready for…
Food is on the move in Chiang Mai. Mobile food carts move about this northern Thai city offering drinks, snacks, and meals. These wandering snack bars and instant restaurants offer some of the most interesting and least expensive food available. Patronized mainly by locals, they take you out of the tourist area as soon as you sit down. A Greek restaurant may be only a few feet away, next to another selling toned-down Thai food. But when you stop at a sidewalk restaurant you’ve left them behind and come a little closer to Thailand.
You’ll find that the sidewalk that displayed hill tribe handicrafts in the morning will host the outdoor restaurant where you’ll dine on yellow curry tonight. Temple grounds turn into food courts on Sunday night, then the entire operation will roll away to emerge the next night at locations scattered all over town.
Near schools, carts bloom along the streets as children pour out at the end of the day, each one ready to buy sweets, sausages, and soup. Ice cream vendors set up shop at recess, passing rapidly melting frozen treats through fences in exchange for a bit of the children’s pocket money. Other carts are constantly on the go, roaming the streets in search of customers.
None of this prepared me for one of the more unique mobile carts. After watching the final parade of a local festival, I was dragging my aching feet along Moon Muang, when I stopped short and let out a small squeal. What was moving around in that cart? Mobile food is one thing, but not this mobile.
Just what was in those clear glass compartments? I moved a bit closer as it rolled to a stop. The squirmy motion ended. Rough pavement had been shifting the insects around, that was all. Insects? No wonder the motion had looked so creepy. Were those scorpions?
Thus went my first encounter with the insect cart. As the days passed, it appeared in different locations around the tourist area located inside the city’s ancient moat. I watched as local people purchased and ate the fried (and thankfully, not live) bugs.
How, I wondered, did they eat a poisonous insect? Frying, it turns out, neutralizes the poison. For a while I tried to talk myself into trying them. After all, I didn’t have to start with scorpions. There were what looked like crickets, ants, grubs, and other crawly things. Although I saw other travelers sample and enjoy some of them, I didn’t indulge. I never really got drunk enough to crunch down on one.
If you want to stick with the more staid of the mobile Chiang Mai foods, try an appetizer came from the satay cart that stops in the early evening outside the Pirates Cove on Ratchamanka. Snack on mango and sticky rice from the stall near the Tha Pae gate. Used a stick to spear a slice of mango out of a plastic baggie, purchased for ten baht at the market. Try standing with the kids after school, and sampling whatever they seem to be buying. Eat dumplings and soups, Thai omelets and sweet corn drenched in sugar and condensed milk.
You could even try the scorpions.
See also: Eating crispy spiders in Cambodia ; Spam Giftset in Korea; Fine Dining with the Preying Mantis; Extreme Eating – Banned Food From Around The World and China’s Speciality Penis Restaurant.
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