The Pursuit of the Perfect Sandwich and other foods we have found in Thailand

I had promised at one point (I think) that I would go into more detail about the food that we have found in Thailand. Today is that day. Our most recent discovery are American Club Sandwiches at a bakery near the train station. For 50 baht (less than $1.50) you can get double-decker club sandwich with chicken, ham and veggies and fries!! The sandwich is delicious!! Ever since our discovery of the American Club Sandwich at Sin Ocha Bakery, it has become an after school snack on some afternoons and also a pre and post weekend trip tradition. As you may guess, the American Club Sandwich is far from traditional Thai food, but when you have not had a sandwich in months, it is essential. As for Thai foods, there is of course your pad thai and fried rice (khao phat). When we first arrived we ate plenty of pad thai because our Thai vocabulary was very limited. We have since replaced pad thai with other dishes, but we still enjoy fried rice on a regular basis. Other dishes we enjoy are:

Gai Pad Prik: Stir fried chicken with chillies.
Khao Phat Naam Prik Pow: Fried Rice with Chili Paste
Gaang Kiawan: Green Curry (This is absolutely delicious!!! Spicy but mmmmm!)
Gaang Gati Gai: Cocunut Curry with chicken
Laap Gai: Laap is a type of preparation where the meat is diced and cooked with chilies, mint, lime juice and some other stuff—This is really spicy, but delicious!
Gai Tod Grateam: Fried Chicken with garlic. This is served on rice with “sauce prik” which is like sweet and sour sauce, but more like sweet and spicy.
Khao Soy: This is northern dish that we found in Chiang Mai. It is a yellow curry soup with coconut milk and noodles with crunchy noodles on top.
Pad Won Sen Gai: Stir-fried glass noodles with chicken (This is one of Pat’s new favorites.

A lot of dishes are served with fried eggs (“kai dow”) and almost everything is served with rice unless it is a noodle dish.

Thai food is delicious!! We are really enjoying the food, but occasionally we do miss some western foods like pasta, sandwiches, pizza and burritos. There are not too many “western” options in Trang, so we have started making pasta and garlic bread with our hot plate once a week.

As for snacks:

Fresh Fruit from the Market:
• Farang (green guava)- This is like an apple in texture, but a bit different. It is great with “prik gluay” a salt and chili flake dip for fruits.
• Pineapple
• Pomello
• Chompoo (rose apple)- I am not sure how to describe this.
• Dragon Fruit- This fruit has a crazy pink and green skin. The inside is white with lots of small black seeds (that are kind of like kiwi seeds). Dragon Fruit drinks look like floating eyeballs (very strange looking and not very appealing looking).
• Green coconuts- The tops are chopped off and you can drink the coconut water.
• Watermelon
Fried Bananas
Sticky Rice with sweet coconut or with custard (My absolute favorite!!)
Sticky Rice pancakes with black beans
Meats on a stick (any sort of meats you can imagine)
Fried Chicken The best is the chicken made by the Muslim women—I am not trying to be racist—there is a difference in the preparation and spices.
Roti: crepes with bananas in the middle
Waffles: There are stalls in the markets that sell waffles. My favorite ones have corn or raisins mixed with the batter.

I hope that gives you a better idea of what we have been eating!