So I actually made it into the top 50 finalists of the STA travel intern competition! Which means I'm only 49 people away from my dream job. Here I am on the STA travel intern home page:
I now have to fill out another form of information, which includes some rather tricky questions. One of the ones I am really struggling with is "What travel experiences have you had?" The reason I am finding this particular question so difficult is because I have had so many amazing experiences, I couldn't possibly tell them all, because it would be pages and pages of writing. So how do I paraphrase all my experiences and break them down into mini, manageable chunks that the STA travel team will want to read about? So far I've just written up my travel highlights, but for some reason this seems to keep coming back to food, thus the title of my blog today. It would seem that food really is an integral part of my travel experiences, whether it is because my search for a tasty dinner leads me into some kind of adventure, or because of the people I end up eating with. A taste, just like a smell can trigger some of the most powerful memories.
Here are my top 4 favourite eating experiences:
The meal with the crow:
I had been working in Sri Lanka for almost two months when I started to really miss English food. It wasn't so much meals in particular, but specific items that were hard to find. Cheese was one of them, and mayonaise was the other. I was craving mayonaise like nothing else, and so every time I went to eat, I would desperately scour the menus for the all-illusive mayo. Eventually, just as I was about to give up, I found a restaurant that offered egg mayonaise sandwiches. It was a rather Westernised restaurant, and had extortionate prices, but I was willing to pay anything for a taste of that mayo, so I ordered my sandwich, and sort of explained my story to the slightly confused waiter, who I think took most of it in. He came out after a while with my sandwich, and said: "you lucky girl, this last one!" and sat the plate down in front of me. At that exact moment, to my utter horror, a rogue crow flew in from outside, picked up my sandwich and flew off into a nearby tree! I was so suprised I wasn't even upset about the sandwich, more baffled at why this crow was so obviously bullying me! I didn't get to eat any mayonaise until I got back to England two weeks later, but I did get to watch the crow try and steal a steak only ten minutes after its intial attack, and fail miserably, bringing the steak and plate crashing to the floor, and enraging the German customer who had ordered it.
(picture from google images)
Club food:
In my first week in Thailand I made my way down to Koh Samed, an island on the East Coast, with a couple of Korean girls I had met in Bangkok. We quickly made friends with a group of Thai students, who took us to their favourite club which backed on to the beach. After a couple of buckets of alcohol, we were keen for some food to sober us up, and we noticed that there was a noodle soup bar at the side of the club. In England everyone is always snacking on chips and kebabs at the end of the night, so I was rather relluctant to believe a noodle soup could be quite as satisfying, but we sat at the bar and ordered the vegetable noodle soup. In Thailand noodle soup is always served with a little range of condiments which usually includes dried chillies, vinegar, and a couple of other bits that I didn't recognise. I had tried using these condiments to improve my soup in Bangkok, but hadn't found the taste very satisfactory. The Thai group we were with, however, skillfully added the right amount of each thing to our soups and I was to discover that a piping hot bowl of broth tastes like heaven after two buckets of Sangsum. The flavours were amazing. The soup was tangy, spicy and refreshing, and now every time I go on a night out in England, I always find myself longing for another hot bowl of noodle soup at the end of the night.
A taste of something different in Vang Vieng:
Before I arrived in Vang Vieng, I read in my Lonely Planet book to avoid the TV-restaurants food at all costs, because most of the restaurants use the same menus, and their attempt at western food isn't too great. As soon as I arrived, I immediately set out to find somewhere that would sell authentic Laos cuisine. My searches fell a little short of the mark, and I spent my first night eating a rather repulsive spaghetti and tomatoe sauce dish, that tasted like baked beans. I was running out of money a little at this point, and had heard that many farang (foreigners) were working in bars in Vang Vieng for free food and drink, so I went on a search for a job. Luckily for me the first bar I went into had jobs available, and I quickly settled in to my new job, making good friends with the manager, Peng. On my third day, Peng invited me to have a meal with his family, an experience I was hardly expecting to find in tourist-flooded Vang Vieng, and I happily accepted his invite. We sat down to the best meal I ate during my whole time in Laos. There was fragrant sticky rice, green-tinged (I have no idea why) sweet rice, tangy fish soup, and spicy papaya salad. The taste of each dish was amazing, and we ate entirely with our hands (apart from the fish soup). Not only was it the tastiest meal I ate in Laos, but experience of eating with a Laos family, who gladly explained to me how to eat each bit as I attempted to use my hands as spoons, was unbeatable.
(picture from google images)
Learning to cook Thai-style:
I think Thai food is some of the best food I have tasted on my travels. It's diverse, flavoursome, and utterly delicious. Whilst I was in the North of Thailand, traveling through Chiang Mai, I decided to take a cooking course so that I could carry on eating Thai food at home. The course was in this beautiful outdoor kitchen, surrounded by plants, and we began the course by shopping for ingredients in the market, where I was able to learn all about the spices and vegetables that go into Thai cooking. I learnt how to make six different meals on my course, including Thai Green Curry, Tom Yam Soup, and Papaya salad amoungst other things, and after making each course, we sat down to eat what we had produced. After six courses I literally didn't want to look at food ever again, but the experience of cooking all my own Thai food was brilliant, and I have made lots of the dishes again since.
I take pictures of my food sometimes when I'm traveling. Check it out on my Flickr
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