Fruits in Thailand (Guest Blogging by Jeremy)

One of the best things about Thailand is that you are just about never
more than 50 yards/metres from somebody who wants to sell you fresh
fruit or related products. Carts full of sliced pineapple, papaya,
watermelon, etc. that go for about 30 cents (US) are just about
everywhere. In extremely touristy or remote areas, the price might go
up to 60 cents. Slightly less common, but still nearly-ubiquitous
(perhaps on every second street corner), are vendors selling bottles
of fresh-squeezed orange juice from small, brightly colored,
tangerine-like Thai oranges (75 cents or so US); and others making
banana shakes (around 1 dollar).

The banana shake deserves a paragraph of its own. Vendors happily make
shakes from other fruits, it's true; and they're pretty good. The
banana shake, however, is something sublime. I tried to eat at least
one a day for most of our stay in Thailand and was largely successful
in this endeavor. The recipe varies a bit from location to location,
but most involve some combination of fresh bananas, crushed ice,
coconut milk and a bit of sweetener. Variation in how these are
combined rarely seems to affect quality, with the main exception to
this being a shake I had in Chiang Rai where the woman added
sweeteners from like 80 different bottles and it tasted more like a
Jolly Rancher than a banana. More surprising in quality was a shake in
Chiang Mai that was possibly made by the restaurant owner's kids, who
seemed to be running the place for the night. I believe 8 children
aged 8 - 14 or so were involved in making this shake (I'm not
kidding), the procedure for which inexplicably involved 5 or 6
giggle-filled trips to the kitchen to grab mystery ingredients, and
several cycles in the blender (which was on the sidewalk, where I was
standing and watching the ordeal). Not once did they taste the shake,
but somehow the end result was delicious.

It will not come as a surprise to at least some of you that I was
looking forward to eating mangoes in Thailand. Even though mangoes
were theoretically out of season during my visit and therefore
unavailable in local markets, it was still possible to get them in the
cities and at some restaurants. This was quite fortunate, as it
enabled us to eat mangoes with sticky rice in the morning at our
favorite breakfast place in Chiang Mai. This is more commonly eaten as
a dessert by Thai types, but I can assure you it makes a delightful
breakfast -- fresh mango, sticky rice steamed and then soaked in
coconut cream, and all coated with a bit of sugary/coconuty glaze.
Washed down with a banana shake or fresh orange juice (see above).
What could be bad?

It does bear mentioning that moving around all of these fruits and
vegetables is a nontrivial operation. Happily, virtually every family
in the agricultural areas of the country that we visited seems to own
a small pickup truck and/or a motorbike. In this context, neither of
these is a recreational vehicle. On more than one occasion during our
bike trip, for example, we would be biking on two-tracks through the
jungle and run across a local on a motorbike. In the US, locals in the
woods on motorbikes are folks who enjoy breathing engine exhaust, race
along at speeds meant to generate adrenaline, and then go home to
watch NASCAR. In northern Thailand, two-tracks in the jungle are
thoroughfares for the hill tribe people -- and the motorbikes would be
laden with bamboo poles or oranges or something. Speeds were slow so
the goods wouldn't topple over. And when we saw pickup trucks in these
areas, they were inevitably loaded well beyond capacity -- sometimes
20 feet into the air -- with whatever could be crammed on them. It was
pretty impressive.

Speaking of our biking trip, we saw just about every kind of tropical
fruit tree/plant that you can imagine -- bananas, papayas, pineapples,
longans, pomelos, oranges, lychees, jackfruit, peanuts, mangoes and
probably also a few that I'm forgetting. We did not, however, see any
mangosteen trees. The mangosteen, as some of you may know, is a small
purple fruit that I discovered in Chinatown in Toronto. It has a thick
skin and flesh that is white, sweet but slightly tart, and wonderfully
creamy. I knew they grew in Thailand so I asked our biking guide where
they grow. "Mangosteen?" he laughed, "They grow further south. People
cut down the trees for firewood because there are so many in season
you can get them for 5 Bhat (about 15 cents US) per kilo!" In Toronto,
they go for about $5/pound. I feel cheated somehow.

Stay tuned for another guest blog post on other foods in Thailand.