Practical Asia travel: currencies, VPNs, food you must try, cross-border logistics.
A friend who does not eat sweets came back from Bangkok talking about one mango sticky rice. Fifteen Thai desserts worth the detour, from street-cart khanom krok to the Portuguese egg-yolk trinity that Maria Guyomar brought to Ayutthaya royal kitchens in 1685 and is still served at every Thai wedding.
A morning bowl of khao soi on Soi Intawarorot, the herb-loaded sai ua sausages at Warorot Market, hang lay pork curry at a Lanna banquet table, and the food stalls that make Chiang Mai Sundays the best street-food night in Thailand. Three days of eating in the north.
Thai green curry at a London takeaway and Thai green curry at a Bangkok street stall are not the same dish. A regional field guide to fifteen curries across the country, how the paste is the actual dish, and where to eat each at its source.
A field guide to the 15 noodle dishes of Thailand, from 20-baht boat noodles at Victory Monument to northern Thai khao soi in Chiang Mai. With Thai names, noodle types, stall-by-stall picks in Bangkok, baht prices, and honest notes on which ones to detour for.
Patong Beach is one Phuket. The Old Town twenty minutes inland is another: Sino-Portuguese shophouses, moo hong pork belly braises, 1946 Hokkien noodles, and the spicier end of the southern Thai kitchen. Named restaurants, baht prices, honest opinions.
The smell of the Omicho fish market at nine in the morning, a bowl of jibuni in a black lacquer dish at a 1580s samurai home, gold-leaf ice cream in the old teahouse district, and the dense, two-hundred-and-eighty-year Maeda-clan food culture that holds it all together. Two days in Kanazawa, eating.
A bowl of ramen in Sapporo looks like a completely different dish from a bowl in Fukuoka, because it is. A regional field guide to fifteen styles across Japan and where to try each at its source.
Kobe, Matsusaka, Omi, Hida, Miyazaki, Yonezawa, Sendai, Saga. A regional map of Japanese wagyu traditions, how they actually differ, and why the BMS grade matters more than the brand name on the menu.
Which of Japan most Japanese-feeling foods were actually invented somewhere else? Fifteen answers, ranging from Portuguese missionaries in 1543 to a naval cook improvising British beef stew for a homesick admiral.
Layered okonomiyaki built cabbage by cabbage on the teppan at Okonomimura, Miyajima oysters grilled on sticks by the ferry pier, and the anago-meshi at a counter that has been slicing grilled sea eel since 1901.
