The Strange Tastes of Thailand 2

In addition to ice cream-in-a-bun-sprinkled-with-corn, there are plenty more strange tastes to be found in Thailand.

Bag on left: garlic soft-shelled crab flavored potato chips

Bag on right: hot chili squid flavored potato chips

YUM!

The clever big snack companies (Lays, Pringles, etc.) have done a spectacular job catering to local tastes. The above pictures shows two pretty normal looking bags of potato chips--until you take a closer look at the small picture and read the Thai. For people who live hundreds of miles inland from the sea, it's remarkable that all seafood ranks high on their list of "most desirable flavors." It's even more remarkable (to me) that many of the creatures we think of as saltwater, ocean-going creatures are also found in fresh water ponds hundreds of miles inland such as shrimp, crab, clams and mussels.

Here we go with another snack to spice up
your all-night slumber party!

Last night I dropped by the local bakery which has the normal looking stuff--cookies, brownies, cakes-- along with a number of Thai oddities. I bought what looked like a normal sweet bun filled with something (I expected Bavarian cream of course). When I got home and cut it open (I've long learned not to bite first) out poured warm, translucent mayonnaise and shredded pork, which has the consistency of very coarse cotton candy.

Looks innocent, heh?

Mayonnaise and pork from a bakery? Yup. A cold cooked hot dog wiener buried in what looks like a Danish pastry is pretty popular too. So be careful when you buy that Danish to go with your morning coffee. You may end up looking for the ketchup for dipping your Danish hot dog.

Sorry, all breakfast pastry chow hounds in the West.
That's a wiener buried in that Danish
(with a little ketchup tossed on top).

And the adventure goes on. . . .