Dontree (Miles), Namfon and Boy (Hippo the Dripper) bring wild yeast breads and great drip coffee (pourover and aeropress) to one place. When we visited, they operated as a pop-up during the day out of Minimeal. Now they have their own location on soi 17.
This year saw a lot of travel as we kicked off the year traveling around Southeast Asia for six weeks, visiting India, Singapore, southern Thailand and Vietnam. We ate a lot of incredible food on our inaugural visit to Vietnam, many of which made it here. There was always fish sauce on the table and, on occasion, a “grand cru” from Phu Quoc.
Not only is Chiang Mai close to the origins of much of the Arabica (and specialty) coffee grown in Thailand, it also embraces a culture of experimentation.
As soon as we arrived to Chiang Mai and started walking around our neighborhood of Nimmanhaemin, my well-trained eye noticed the abundance of ice cream shops. I made it my personal challenge to try as many of them as I could, in between bowls of khao soi and plates of mango sticky rice. Here are the ones I got to.
After researching ethical options for hanging out with elephants in Thailand, we ended up at Elephant Nature Park, a sanctuary for rescued elephants as well as water buffaloes and dogs. We highly recommend spending a day of your trip here; it’s well worth it. To prepare, here is how you can expect your day to go.
A handful of street food vendors dot the streets of Chiang Mai during the day, but once the sun goes down and the night markets are set up, the street food really comes alive. Most of these dishes won’t be on the menu at your local pad Thai take-out spot back home.
Despite being the largest city in Northern Thailand, Chiang feels manageable and laid back, in part due to far less traffic and a smaller city center than its southern counterpart, Bangkok. Here is the practical information we observed in our time there.
On the surface Bangkok is still a place for Thai iced teas and sweetened coffee drinks, but the specialty coffee scene here is growing rapidly. Unlike New York or London, Bangkok has an advantage neither of those cities have — Thailand is also an origin country.
While we primarily ate on the streets, Bangkok is also a cosmopolitan world city — you can eat Thai food at fancy places, spend the evening at a wine bar, or have a nightcap at one of the many cocktail bars.
Bangkok has a street food life that doesn’t sleep. You can find vendors pretty much everywhere and at all hours selling savory foods, sweet foods, drinks and fruits. There are also many shophouses and trendy restaurants serving up Thai food. Opinions are to be had about whether street food or shophouses are better, but either way you won’t go hungry.
On our second visit to Thailand we spent time in Bangkok, the country’s most populous city. Our first visit to Thailand was earlier this year to Koh Lanta, a small laid back island in the south, a far cry from the busy metropolis that is the country’s capital. Over our 6 nights in Bangkok, here’s the practical information we observed.
Until our recent 7-week trip through India and southeast Asia neither of us had ever traveled for longer than a two-week period at a time, making for all sorts of new experiences, not just during our travels, but also while preparing. How to pack for 7 weeks?
Dontree (Miles), Namfon and Boy (Hippo the Dripper) bring wild yeast breads and great drip coffee (pourover and aeropress) to one place. When we visited, they operated as a pop-up during the day out of Minimeal. Now they have their own location on soi 17.