A taste of Asia
Documentary
A travel across Thailand and Laos discovering the most popular street food in the world.
Every street corner offers small food carts, they are used as kitchens and they propose every kind of local dishes, fruits and vegetables, meet, fish and all kind of soups and sweets, strating from the sunrise. It doesn’t matter if the food is raw , grilled, roasted, fried, boiled, or dried: there is not fixed time to eat, you can always stop and taste something new, it’s up to you. Thai street food has been influenced very clearly by Chinese culture and traditions; it’s not just a coincidence that in Bangkok you can find Chinatown, one of the most vital and peculiar neighborhood where it’s normal to see ducks and porcs hung in plain sight, in front of many shops.
Markets are very peculiar too, mainly of 2 types: morning markets, opened very early in the mornings until 12 o’clock, more or less, and night markets, opened in the end of the day till late in the night. Markets are family run: parents work to prepare the open-air booths while the little ones play in the street, when possible, but when everything is ready they actively help adults in the trade rituals. Sometimes the streets get closed to the traffic to host the open-air markets, like it happens in Chiang Mai with the Saturday Walking Street. Not only food but fabrics and gadgets of every kind are presented to customers and the shop keepers are the first eating street food: it’s easy to see women behind the merchandise having a simple meal waiting for customers to arrive or a little girl sit in the back of the shop while she’s trying to wake up.
When there is not enough space for market, it is possible to follow the old railway path and bumo into other carts and shops, still loaded with food, obsession,
tradition or simply the easiest economical resource.