Food Advice for Steem Fest: Find some street food stall and try Som Tum (ส้มตำ)

If you are attending SteemFest this year you are going to be doing so in the country that I have called home for the past 14 years. I know that the packages that are being offered are going to be all-inclusive for the most part. However, if you have some time before or after, there are some things that I think are just so very essential to really get the true experience and one of those things is "Som Tum"

That sign says "Som Tum" in Thai and honestly, if you can manage to remember what just these two words look like, I can assure you that you will get a far more authentic experience at a stall with no English on it.

There are many different varieties of Som Tum as the terminology is simply used to describe a very wide variety of dishes that are all created in basically the same manor with different things added in.

_{I don't expect you to be able to read that, but notice how each of the menu items start with the same two characters}

This might sound bizarre but this is speaking from over a decade of experience: The scummier the stall looks and the older the person behind it happens to be - the better it is going to be. I'm not suggesting the nicer looking places can't make this dish, because honestly it isn't exactly a Gordon Ramsay super complicated endeavor, but the old folks with the crap shacks make the best ones.

source
_{this is a professional image, a "real" image (mine) is next}

Som Tum is basically spicy papaya salad and if you are not familiar with what "spicy" can mean in Thailand, be very careful. I know a lot of people that think they like spicy because they like "hot sauce" only to discover that there really is no comparison between hot wing sauce and what a Thai person considers spicy to be. You can quickly make your food inedible if you aren't careful. Tabasco is like milk in comparison.

I recommend for a beginner to order a Som Tum Thai (that's literally what it is called as it is the quintessential Thai version of this famous dish) and ask them to put 1 or 2 chilis in it.

_{That one was mine from today - i didn't even try to make it look nice for the picture.. Do NOT try to eat it with a spoon :P}

Ordering this, with a sticky rice (which can help cool your mouth off if its too spicy) at an non-tourist stand in Bangkok or really anywhere else in the country should cost you less than 50 Baht (around $1.50.) It's a fantastic deal and no matter where you are, you are never far from a Som Tum shack.

It would be a true shame if you came all this way and didn't have what I consider to be one of the most quintessential culinary delights of this country.

It wouldn't surprise me if SF2019 provided Som Tum... but you should still get some of the street stuff from a run down cart made by a woman in her 70's. It is truly the real deal.

_{Images not sourced are my own, taken with my shitey Huawei phone}