I love eating local food. I am definitely not the kind of person that expects anything to be the same as home and I like to try around. The Thai cuisine invites you to try around and have your taste buds dance tango. Also, in many cases, when you are in a small restaurant at a remote location where nobody speaks any english and you don’t speak a word of Thai, it usually all comes down to luck. Thats fun, its exciting, its a lot of variety.
Still, from time to time, there are these bad bad cravings for the little, delicious things that you have back home. Speaking from my experience, these cravings are most extreme in the first one or two weeks at a new place before it starts to gets less….very slowly.
My personal sin list is short:
- Chocolate (Ritter Sport or Milka)
- Chocolate Cereals with COLD milk
- Good german bread with sausage
This list is in order of how much I usually crave these things when I am travelling. Surprisingly, I don’t really miss the chocolate over here in Thailand. Most certainly that is because of the heat, which would make ever chocolate bar a nasty disaster.
Still, I really missed the cereals and the bread. I fought the thoughts down and made it long enough to finally stop thinking about that stuff. Until today.
While still not being 100 per cently fit again after my recent infection, and after not having eaten too much for three consecutive days I was looking for options on what to eat in order to start slowly. A swedish guy that is living in my hotel entered the lobby with a bag full of delicious bread. When he saw the look on my face he told me that he got that from this German Bakery around the corner. WHAT, THERE IS A GERMANY BAKERY HERE?
So, obviously I had to see this. I went to that place and it did not look very german at all. More like a really bad italian restaurant. Still, the bread looked good. I bought a half whole-grain bread for reasonable 50 Baht and left very eager to try it as quickly as possible.
But before doing that, I needed something to go with it. Cheese.
I went to the biggest shopping centre in town, the Central Plaza in Udon Thani and quickly found the Deli and Specialty supermarket in the basement. I swear, I only wanted to buy Cheese. But on my way to the cheese shelf I coincidentially ended up…OK…I deliberately decided to check out the cereal shelf. Many cereals were on sale and I simply had to take one. Then I got some milk that looked right (I wanted cow milk, since I do not understand Thai, I needed to look out for a cow image on the packaging) and also found some cheese.
The prices were still reasonable:
Koko Krunch Cereals = 112 Baht
0.95l Milk = 44,5 Baht
2 small packs of Cheese = 2 x 25 Baht
TOTAL: 206,50 Baht
Words can hardly describe how much I enjoyed all this stuff. The bread was fantastic, at least as good as back home, perhaps even better due to the long time I had to live without it. The cheese was amazing as well, I now know that I like Cheddar.
As happy as I look when eating cereals
The cereals are still sealed but I guess I can’t wait for tomorrow morning. But hey, at least I feel better already, and this good food definitely helped a lot.
My advice: Even if you are travelling on a budget, consider treating yourself to some specials from time to time. They are worth it and they really give you a lot of the energy and motivation you need from time to time.
Yours
Crazy Ivory
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