Travel Miscellanea #3: FOOD! (the real reason to travel)

TURKEY:  Where the art of lazy days, drinking strong tea and playing backgammon, has been refined over hundreds of years.

Pictured above:
1. The standard Turkish breakfast: nutritious bites of cucumber, tomato, olive, cheese, egg and bread.
2. Our favorite meal in quaint Safronbolu: saffron rice, lentil soup, stuffed grape leaves and tortilla with yoghurt and tomato sauce.
3. A heavenly dessert: Turkish Delights and Turkish coffee.

NORTHERN THAILAND:  A food oasis, hugely satisfying to us after India and Sri Lanka curries grew tiresome.  Watch out for the excessive sugar and MSG though! 

Pictured above:
1. Such variety of fresh fruit at the markets! Mangosteen and tamarind pictured.
2. Ah, the street stalls.  Here's a classic: $1 Pad Thai.
3. My favorite meal in Chiang Mai: duck noodle soup.  And a good book for dessert.

LAOS:  Rough-around-the-edges cuisine, with fly blown street stalls and markets full of unusual wild foods.  But Laos is also home to the best ultra-sticky glutinous rice to be found on the planet, and it's coffee -- though prepared similarly in Viet Nam -- is local and high quality. 

Pictured above:
1. Every kind of meat-on-a-stick you can imagine!
2. By far the best of Laos is fer, a noodle simple that has a lot in common with Vietnamese pho.
3. My constant gastronomic companions in Asia: beer and mangosteens.

SINGAPORE:  If Chiang Mai was a food oasis, Singapore is food heaven -- with every corner of Asia represented in the cheap and abundant food courts.

Pictured above:
1. Made by hand in front of us, Chinese dumplings with winter melon. 
2. Tasty Indian mutton bryani.  The most voluminous pile of food for $3 I will ever see in my life.
3. The signature dish: delicious spicy coconut soup, Laksa, and fish cakes steamed in banana leaf.

MALAYSIA:  Though we haven't been here long, we had to include this photo of the best grilled chicken I've ever had in my life.  Having lived in Louisiana, that's really saying something!  Also pictured are thin 'beef pancakes' and the ubiquitous tea with condensed milk.