Thailand told through noodles
Last year, I sat on a plane discreetly reading Petra Alderman’s Branding Authoritarian Nations. In her introduction, Alderman describes watching a Thai Airways in-flight video that showcased Pad Thai as a symbol of 1930s nationalism under the regime of Plaek Pibulsongkhram - a “healthy, easy-to-cook” meal the country could rally around. Alderman’s book goes on to explore the role of nation-branding in keeping Thailand authoritarian, but not before she dismantles the founding myth: Plaek’s own daughter admitted to a Thai historian that her father wouldn’t have known how to create the dish, let alone have it as a favourite.
As Eve Watling writes in The Economist, the dish’s full name (kway teow pad thai) stems from a Chinese dialect and translates to “Thai-style stir-fried rice noodles.” This implies a Chinese origin modified for local tastes. Watling notes that the dish existed peacefully as a cultural hybrid until the 1930s when Prime Minister Plaek issued decrees to promote a unified Thai identity and repress ethnic Chinese influence. Pad thai was said to protect local rice farmers and replace imported wheat noodles for local rice varieties. “Though served as a symbol of harmony, the dish remains a testament to Thailand’s political turbulence,” Watling observed.
The “origin story” is further muddied by nutritional anthropologist Penny Van Esterik. She suggests the Prime Minister simply had a version made by his housekeeper that he really liked. Whatever its origins, the dish is now ubiquitous. It even thrives in the North, where khao soi (the beloved curry noodle soup believed to have come from Chinese Muslim spice traders) usually reigns supreme. Reflecting on our five years of wintering in Thailand, I realise that our travels can be traced through the various pad thai dishes that end up in front of us.
The first pad thai landmark is Uncle Kai’s. Originally on Suthep Road, a long road heading out of the city towards the mountains, Uncle Kai also moved further into the forest to become the main fueling station for those running or hiking the Monks’ Trail to Wat Pha Lat or Doi Suthep. Despite the influx of farang from the adjacent Basecamp cafe, Uncle Kai (front of house) and his wife (the unseen magic in the kitchen) keep their prices honest and their pad thai fuss-free. As a result, this is for me, the best pad thai in Thailand: light on oil, free from shrimp, and the tofu is perfect. Of course, this might be the post-exercise appetite talking; when you’re sticky with sweat, mosquito repellent and sunscreen, there is no better reward for aching knees than sitting precariously under falling hog plums as they come crashing through the tree canopy at Uncle Kai’s. For the time we lived next door, we were simply known as “Pad Thai Chicken” (Jon) and “Pad Thai Tofu” (me).
Contrast that comforting dish with the pad thai of Kanchanaburi. One day, after finishing our food shopping at the lively market across the Mae Klong River, before pedalling our bikes back onto the barge for that beautiful 45-second boat journey home, we carefully translated a bright banner on a street food stall and placed our orders. The noodles were piled high, but speckled with a vibrant orange I initially mistook for chili. As I tucked in, the “chilies” stared back: hundreds of tiny, dried shrimps. I tried to pick them off, but those little eyes were everywhere. I couldn’t finish a meal that watched me eat it.
From the upmarket Vegan Mama in Nimman (perhaps a touch too heavy on the tamarind) to nameless local haunts where we shakily traced our orders in Thai script, pad thai was there. A late-night roadside meal in Nong Khai near the Laos border, served with fresh chives and a heart of banana blossom. The northernmost portion we have eaten was in Chiang Saen, where a Muslim woman stir-fried noodles mee goreng-style into a square of paper so we could eat it, sat on the banks of the Mekong, looking across to Laos. In Phuket - our most southern sampling - was served with a side of bouillon soup and curiously carrots. Most pad thai are not particularly “memorable,” but that is the beauty of it - it is a reliable, inoffensive constant.
Finally, there was the pad thai we recently cooked at the Akha cooking school in Chiang Mai. The Akha are an ethnic group who live in small villages at higher elevations in the mountains of Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and Yunnan Province in China. There is an irony in someone from a hill tribe teaching a dish born from a nationalist strategy designed to assimilate their culture. Some 60,000 Akha remain in the north of Thailand and have faced major challenges with both Western capitalism and modern Thai society, whose laws regulate forest usage in a way that impacts the traditional Akha lifestyle.
Our chef, Niti, taught us the Akha way of cooking with a smile: “There are only three things in the jungle that you can’t eat, and nobody knows what they are,” she first told us as she navigated us through the busy Warorot Market in search of ingredients for the day’s meals, but pausing to offer us crickets, tobacco leaves and betel, pig’s ears and grilled frogs. This saying highlights the Akha’s deep connection and knowledge of the forest and its resources. The Akha relationship to land is critical to how this group lives its culture, but they are not recognised as having rights to land in Thailand and other places where they are found. While NGOs report that the Akha are the poorest and often face the highest rates of addiction of Chiang Mai’s hill tribe, the Akha Cooking school is thriving and also sells the tribe’s famous textiles and coffee beans (a crop to replace opium).
Standing in front of a photo of herself in traditional Akha clothing, an equally colourful image of her mother behind her, she informs us: “You must be angry at your ingredients!” and deals a swift but successful blow with her kitchen cleaver to a garlic clove, removing the skins and reducing them to pieces in that one move.
She teaches us to add a “7-Eleven” to our dishes - referring to the ubiquitous convenience store. For pad thai this means seven carefully counted shakes of fish, soy or tamarind sauce, followed by an additional and more generous approximation of eleven, as she catches the eyes of shocked farang expecting to be told to add measured and precise amounts. Most importantly, she insisted that cooking must come from the heart. “You have to love food, love your recipe, love the ingredients - cooking must come from the heart.” Perhaps, as Thailand heads up to elections and deals with clashes at several borders, I wonder if that is the part of the national branding strategy that should have been promoted.
Disclaimer: We eat a lot of meals per day, over several months. We really have eaten a lot more diverse food than Pad Thai!
LOL - there are worst things to be known for than 'Pad Thai Tofu'! I love sampling a single dish across a country/region to learn more about local influences - although Khao Soi remains an eternal favourite!