Distinctive Laos

If you dig some TAM (tangy papaya salad) and larb (cold meat salad) at home, and your choice of starch is rice, you should look into gai yang (grilled chicken) territory on your next trip to Thailand. Along the border with Laos, the Isan region of Thailand takes its name from its location — the word ‘ishan’, in Sanskrit, means ‘northeast’. The Lao-speaking majority, whose dialect is also called Isan, consider themselves a population distinct from the Lao of Laos. The Isan people consider their culinary culture quite distinct from mainstream central Thai cuisine. We Indians will love it, naturally, given the Isan preference for fiery chillies; the other signature flavour is sharply sour. The iconic gai yang is the easiest way to expand your local palate, but for full bragging rights you should hunt down makok (red ants’ eggs), kai palow (brown eggs cooked in meat stock and served with blood broth), frog soup or rhino beetles. If you’re playing it safe, ‘horse poo’ or khee ma should go down easy — it’s a rice-and-coconut sweetmeat — as should bamboo soup, khanom jin (rice noodles in curry with fish bits or balls), grilled catfish or the hu chuang rice pancake. Somewhere betwixt the usual and the outré, you can nibble on goong cha nam pla (marinated raw prawns) or sai kros Isan (Isan–style sausages, squat and sour from fermenting).

Getting there Fly to Khon Kaen or Ubon Ratchathani, or maybe Udon Thani. Nakhon Ratchasima is a good place to make base, now that Happy Air flies there, or try Nong Khai, gateway to Vientiane.