Skip to main content

Travel Advice- South East Asia- Plaa Raa Makes Your Stomach Upset

The delicacy known as Plaa Raa, or fermented fish, is the number one culprit for mild stomach illness in South East Asia.

No one is immune from its effects- I have indulged in it and it is not surprising I fully understand the words "stayed home from work with an upset stomach" in the news announcement below and why these maybe the most common words in the Thai lexicon for every person with epicurean tendencies.

Even the Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej is sick today from plaa raa or the flu.

And while it is unlikely that Mr. Sundaravej got sick on his trip to Laos, it is much more likely he got a flu during this wet time of year, it is still worth noting that most people in northern and north eastern Thailand love plaa raa and eat it as a staple food.

They even have a fermented fish village where the villagers make a good living making plaa raa and fish sauce.

If you travel there, please make sure when you get green papaya salad you ask for Sam Tam Farang, NOT Sam Tam Plaa Raa.

Whatever you do, never say you DO NOT like Plaa Raa in Thailand. It is very offensive. Many Thai's from the North and East consider it a national dish and unless you are Thai or speak Thai very well you do not want to risk an incident. In cases where it is pushed on you, it is better to eat it graciously and take your antibiotics later.

This goes for just about anywhere else in the world you want to travel too.

And while you are there do not confuse it with my own favorite which I recommend to everyone called Khao Yam Pak Tai or sweet and spicy rice salad.

Plaa raa is not to be confused with what Asian people like- fish sauce (nam plaa). At least in America and South East Asia. Fish Sauce is also made from fermented fish but is purified so its salty font of fishy goodness is always there to season your favorite dishes. If you ever feel adventurous enough to try it, I recommend these excellent recipes a fried green onion omelet (kai yat sai) and sticky rice or ginger chicken (gai pad khing) and sticky rice (kaew neuw).

After eating like this for several years, let alone a lifetime can you imagine how weird a giant hamburger looks when you first see it?
Labels:

Comments

vishal said…
DO U WANNA GO FOR A TRIP WITH YOUR FAMILY,WE ARE PROVIDING GOOD PACKAGES WITH AN EXCITING PLACES SO GO A HEAD n CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR FREE AND ENJOY YOUR TRIP WITH YOUR FAMILY.
ALL THE BEST
THANKS
August 11, 2010 at 2:21 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...
44 comments
Read more

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...
22 comments
Read more

Soda tax debate reveals fundamental progressive assertions about your lack of individual rights and the "responsiblities" of the State

I thought it would be at least amusing to use the Delawareliberal comments as sub-headings regarding each category of what is wrong with the proposed tax on sodas and juice drinks. But there are so many different little strands of each comment that it would be impossible to pull them all out. So, instead, I'm going to let you read them in more or less the order they appeared, and note the assumptions. pandora: I’m perfectly okay with taxing sodas and juice drinks. Mainly because they’re total crap, and one of the main reasons our country’s children are overweight. They are also dirt cheap. Assumptions here: (1) Because "I" am perfectly okay with a new tax it should be imposed on everybody; (2) it is the government's responsibility to keep children from being obese; (3) the cheapness of the product to be taxed justifies charging people more for it. John Manifold: Soda fattens your kids [and you and your husband], shortens their lives, costs more than water [a...
31 comments
Read more