Good morning! Farmer Brenton here. Farmers in Central Texas usually don’t get an off season, persay, but two weeks ago I was able to take off two weeks and travel to Thailand and Laos. It was my first time in Asia (and that far away at all) and I literally had the best time ever. It was best trip of my lifetime, if you would believe it, and I feel so lucky to have been able to go. Of course, like any life changing trip it's somewhat hard to describe... but let me try to tell you about it. This vacation was really a food-vacation... which if you know me at all, should be no surprise. If you read the blog, you likely love food… and probably travel, so hopefully you’ll find my travel tales interesting.

Some of the breathtaking views.

A FOOD OBSESSION

As many of you know I love food, especially home-cooked food. Growing up in Southern Alabama, I’ve always been into Southern food, and when I moved to Wyoming after college I got really into interior Mexican food and bought just about every Mexican food cookbook I could get my hands on. When I moved down to Austin, my obsession with Mexican food continued, obviously, and then I got reconnected to my Southern roots, so to speak, and dove deep in to Louisiana cooking, too.

Beautiful red corn varieties as seen on my trip. Remind me of my southern roots!

I didn’t grow up eating Asian food at all, but when I moved back down to Austin, kind of around the same time I started the backyard garden on Holly Street, I started eating more and more Asian food, and pretty immediately fell in love with the bold flavors, use of vegetables, and I’ve always loved spice. Asian food kind of hit all the marks. Specifically, I started to get really into Thai food, and started to cook it more and more. I also built myself a pantry with lots of Thai ingredients, and also some special kitchen tools made just for Thai cooking. I have this huge stone mortar and pestle (that I also use for Mexican cooking) and this sticky rice cooker. It looks like an hour glass, and is made out of aluminum. You put this bamboo basket on top, which is where you steam the rice. I’ve got this tool to shred green mango and papaya to make Som Tum, a Thai salad.

Plus, I have a gigantic library of Thai food cookbooks. I have this one cookbook, that I think is one of the first Thai food cookbooks ever published in the United States. I got this book so long ago, and it was my first introduction to some Thai ingredients. For example, this was the first time I had heard of using cilantro root in food, specifically in green curry. I was already growing cilantro, and soon I began to add more Thai ingredients to our crop plan. We grow Thai basil, lemongrass, and some Thai eggplant varieties. This year, maybe in subconscious excitement for my trip, we’re growing four different Thai chili varieties.

I’ve been planning this trip for about 4 months, but for way longer I’ve been going to Thai restaurants in Austin and talking to the owners about their food and also asking them for recommendations of where I should go. One of our former farm managers, Becky, actually grew up in Thailand (and speaks Thai), and she introduced me to Dee Dee's Thai food truck. This place specialized in Northern Thai food an, and is one of my favorite Thai places in town. Okay, enough about why I wanted to go to Thailand and Laos. Let me tell you about the trip.

Meals to come.

GETTING THERE

The trip was 2 and a half weeks, which is really a long time for me to be away from the farm… luckily Krishna and the rest of the crew held down the fort. It was really an adventure getting there. We boarded a 6am flight from Austin that was LA bound, but we had to make an emergency landing in El Paso because someone on board was having a heart attack (luckily, he was okay). After rerouting and getting to LA, we traveled over the ocean and across time zones and landed in Taiwan, and then to Chiang Mai in Thailand. We finally were in Asia! We had a 4 or so hour layover in Chiang Mai (our final destination was Laos), and were eager to see where we are.

We left the airport, and got a taxi. But the taxis in Chiang Mai are really more like pickup trucks. You get in the bed and share the taxi with several other people. I pretty much felt like I was in one of the harvest trucks at the farm. We had read about this one restaurant that supposedly served the best Khao Soi, this famous dish in Chiang Mai, and so were headed that way. Chiang Mai is a huge city, probably the size of the greater Austin area with several million people around. It’s bustling and busy, but without highway and major roadway infrastructure. From the back of this truck, we were hurried through this town and caught the first glimpses of Buddhist temples, and soo many markets. Everywhere you looked, there was someone selling something. They were all independently run little enterprises… people were grilling everywhere and were selling grilled fish, meat, sausages. More street food than I’ve ever seen before, more vendor booths setup. People were just hustling!

There was so much delicious and diverse street food, some of it recognizable to my Western eye, and some of it a complete mystery.

Again, the inspiration for this whole trip was really food, and our very first meal did not disappoint. We found our Khao Soi eatery, just outside the gates of the old city, and it was spectacular. This is a soup-type dish, specific to northern Thailand. It has a lot of Chinese influences and has two types of home-made noodles - sauce noodles and hard noodles (fried in oil) that float in this chicken-noodle-soup like broth, but more coconut-curry flavored. It’s served with all of these delicious pickled greens and vegetables. This $1.20 bowl of soup was, up to this point, one of the best things I had eaten all year and it set the tone for the rest of the trip.

 

LAOS

Our plane ride to Laos felt like a trip back in time. The entire vibe of the airline was very 1960s. People and flight attendants were very dressed up, and they had the most peaceful music playing on the plane before take off. Even the colors of the inside of the airplane were notable - deep navy blues with turquoise trim. Believe it or not, the airplane food had us excited.

The serenity of the plane ride was pretty different from the roadways we experienced when we touched down in Luang Prabang. In Laos, there really aren’t many cars, and instead everyone drives motorbikes. And these motorbikes, it seems like the drive wherever they want. In the United States, we’ve got pretty strict sides of the road that you’re supposed to stick to, but a “correct” side of the road is not a concept in Laos. Being on the roads there is like you’re swimming in a river, just weaving in and out of oncoming and passing motorbikes. Scooters seem to be coming straight for you, but then suddenly they’re moving out of the way. Amazingly, no one is crashing! Everyone just knows how to swim in this river of motorbikes, and once we were there for a while we got completely used to the flow. No one is even mad in this kinda traffic.

We knew the food was going to be awesome on this trip, but we didn’t expect just how welcoming all the people would be. The trend of amazing, generous, and welcoming locals started off early with our room in Laos. We got there, and after slipping off our shoes (no one wears shoes inside there), we were invited to this beautiful terrace and given smoothies. With whatever fruit we wanted. The place we were staying felt like this beautiful tree-house, with peaceful porches and spectacular views, that if it was in Austin somewhere would cost you a fortune to stay in. But here, everything was so inexpensive...even a farmer could live like a king for a couple of weeks.

Our welcome smoothie, which included copious amounts of passion fruit.

LUANG PRABANG

Luang Prabang is a world heritage city. It used to be controlled by the French, and those influences are everywhere - in the architecture, especially, but also in the great coffee and pastries that can be found on ever corner. I love this city so much. There are markets everywhere you look, in so many different corners of the city. So there are literally so many farmers, growing so many crazy vegetables that you’ve never even seen before. And fruit. The bounty and variety of fruit is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s an agricultural meca. And coffee! They even grow coffee.

Markets with fruit and vegetable offerings unlike anywhere else in the world.

We spent a lot of time at these markets. You can’t go anywhere in the city without stumbling on a new one, and some of them are miles long..occupying one main street, but then every side street seems to be filled with vendors, too. There is so much exotic produce! So many vegetables that I have NO CLUE what they are. One day it rained, and suddenly the next day there were vendors selling 20 different kinds of mushrooms. We saw live frogs, eels, birds (that looked like sparrows to me), bats, live turtles, live shrimp, pincher crabs, muscles… We even saw someone selling something that was like wasp larva. Of course, we had to get some of this to try. It was so good, and the whole time I was eating it, I was like “I can’t believe this wasp larva is so good.” There are desserts everywhere, rice puddings served in banana leaves, and these really really delicious mini coconut pancakes that were about an inch and half across.

Wasp larva, anyone? High in protein, fatty acids, minerals and vitamins, it's not a bad snack.

And the fruit! I found myself addicted to passion fruit and passion fruit smoothies this trip. We also ate a lot of these fruit called mangosteens. These fruit have this purple people (which they use to dye clothes), but it’s white inside, a lobed fruit.. Kind of like an orange with white flesh. It’s hard to even describe the flavor, but it’s good. We also ate lots of custard apples, which taste and smell like honeysuckle. It cost, basically pennies, to eat some of the best fruit in the world, and I couldn’t stop eating it. The fruit was off the hook. Oh! I forgot, there were also a huge selection of bananas, including these really tasty small ones.

Mangosteen.

When not gorging on fruit, we were exploring the outdoors. One day we rented scooters and drove them to these beautiful, cascading waterfalls… probably 200 feet tall... that emptied into this beautiful turquoise pool.

 





A beautiful temple in Chiang Rai, Thailand. The inside is adorned with beautiful murals, but no photos were allowed.

LONGBOAT

The only way to get to Chaing Mai from where we were in Laos was by boat. We spent 2 days on this longboat (it was long.. About 100 feet) that went through the Mekong river… which is kind of like the Mississippi in terms of its importance and usage. These boats were powered by these huge diesel engines on the back, which took us on a tour of national forests and small villages. This boat ride was two nights, and it docked at a tiny village overnight. We didn’t quite have a plan of where we were going to stay, but got very lucky when a fellow boat companion told us his brother recently finished renovating a guest room that he was going to rent out. This room was beautiful, and when we looked out our window the next morning, there was an elephant across the river!

 

This journey through this part of Laos on our way to Chaing Mai felt so rural and undiscovered. On our way, we learned that China is bringing a railway into this area. We passed this huge bridge that was a part of the project… I can’t help but think now is the time to see this region, when the only way to see it is by bumpy car rides or very long boats.

Construction, funded by China, of a bridge that will cross the Mekong.

Chiang Mai was filled with trips to impressive temples, beautiful artwork, more incredible meals, and lots of coffee. We rented a car and left the big city behind, and headed for a small town called Chiang Dao.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH

I’m so glad we found our way to Chiang Dao. Here, we stayed in this very small hut that was surrounded by a towering bamboo forest.. The bamboo was like 8 inches in diameter! There is this world renowned restaurant at the base of the mountain here that we had researched, and so obviously we went. We were the only customers there, and the food was incredible. The folks working at this restaurant told us that we had to go climb the mountain the next day and see the Buddhist monks that live on top. We were told that they don’t allow westerners to eat breakfast with them. They eat breakfast at 8am, but you could go see them before that.

So at 7am the next morning, we were at the base of this mountain ready to start our assent. We met someone at the base who asked us if we could help carry all of this stuff up (at least 1000 steps). There was this huge pile of supplies and food, and so naturally we grabbed as much as we could hold, and helped carry the supplies. When we arrived at the top, there were about 15 people all preparing breakfast for the monks, and they invited us to serve the monks breakfast! In a cave! They only eat once a day, and so this is a really important meal. After we served the monks, we got to eat with all of the volunteers. This was by far my favorite meal of the whole trip. It felt like a Thanksgiving meal - the food was a whole conglomeration of home-cooked dishes, made by home cooks. And of course, the experience of serving the monks, being in the cave, hearing their chants and witnessing the religious ceremony added to the experience.

Our culinary experiences didn’t stop there, that day. After coming off the mountain, we decided to get some coffee at this place we had read about (which happened to be next door to our hut). Little did we know, this coffee roasted and served coffee with beans that were grown on the very hill we had just come down from. The owner said his whole extended family lives on the hill and harvests the beans by hand. He made us the most delicious cappuccino. Some of this delicious coffee made its way home with me, and it will help get me through this planting season.

Home grown beans, roasted and ground on the same property they they are farmed.

MORE ADVENTURE

After leaving Chiang Dao, we ventured even further off the beaten path to this small town that was in the middle of this national forest. We actually had found an airbnb that was run by this indigenous tribe there, and when we met up with our host he said we would be the only visitors for the whole month. We actually couldn’t even drive our rental car the whole way there - we had to meet our host on this pinpoint on a map, leave our rental car in the middle of the national forest, and then ride with him (in his 4 wheel drive vehicle) deeper into the forest. Our home for the next couple of days was next to a waterfall, and on our first night the entire family helped make us dinner.. All while sitting on the floor of this beautiful bamboo hut. This meal is another that sticks out… the eggs they used were so delicious, and it was such simple, yet tasty food.

Hanging out with the whole family at this Airbnb, deep in the jungle.

Our trip concluded back in the city, with more trips to the markets, and more - you guessed it - delicious food. On our last day, we had heard about this family who lived outside of town on a huge tract of land and had some elephants. We weren’t interested in riding elephants or anything, but we did want to see some. So we made arrangements with this guy who picked us up in town and then drove us 3 hours to this small village in the jungle. When we got there, there were no elephants to be seen. But that’s because we had to go find them! This land was the ancestral home of these three elephants, and they weren’t confined in anyway. Once we finally found the elephants, we gave them some fruit, and simply spent some time with them. A family in the village cooked us lunch, shared stories about their lives and their culture, and opened our eyes a little bit more to the wonders of Thailand.



We left Thailand on a Tuesday, and with the time change somehow ended back in Austin on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning I was back on a tractor at JBG, thinking of all the incredible farms I saw in Laos and Thailand. Farmers there were so skilled - growing productive crops on hillsides! They had caterpillar tunnels with electricity run to them that grew speciality flowers, and every farm seemed to be growing vegetables, fruit, and flowers... so diversified! Needless to say, I’m pretty inspired (and very full) and ready for our busy fall at JBG.

These farmers are so advanced! I can't imagine trying to grow produce on such a hilly terrain.

Checkout these pristine fields.