BootsnAll Travel Community

One of the sources of traveling cheaper is eating hawker food aka street food, from either stationary or mobile carts. It contributes to the mentality/competition - more common in backpacking circles I suspect - of "How low can you go?" (A separate discussion I want to start!)

Well...I guess I want to sort of debunk this idea.

Notwithstanding how unplesant it can be to eat standing up or when motorcycles are whizzing by on a busy street....

Sure..you may eat street food a dozen times and never get sick. But, the "one" time you do get sick does it not put you out of commission for a few days or even longer? Does it not force you to alter your plans? Does it require you to possibly spend more money to heal yourself/continue your journey? (Better lodging, transport, possible medical expenses,etc...) Does it not impair your enjoyment/perception of a place?

I eat street food, but not that frequently. I've always had it in my mind that I should eat it more to save traveling dollars. Never mind the actual delta between a decent restaurant and the street food is minimal in most countries.

Yes - you can get sick eating at restaurants too but the odds are usually lower are they not?

My Laos story

So I got the idea for this thread after traveling in Laos for a week or so. My last night in Luang Prabang I went on a hawker eating spree. I had noodles (And a glass of water - from what appeared to be purified water in a large plastic container), a rice popsicle, couple of crispy rice cakes and some pineapple.

I was emboldened by my experience recently of eating at a hawker stall a couple hundred feet away from apartment in my Bangkok. Something which I've done 3 times so far. Heck - if I could see her cooking the food, I could see the ingredients...it's like I can have personal quality control.

Back to Laos...so later that night I get the grumbling stomach, diahrea (sp?) (Though not terrible), and worst - a relatively sleepless night. The icky feeling and "modest D" continues into the morning - when I was planning to take a minibus down South - a windy and hilly 7 hour ride -, rest for a night, then another 4 hour minibus to the Thai border, then back to Bangkok. I realize being on a bus and possibly having to go to the bathroom immediately is not a good idea. So I decide to fly back from Luang Prabang to Bangkok. Which in the end costs me US$60 more than if I took a night train at the Thai/Laos border or US$25 more than if I got by land to Udon Thani and flew Air Asia.

So basically...the extra cost to me wipes out all the possible savings from eating Hawker food many many times over. (Not even talking about my less enjoyment of my final days in Laos) Of course there is also the cost of me being in Laos too which at the very last is the per day cost of my visa, cross-ocean airfare, etc...

I expect to get sick on the road, but if I can avoid it I certainly will. In earlier 7 months RTW air travel I got diahrea from food I ate only in a very minor form when I first got to India from what I recall. (The other time - and far worse episode - was from getting seasick while scuba diving!) Other than that virtually no problems...and I seldom ate hawker food on that trip.

Experiencing culture while eating hawker food is fine...I just won't ever do it with the mentality for saving money.

Comments? Rebuttals?

I had lots of awesome street food in South America. Yummy, cheap, great to get on the go. Mystery meat on a stick, egg sandwiches, puffed pasta out of a ginormous plastic bag, mystery meals that looked like they'd been sitting out for a little while, etc. Never got sick.

However, I have gotten food poisoning quite a few times at reputable restaurants in the states!!!

Make your own conclusions from that...

I have eaten hawker food almost everywhere I have gone.

I have followed four basic rules that have stood me well:

1: no milk products that were unrefrigerated.
2. Fried or boiled
3. Popular with the locals.

4. No shrimp or seafood products.

This has served me well. I got sick on a Bratwurst( I think) in Vienna. The odd thing about food poisoning is that there are several types of it, and SOME have a 24 to 48 incubation period. So, that tortilla you thought you got sick on might have been just fine. It might have been the ice in the drink you bought in a local restaurant.

When I found this out, I despaired of ever really tracing which meal caused my illness. Of course, i only got food poisoning a few times in all my travels, and well worth the experience of tasting the cheaper foods I could AFFORD to eat.

Unfortunately, often the best examples of the food of a country is either gotten through a great home cooked meal or a really expensive restaurant meal, served to the much richer residents of the country.

I use the quality of street and cheap restaurant food as one means of determining liveability in a place. I would NOT live in Cairo from this factor alone.

The $60 "modest D". Poor you.

I am a hawker food epicurean. It's the way I love to cook and the way I love to eat.

TT has the basic common sense on hawker food, though the only rule I follow is popular with the locals. If you have to wait in line for your food, chances are you are not going to have to wait in line later for the loo!

Another idea is to gradually acclimatize your system to the local food. Eg, start off with foods that are bland or usually no problem for you back home.

I think restaurants can be the scariest. You just don't know what happens behind closed doors!

It really depends on how into food you are. In my book, if I spent $800 on airfare to fly to Asia, and I didn't eat any of the Hawker food, I would have lost money and time.

Hawker food is such a big part of the culture, and is something you cannot get back home, no matter how much you are willing to spend, should you suddenly wake in the middle of the night with a craving....

Hawker food, or anything like the local fruits, and pastries, bread...etc are things that you have to make a trip for. The local ingredients can never be duplicated in the USA.

The atmosphere, the sights and sounds and the people around you while you ate, are never to be duplicated in the USA, either. Even if I got the recipe, I know I wouldn't be getting it right. The water is different, the air is different.

Of course, if a person is afraid to eat something, he or she should not do it. Your own body will usually tell you if you can handle it or not. Emotions like fear and doubts while you eat could do more to make you sick than the actual food.

I always eat streetfood, not just because of the cost saving but for the culinary experience -- it's the best there is!

But there are a few rules CoL didn't follow. In areas where I have reason to be worried about disease, I do not eat fruit that I don't peel myself, I don't drink cold drinks unless they come in bottles or cans (the exception being Toddy and other local brews ), I don't eat popsicles (I presume that is a form of icecream) because freezing doesn't make food safe in any way. And yeah, follow the crowds. Standing in line is a good thing on a street market.

My rules are to avoid seafood and milk products. I like knowing exactly how my seafood is prepared and stored, and having it sit out on the side of the road for a while just isn't cool. I've found some fantastic chicken on a stick here, with a ginger and spicy sauce. My favourite streetfood so far has been a corn dog (hot dog covered in batter) with french fries stuck to the outside. Then, they put ketchup on it. Sooooo good...

A rice popsicle is maybe a bad name. But it is actually is just cooked/grilled rice in the shape of a popsicle. Rice chunk on a stick? She put some kind of glaze/sauce on it while grilling it. Not that particularly tasty. I threw out half of it.

I've avoided the seafood (Allergic to crustaceans anyway) and milk products at hawker places. I guess I broke a rule of eating raw fruit when I devoured the pineapple. I was thinking that might be the culprit. But...I will never know for sure I guess. There were other folks eating at the hawker stands. I can't say there was a line per se except at the Rice chunk on a stick place.

I did buy a little slim Thai Hawker Food "guidebook" earlier before I went to Laos. Thus showing my commitment to be more of a hawker connosieur. It even dissects individual streets in Bangkok on where to go. Great pictures.

Good comments all. I guess I will muster up the courage to go again. On the bright side...I read in the Bangkok Post that there is an effort to make sure Thailand hawker stalls (Whether outside or in indoor food courts I believe) are sanitary. I've seen some of the signs around. So far it says only 36% are in compliance out of 130k+. I don't remember the exact #.

I guess my concern all this time has been more of the mobile outside ones. In Bangkok there are lot of food courts attached to malls with at least a dozen+ stalls (TO get you to go there and shop of course!) where you can eat for the same price with the same food pretty much. Clean eating and cooking areas. Of course without the traffic chaos too.

on another note...

-- A Thai living in my apt here related a story of eating at a hawker stall where she got sick and had to go to the hospital for a couple of days...so it certainly isn't confined to just being a foreigner. As evidenced by the effort to certify the sanitary conditions. ...although she isn't a typical Thai as she has lived outside the country for long stretches working for various companies.

I have a story to relate about seafood that perfectly matches my qualms involving them and hawkers.

A friend of mine and myself developed a hankering for lobster in Istanbul. We hunted down a restaurant willing to boil it and serve it for a price. We then looked for the lobster. We finally found one for an exorbitant price. We didn't buy it. It was sitting on some ice in on a 80 degree day, and it was DEAD. I guess the vendor didn't think it was a bad idea to sell it after it became deceased. I really hope a mid to small sized restaurant didn't buy it and serve it to THEIR patrons.

BTW: On Khao san road I ate a lot of street food, mostly charcoal roasted chicken legs. Did I mention that is my favorite food, even at home?

I always buy food from grocery stores or supermarkets. And sometimes splurge on a restaurant

Vendors usually don't have much space/storage to go wrong with, right? so I usually trust them-assuming it's fresh...like a bbq in someone else's yard.

The only time I got sick from food (not related to tequila) was from a restaurant in Morocco. They told me about 10 times to order the special, but something on the menu sounded much better. 30 minutes later, I was puking greasy orange couscous in the bidday of the hotel room. Note to the village traveler: ORDER THE SPECIAL!

I've not been to SE Asia (yet--in January, however...), so cannot say that I have experience with the true hawker food. To miss out on such an experience, though, would be a shame. As a chef, I think the golden rule I would follow would be...lines are good. If the food is constantly moving, it doesn't have time to go bad. That, and avoid fuzzy seafood. Always a good guideline.