Member-only story
The Best Meal I Had in Asia Was an Accident — and Possibly Illegal
I pointed at something in a night market. It barked back.
Let me start by saying: I love a plan.
I am the guy who downloads Google Maps offline, bookmarks restaurants in multiple categories (cheap-but-clean, local-famous, Instagrammable-but-not-too), and color-codes his itinerary like the trip is a military operation.
Which is why this story — the one about the best meal I had in Asia — doesn’t start with a reservation or a recommendation.
It starts with me being lost, mildly dehydrated, and hovering between hangry and emotionally fragile in a Bangkok alley lit by a single fluorescent bulb and what I can only describe as chaotic meat energy.
We had just spent the day temple-hopping, which sounds serene unless you’ve ever done it in 95-degree humidity while wearing pants out of cultural respect and silently resenting every couple in matching linen sets.
Our Grab app wasn’t loading. My backup restaurant was “temporarily closed” (a phrase that, in Southeast Asia, might mean “for an hour” or “until the end of days”). And my travel partner — my wife, Allison — had hit the part of the day where all communication is performed through facial expressions and audible sighs.
