Our very first meal in Thailand – ever – was coughed up from a food stall on Bangkok’s infamous Soi Cowboy. It was sometime after midnight and the vendor handed us a Styrofoam bowl filled with threadlike rice noodles, a clear pinkish broth (caused by the neon lighting?), a handful of rust red gelatinous squares (dyed tofu, perhaps?), and a few boiled chicken wings. We were hungry, traveled over thirty hours from the USA to Thailand, but nonetheless thought it was safe to eat Thai street food.
What happened to our GI tracts the next day? Well, nothing really. We got up bright and early, ate our ‘safe’ complimentary breakfast from our hotel around the corner from Soi Cowboy, and out we went to explore the streets of Bangkok.
What We Did Right
Were you expecting that we’d be spending the next 24 hours battling over the toilet and experiencing the equivalent of Delhi Belly or Montezuma’s Revenge? In that case, we’re sorry to disappoint you!
Maybe we got lucky with that particular bowl of noodles or maybe ordering from that vendor wasn’t as reckless as it sounds. Eating at Thai street stalls, pushcarts, or food vendors seems to be synonymous with food poisoning, but that hasn’t been our experience.
We think it’s safe to eat Thai street food and would like to attribute our happy bellies that particular night (along with countless other evenings eating at food stalls) to several calculated decisions.
TIP 1: Look for the vendor with a long line
Long lines usually mean satisfied recurring customers. We aren’t doubting that the food tastes good, but it’s important that the people who are frequenting these stalls aren’t getting sick. When looking at lines, we also give precedence to those that have several local Thais in them over lines solely composed of tourists. Not only does this suggest that the Thai street food is safe but that the flavors haven’t been toned down to satisfy foreigners’ palettes.
The night we were on Soi Cowboy we walked by several food stalls and most of them had few, if any, customers. We noticed one vendor with several Thai people standing in line so we gravitated there. Though we didn’t have a clue as to what the lady was serving, we figured that was a good a choice as any if she had several people waiting.
TIP 2: Buy cooked food that’s hot
Aside from handmade ice-cream, fruit shakes, or fresh fruit, most vendors don’t serve raw or chilled foods. Instead, there’s a plethora of cooked food. Given that perpetually hot climates and open-aired dining areas are often attributed to an unpleasant experience in the bathroom later on, we understand why people question if it’s safe to eat Thai street food.
To minimize the chance of an upset stomach, we typically pass on the bowls or pans of ready-made food that we’ve assumed to have been cooked hours in advance but are on display uncovered in the ambient temperature. The only exception is if we see the vendor just setting out the bowls and were among the first customers of the day.
What we do eat are stir-fries that have been cooked in a sizzling wok right in front of us, skewers of meat, fish, or shellfish that are actively cooking on a fiery grill, or soups that have been ladled from a near-boiling cauldron. If it’s served to us hot, we are more confident that any sneaky bacteria have been killed off. That’s why the piping hot bowl of noodle soup from the Soi Cowboy vendor – regardless of its unfamiliar contents – was a seemingly safe choice.
TIP 3: Buy from a vendor that specializes in one type of food
Thailand’s tourist-friendly restaurants (whether serving up Westernized Thai food or a Thai interpretation of Western food) are notorious for their book-sized menus. No joke, they often come in three-ringed binders! Chances are with 35 pages of entrées, ranging from lasagna to pad Thai to club sandwiches, not everything is fresh back in the kitchen. Yet many visitors choose to eat at these establishments over food stalls.
Most food stall vendors specialize in one food type, whether it’s beef noodle soup, stewed pork leg, or banana roti and then offer a few variations. You can count on these vendors to buy their fresh ingredients regularly and then close up business when their stash runs out. With such a high turnover rate, there’s less time for the ingredients to spoil. That’s very different from the ground beef or semi-thawed shrimp that have sat in a restaurant’s walk-in refrigerator for the past two weeks.
TIP 4: Use good judgment
Food hygiene standards in Thailand are different from Western countries – that’s stating the obvious. You won’t see vendors checking food temperatures with thermometers or dishes covered by food trays. There may even be *heaven forbid* street dogs or stray cats hanging around the food stalls.
So if you are browsing among food stall vendors, common sense goes a long way. Rather than jumping to the conclusion that these vendors are unhygienic and careless with how they handle the food, casually observe them before buying anything. Is the workstation generally clean? Is the raw meat kept in a cooler before being cooked? Does the vendor use a different hand or tool to touch the food than the cash? Do the ingredients look bright and moist and not dull and limp? Are hundreds of people eating from the food stalls? If the answer is ‘yes’ to these questions, then order something!
TIP 5: Ice should have a hole in it
Many people fear the ice in Thailand. We can only imagine how many hot and thirsty visitors have turned down an iced drink in favor of a room temperature canned soda or a hot coffee because they were afraid the ice would make them sick.
Good news! It’s possible to determine what ice is safe to drink in Thailand by its shape. We suggest steering clear of crushed ice and keep an eye out for ice that’s in large, uniform pieces and that most often has a hole through it. That’s a telltale sign that the cubes have been made from filtered water at an ice factory and not hacked or shaved from a block of ice with a potentially unsanitary blade.
When we sat down outside at one of the bars that flanked Soi Cowboy with our bowls of soups and ordered a round of beers (which is allowed in Thailand!) we were surprised to have two glasses of ice plopped down beside us. We had heard that it’s customary to drink beer with ice because the beer warms up too quickly. As it turned out, the ice cubes were large cylinders with a big hole down the middle. When in Rome!
TIP 6: Drink bottled water
Drinking bottled water in Thailand is the way to go. Accessibility won’t be a problem because the locals drink it, too, particularly in major towns that have proper bottled water distribution shops. But most vendors don’t sell plastic bottles of water at their stalls. Instead, vendors set up free, self-serve coolers filled with filtered water and safe ice. Â
Keep your eyes out for a rack of metal or plastic cups to drink from and a large, typically round cooler beside it. The cooler either directly dispenses water or it has a removable top with which water can be scooped out with a ladle. An obvious sign that filtered water has been used is the 40 L water jug (similar to the kind at your office’s watering hole back home) sitting off to the side of the vendor, which was purchased from a bottled water facility.
Have we ever gotten sick?
Yes, in the three years living here, we both have gotten sick. Chris once and I twice. We weren’t able to avoid stomach bugs entirely.
Within a few months of officially moving to Thailand, I had a one-week-long stomach illness that resulted in regular intervals of stabbing stomach pains. The culprit was either a mango and yogurt shake or a shrimp and vegetable stir-fry from street stalls in Chiang Mai. The second time I got sick was from the chicken I cooked from scratch at home and ended up going to the pharmacist down the street for antibiotics. Chris, on the other hand, just recently had a 36-hour debilitating bug (we’ll spare you the details) after eating a charcuterie and cheese plate at an Italian restaurant in Krabi.
All three situations were different – once from a food stall, once from an upscale restaurant, and once from a home cooked meal – and all were supposedly ‘safe’ because there no obvious signs to us that the food was spoiled or that it had been mishandled. But sh*t happens, pun intended!
This is not to say that every other time we’ve eaten Thai food things have been, er, regular. It took our stomachs about one month of eating Thai street food once every other day to adjust to the flood of new ingredients and different strains of bacteria on the other side of the world. Even if we had previously believed to have possessed iron stomachs.
To this day we aren’t sure what type of noodle soup we ate on Soi Cowboy, although we’ve figured out the rust colored ‘tofu’ squares were really blood cake and suspect the pink broth was colored by red bean paste. But we figured we must have made some smart decisions that night and it certainly makes for an entertaining story!
Do you worry that it’s not safe to eat Thai street food? What is your biggest concern?
PIN IT FOR LATER!
So, is it safe to eat the raw vegetables if they’ve been washed in tap water? I am dying for a green papaya salad (we leave on Thursday for Phuket!). I really want to venture out to restaurants versus eating at the resort daily, but I’m also afraid of getting sick. Nice website, by the way!
Don’t forget to mention the use of cheap high processed oils like palm oil, soybean oil etc which is used by most street vendors. The use of these bad quality (and sometimes even toxic) ingredients are way more troublesome to your body in the long term than the hygiene issues I think.
This is an excellent point! Although the meat and vegetables are generally fresh, sauteeing or frying everything in low grade cooking oil makes it unhealthy and even unsafe! Now that we’re no longer swooning over cheap street food, we have become more aware of these dangers and rarely eat it.
Great article – thanks for all the tips, particularly about the filtered water coolers and the ice cubes with holes! Are the fruit drinks/smoothies safe to drink since it seems like they would add water/ice or wash the fruits with tap water? I am planning to visit Bangkok, but am worried about the water situation since I do have a very sensitive stomach and am prone to food poisoning/stomach bugs. Thank you!!
It is safe to bathe and wash fruits and veggies with the water in Thailand – there’s no contaminating bacteria that will give you stomach bugs. Smoothies are safe to drink because they use filtered water (you’ll see big jugs sitting around). We don’t recommend drinking tap water though because there is sediment in it.
Thank you so much!!
Any suggestions on baby safe places to check out? Bringing our 9 month old on a 3 day trip to Bangkok and I’m kind of nervous about food options. I think I’ll bring along a bunch of baby food anyway, but he’s honestly not really too used to jarred baby food as a usually make him something at home.
If you’re visiting Bangkok, we’d suggest eating at one of the food courts in the malls. They serve the same street food fare as the food vendors do, but at least you can sleep a little better knowing the workers have refrigerators to store perishables in and a sink nearby to wash their hands! Try out Terminal 21 Mall’s Pier 21 Food Court. We don’t recommend eating from the street stalls since your baby’s immune system isn’t as strong as yours.
Terminal 21’s food court is the best. Yum.
By the way, I know what your first meal was and your guesses were wrong. It’s not the neon lighting, the soup is supposed to be pink. The noodle soup you ate was Yen-Ta-Foh. Plus the chunks are pigs blood. Thai people love their pigs blood and can be commonly found in soups.
We’d never seen the soup before moving to Thailand so we were in for a surprise on Soi Cowboy. Another commenter mentioned the Yen Ta For soup about a year ago and since then we’ve seen it on other Thai food posts. Not red tofu – pig blood chunks for sure!
Hi i am planing my first trip to Thailand and Cambodia this year, I was married to a Chinese man and I know what he liked when it came to Chinese food and i was willing to try anything apart from Cat and Monkey, but since then I have become a vegetarian will it be easy to find street food for a veggie? thanks
x
Absolutely. Chiang Mai is particularly vegetarian- and vegan-friendly. Keep any eye out for the symbols เจ (pronounced ‘jay’) which means vegetarian food. These two letters are often written in red letters with a yellow background.
Wow, the Ice cube with a whole in it. Not heard of that one but will certainly look out for that one. Have you guys been around the Market in Bang Rak? Was in the neighborhood on my last stay and loved the area. They do some fantastic fry ups but only mornings as it shuts down at 11:30AM. Oh and I found a cooking class as well right in the middle! Was brilliant! http://www.gothaicookingschool.com
We went to the market on the other side of the river from Bang Rak called Klongsan Plaza (we mentioned that in our 24 hour Mini Guide to Bangkok). Good street food!
We first started to travel to Thailand in 2008, the first time we went we were to scared to try the street food which looked amazing. When we went back the year after and every year since we have become more brave to try street food. I have to say use common sense its not hard to choose which are the best places to eat. We adore street food always cooked fresh in front of us, i must say i love the nutella and banana pancakes……..yummy.
This article is great! We will be in Bangkok for 2 days. Then we are traveling to the Krabi area and islands where we will be staying in nice hotels and resorts. What do you recommend we do for food at the resorts? I’m so terrified of getting sick, I might get the Hep A shot to give me peace of mind :(
Just use your best judgement – watch the staff how they handle the food, if it’s put on ice, if it’s fresh looking, smells good, etc. Don’t eat something if you are suspicious. Wishing you a good trip with no tummy ailments!
fantastic blog…thank you…x
Thank you! Love your website, my daughter is using it as a guide to plan her trip to thailand.
Glad to hear it :) Hope she has a wonderful trip!
Something that I saw when I was in Thailand that I wanted to try was the meats/sausages on the grill. I was wary because some were already cooked, while others were currently cooking on the grill. How can I eat these while making sure I won’t get sick?
Go for the ones that have just come off the grill. Watch the vendors cook them in front of you – not just a quick reheat, but make sure they grab raw skewers out of the cooler and cook them right then and there. There are sour pork sausages (fermented but not really cooked) and other local sausages that we eat that we wouldn’t recommend if it’s your first time traveling here.
Hi, would it be safe to drink their thai iced tea or even eat their papaya salad? Do they use filtered water for drinks and to clean their food?
Drinks are made from filtered water. As far as we can tell, produce is washed with tap water. If you’re concerned, best to avoid any fruit or veggies than can’t be peeled. This includes a raw dish like som tum because the long beans and tomatoes may have been washed with tap water, although the green papaya itself must be peeled first before getting shred.
Love these fantastic, fun and informative posts guys. You have been a source of much hilarity and knowledge (not necessarily in that order) since we first decided to relocate to Thailand for a few months. I am happy to recommend people joining your posts if they need info on living Thai style. Totally love the street food here! The walking markets especially have allowed us to explore and try out all sorts of amazing treats (Chim Dai Mai is one of my favourite phrases “Can I try Some?”). We have only had one bad experience where my daughter vomited through… Read more »
Glad you like our tips, Lauren, and it’s awesome you use the phrase ‘Chim dai mai’ while you’re out to sample new things. Wish you all the best now that Thailand is your new home!
I m must say, this is the best post I’ve seen about eating street food. I was hoping I might be able to chip in with a couple of tips but you got it all covered. I will add though that many people I know who have suffered food poisoning largely blame it on prawns.
Thanks for the lovely compliment!
We now proceed with caution when eating seafood anywhere other than beach towns. However, we play catch up and eat fish, squid, and crabs at least once a day whenever we travel down south. We’re still somewhat wary of shrimp…
I love the food in Thailand. I have been to Chiang Mai many times and they do have many very good vegetarian restaurants. The best one is A Taste of Heaven in Tha Phae Rd. They also do the best cooking school there, even my son who is not a vegetarian said the food I cooked in the school there was better than the school he attended. The next time we went to Chiang Mai the whole family went to the cooking school at A Taste of Thai and none except myself are vegetarians. I always eat the street food… Read more »
Thanks for that cooking class suggestion. Glad to hear you have had good experiences eating Thailand’s street food :)
I got really sick after drinking mango smoothie after bar night…didnt listen locals about yellow mango and alcohol mix can be bad for your health…also if I remember right the durian with alcohol can kill you. :o
We’ve heard about the combo of durian and alcohol can kill you, too! Although you probably won’t find us eating copious amount of that stinky fruit (a few bites will do) while drinking beer or cocktails… we’ll stick to chips or pretzels :)
Spoken like true Thais! It is always best to eat in food establishments where you can see the food being prepared. The joy of eating street food, trumps the hazards for me – although I always try to be prudent. I went with 7 Thais for a weekend at Villa Narwin. On the way there, we stopped at a roadside open-air restaurant in Sri Racha to feast on a type of cockle. There were two Thai grannies in our group and once they saw that I liked the cockles, they competed to see who could shuck the most for me… Read more »
Wwwhhoooaa, what a story! How did you get so lucky? We are wary of shellfish but are willing to eat them if they are popped open with both shells – the telltale sign that they were alive when cooked. The cockles are a different story bc you still have to pry them open prior to eating. We feel bad for your friends but are glad you didn’t get sick :/
I’ve been eating street food in SEA since 2000, and a lot of it in Chiang Mai. I’m happy to day that I’ve never gotten sick from any of it. In fact, the only time I’ve gotten sick was in Taiwan, and that was from eating at a MacDonald’s! Your tips are right on.
Ulgh, both of us tossed our cookies after eating McDs in the USA – it can happen even in ‘first world countries’! And Chris is now wondering if what made him sick recently was the Burger King instead of the Italian restaurant! Open aired food stalls have a stigma but people often forget about the poor food handling that goes unseen in ‘safe’ restaurants. Thanks for commenting!
Nice article. I do wish there were more vegetarian/vegan options, but I also realize we non meat eaters are in the minority, and vendors need to follow the money to stay in business. For those that want to eat healthy and eat meat, you can request no sugar or salt added to the stir fry, but beware the batter for fried chicken and some other deep fried foods usually have sugar added (it sells better that way) … cheers:)
Supposedly Chiang Mai offers tons of vegetarian and vegan options and it’s a popular topic among travel bloggers passing through the city. We think Thai fried chicken is the best and we don’t doubt that sugar and even MSG is used to make it so delicious – which we’re totally ok with. We just treat ourselves every once in awhile :)
I believe the noodle bowl with Pink Color (fermented soy paste) in it called Yen-ta-Four. Thanks for a Fun & Informative Article. :)
We came across that name but thought it was exclusive to soups with fish or seafood in them. It’s something we need to seek out and try ‘officially’ now!
I totally agree with you:
1) local street stalls cook right in front of your eyes, unlike restaurants: you don’t see what’s happening in the kitchen !!!
2) stalls or restaurants with locals will cook safe food because they don’t want to lose their reputation/customers/income…
Well said!