Is Thailand's Papaya Salad the Greatest Dish on Earth?
Is Papaya Salad, known as Som Tum, the greatest dish on earth? In this food heavy episode, we discuss Thai cuisine, with Adam suggesting that Papaya Salad is a perfect dish. Adam also shares stories of his travels around Thailand, including working on a durian farm on the Cambodian border. If you love Thai food or if you've ever wondered just how big a durian really is, don't miss the debate! We apologize in advance to fans of cheddar cheese.
Stay tuned for the Lost & Found section, as Alun explains the reason why he can't eat papaya and we discuss our favourite cuisines from around the world.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
03:51 - Why is Adam so incredibly hot?
07:00 - Bangkok wine dinner
12:12 - How big is a durian fruit?
22:42 - Rice for Breakfast: Papaya Salad (Som Tum)
35:07 - Lost & Found: Alun's papaya aversion
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Welcome to Tripology
Alun:
[0:02] Hello and welcome to this episode of Tripology. It's a backpacking show where two genuine best friends get together and talk about travel. I'm Alan, and I'm here with the ever incredibly hot Adam.
Adam:
[0:17] Anyone who didn't think that we get to choose our own adjectives, now will know.
Alun:
[0:21] And by we, you of course mean you. Sometimes I look at Adam just before the recording and say adam what's your adjective and this week he requested a very special request incredibly hot
Adam:
[0:34] Do you think there's anyone that listens to this show on a regular basis that doesn't realize that usually more often than not the adjective is kind of associated with the subject of the show.
Alun:
[0:44] That was that wasn't the case really early on but it's become the case i wonder if there's some people listening to the show that get frustrated every week why hasn't alan described had Adam as incredibly hot yet. He's been naive. He's been irreplaceable. He's been brave. He's been all these things. Why hasn't he been incredibly hot?
Adam:
[1:02] Which one of the adjectives that we've used in the last 190 episodes do you think would be best applied to you?
Alun:
[1:11] It's a big question. Do you remember what your first adjective ever was?
Adam:
[1:14] I should. I should. Shit. I nearly listened to the first episode this morning.
Alun:
[1:17] Yeah. It's hard.
Adam:
[1:21] Ever hard. It's hard to listen to.
Alun:
[1:22] It's just hard. I think the first one you ever were is informative.
Adam:
[1:27] Oh, wow.
Alun:
[1:28] The ever informative Adam.
Adam:
[1:31] I don't know if that's still true to this day. Is it?
Alun:
[1:34] It's become less true over time.
Adam:
[1:37] Oh, well, I'm not the same person and we're not the same show.
Alun:
[1:39] No, yeah, exactly. it's three years on
Adam:
[1:42] For a bit of context people are going to be thinking why is it a big deal that they're sitting on the same bed but we're in tokyo we're in your house i've flown over to be with you for a couple of why.
Alun:
[1:52] Is it a big deal that was on the
Adam:
[1:53] Same bed because we're usually not in the same space yeah.
Alun:
[1:56] That's true we're usually remote
Adam:
[1:58] It's kind it's kind of a big deal yeah but it's i mean it's not just about our friendship it's about you know keeping the show going.
Alun:
[2:05] More episodes than not of this show are recorded in a remote viewing studio where we you know i speak and then you come on the screen you speak i speak we all speak together
Adam:
[2:18] Uh and i do think that it's something for us to be proud of definitely.
Alun:
[2:23] The remote aspect of the
Adam:
[2:24] Show well just the fact that we've kept this thing going on a weekly basis for three and a half nearly four years in december it'll be four years and it's been recorded in over 30 countries yeah i remember an episode i think you might have been in belize where you recorded a show on top of a roof it was like a shack and there were some hedgehogs making noise in the background yeah and uh the wi-fi was terrible but there are.
Alun:
[2:46] Some episodes of the show where the quality suffers because of the insane situations i was in you can hear a howler monkey in the background one of those episodes yeah it was a crazy crazy time i think when we won best travel and adventure podcast 2025 one of the key things I argued. You know, you have to write a little essay. Why do you deserve it?
Adam:
[3:07] Have you not heard the show?
Alun:
[3:08] One of the key things I said was, I think we're the only travel podcast that travels full-time.
Adam:
[3:14] Yeah, which, funnily enough, would be one of the criteria if I was a judge.
Alun:
[3:18] Is there another travel podcast that travels full-time, where the hosts are constantly nomadic and on the road? If there is, I'd like to hear about it. Write in. Go to our website. There's a contact form. Send me a message.
Adam:
[3:30] And if there is, we should listen to them. We're part of the same community. We're trying to spout the same sort of stuff. But it is bloody difficult to produce a podcast.
Alun:
[3:37] Oh, God, it's hard.
Adam:
[3:38] Every single week. I actually meet other people who travel who don't have a podcast. and i wonder whether they think sometimes god i'm so glad i don't have a weekly podcast i can just travel without thinking about anything else they.
Alun:
[3:49] Don't know what they're missing out on
Adam:
[3:50] They don't they don't.
Alun:
[3:52] Well tell us adam why are you incredibly hot this week are you talking about i mean there's a few things couldn't you could be incredibly hot because you've had something spicy you could be incredibly hot because you've been in a sauna you could be incredibly hot because you've observed that other people find you attractive or you could be an incredibly hot because you're having an allergic reaction to something which you've ingested
Adam:
[4:13] Yeah we narrowly escaped the typhoon just a couple of days ago incredibly wet it was um, but i thought this would be a good occasion to round off my time in thailand because we like to do things in chronological order we like to talk about them when they're fresh and i've been here for a week today actually have you really.
Alun:
[4:32] Yeah yeah it's felt like shorter
Adam:
[4:36] Is that a good.
Alun:
[4:37] Thing i think time flies when you're having a nice one
Adam:
[4:40] Yeah yes uh so there are a couple of things i'd like to talk about um regarding my time in thailand and i think it'll make for interesting conversation.
Alun:
[4:50] Okay i'm ready to receive the
Adam:
[4:52] Conversation the first bit will be a little bit a little story something that happened to me in my actual life and then it'll be a rice for breakfast.
Alun:
[4:59] Oh amazing everyone's favorite travel food
Adam:
[5:02] Item. Not just any rice for breakfast rice for breakfast about the dish that I think is potentially the best dish on planet Earth.
Alun:
[5:09] Wow papaya salad oh
Adam:
[5:12] Talk about a spoiler alert.
Alun:
[5:14] Sorry i just know that we've already had a rice breakfast on papaya salad are you sure i'm pretty sure
Adam:
[5:19] Well we've definitely had one on a pad.
Alun:
[5:21] Thai okay all right well i'm ready to receive it regardless
Adam:
[5:25] I think there's a difference between doing one for you know the sakes of doing it because it is it is my favorite dish on planet earth yeah and then this time in thailand one of my objectives was to try and find the best papaya salad in thailand.
Alun:
[5:38] If we have done it before do it twice because you know there's only a finite number of foodstuffs on planet earth so eventually if you do enough rice for breakfast you are going to come all the way around to papaya salad again aren't you you know we're hundreds of episodes in some of those episodes have rice for breakfast in it only follows you know you go through oh it's papaya salad again
Adam:
[6:01] Well hang on i can think of five or six countries off the top of my head you can probably think of even more where we're never going to cover any of their.
Alun:
[6:07] Dishes no exactly Turkmenistan if you think you're getting covered in an episode of rice for breakfast not this year i'm telling you that for a fact
Adam:
[6:16] Not until you start churning out your own version of papaya.
Alun:
[6:18] Salad oh you what are you like honestly the number of emails we get from the Turkmeny government saying guys rice for breakfast it's unbelievable so sorry Turkmenistan but we will come around to you eventually but there's a few more dishes out of thailand we need to recover a couple of times and it's
Adam:
[6:41] More topical it's more.
Alun:
[6:42] Next week we're doing pad thai again we wait your turn Turkmenistan no
Adam:
[6:47] Because if you if you haven't had a pad um a papaya salad or sometime in thailand you're missing out yeah just in life just in life because it is one of the best things on earth anyway let's start at the start, A couple of days into me being in Thailand, I went to a wine bar. That's not like you. No, no shock there. I was sat at the wine, a lovely wine bar called Collected. I'll do a link in the description. You should go and see Palm. She's the owner. She's lovely. And I sat at the bar. I was minding my own business, talking to the owner, having nice conversation, drinking nice wine, recommended by the Sommet. And there was a table of very lively characters behind me. And they saw me at the bar on my own. And they said, what are you doing? What's your story? why don't you come down and hang out with us and have some food the group throughout the evening change some people left some people joined uh stayed there until about 1am closing when we got kicked out after a few bottles and the group said to me, we are having a wine dinner with yeah well just you know.
Alun:
[7:48] At the wine bar
Adam:
[7:49] At a different restaurant okay it's a blind tasting which for any of you who don't know you kind of, bring a bottle of something everyone tastes it without knowing what it is and then you have a chat about it you know think about which country it comes from what year it might be the type of grape all this kind of stuff whilst having a really nice evening with your friends so these these are all wine industry people okay yeah.
Alun:
[8:09] And if the little tip for you if you ever find yourself like me not knowing anything about wine but for whatever machinations you end up at blind tasting there's a few little trick phrases that you can use to help get yourself out of it if someone asks you do you like that wine you sort of look at blind tasting carry your eyes closed sort of sniff like that and go oh crikey it's chock full of tannins the legs are as long as hell and there's stone fruits coming out of the wazoo say things like that and wine people will think that you are one of them
Adam:
[8:41] Yeah or mental or drunk, one of those exactly.
Alun:
[8:45] One of them
Adam:
[8:46] Um so it was lovely the dinner was lovely i did feel you know i was honored really to be invited so quickly to something like that because it was enabled me to access a side of bangkok that i that i wouldn't have otherwise the.
Alun:
[8:59] Wine access card
Adam:
[9:02] And um and so i went to the dinner we had a lovely evening then we went on to karaoke again lots of fun i don't know what time we rolled in but it was, it was a while it was the early hours and we were drunk we were definitely drunk and i still get.
Alun:
[9:18] Drunk at a blind tasting because one of the ways that you can measure how drunk you're getting is when the move the room starts to move yeah and if you're
Adam:
[9:26] Blind when you can't see you can't see it uh some people actually they don't really like blind tastings they think they're pointless.
Alun:
[9:32] Yeah people who like to read the label in secret and then come out with oh i know exactly what region this is from this is uh It's a Chardonnay, isn't it?
Adam:
[9:41] It's disproportionate as well. Certainly, if you're me, I can't put words in anyone else's mouth. But if I nail the grape variety, I'm not that happy with myself. But if I don't get the wine or I don't get close, I'd really beat myself up. So psychologically, I don't think it's really...
Alun:
[9:58] It's a high-pressure situation for your blind tasting, isn't it?
Adam:
[10:01] Yeah, and if you go to a blind tasting and you bring a bottle that is textbook, you know, stereotypical, a great example of its type, and quite obvious, people are likely to get it.
Alun:
[10:11] It's a nightmare when you get the colour wrong, isn't it? It's a nightmare when someone gives you a Pinot Noir and you go, oh, I'm getting Pinot Gris.
Adam:
[10:21] But when you... i mean i actually thought a blind tasting originally when i first started out on my wine journey i thought that blind tasting was just not being able to see anything and you just have a drink and you have to just nail it, you just get it get it on the nose um so this is champagne.
Alun:
[10:37] It's not even
Adam:
[10:37] Physically it's it's actually quite stressful a lot of people even within the wine industry soms and people that you know have worked in wine for a very long time that's short.
Alun:
[10:45] For sommelier not
Adam:
[10:47] Um not what som-sum the battle of my salad uh and the battle.
Alun:
[10:53] Of so yeah
Adam:
[10:54] Uh so anyway yeah it's a lot of fun it's supposed to be fun i think and educational and a great way to kind of you know we're not all making the same mistakes so it's a good way to learn yeah for sure it's all experience the best way to learn about wine is to drink it i do believe that sure, not like you you bookworm yeah sober bookworm knowing.
Alun:
[11:14] So much about wine reading the back of a wine
Adam:
[11:18] Pamphlet oh yeah i didn't think you knew anything about wine until you said the word was zoo.
Alun:
[11:24] That's the organ that it's a vestigial organ in the human body that processes wine
Adam:
[11:29] Uh so i had an amazing time with them and then we stayed in touch and they kind of shaped my time in bangkok because i was invited to a few did.
Alun:
[11:36] They shape it like a grape
Adam:
[11:39] No, no, no.
Alun:
[11:39] It was grape-shaped.
Adam:
[11:42] It was this group, actually, that I ended up hanging around with a few times while I was in Thailand. And there was a lady who was at that dinner who came afterwards. It turns out she's Thai. She's a lovely woman. Thai, very talented chef, used to work in Paris and open restaurants and also Lisbon. So it's very, very cool to meet someone like her. And it just so happens that a little while ago, she moved back to her farm, her family farm, on the border of Cambodia, a place called Trat, where they grow durian and mango seed.
Alun:
[12:12] Durian, of course. We know durian. Why do we know durian? Because famous for being the most rancidly, smelly, abhorrent fruit, so much so that it's famous. You know, you mentioned Jorian and people who Like, you know, some people Have like trigger words where they like to do a fact A lot of people you mention Jorian, they go It's banned on public transport in Southeast Asia It's like one of those trigger things, isn't it Jorian, oh it's banned on public transport You can't have Jorian in a hotel, it's banned It smells too bad It does smell,
Adam:
[12:44] It does smell pretty bad Yeah.
Alun:
[12:47] It's difficult to describe the smell But you, being a SOM Might be able to
Adam:
[12:53] Could I though? I don't know if it smelling off is really enough, because it's not quite mold.
Alun:
[13:00] I think it smells of the breath of someone evil.
Adam:
[13:04] Okay. But not that evil.
Alun:
[13:07] No.
Adam:
[13:08] Just someone who...
Alun:
[13:09] Someone who is nasty. Like a wicked spirit. Not Satan, but like a ghoul.
Adam:
[13:16] For you, it's like a back-of-the-mouth smell.
Alun:
[13:18] Yeah. Of someone with a rotten personality.
Adam:
[13:21] Yeah you just give me flashbacks to that sheep incident which i won't talk about well.
Alun:
[13:26] Don't mention it um
Adam:
[13:28] But i don't.
Alun:
[13:29] Once encountered a sheep that had halitosis and halitosis of course breath yeah and it was also deceased and it smelled like a dorian
Adam:
[13:37] Um so yeah now oh back of the mouth but yeah it's pretty awful it's not so bad that it's that you shouldn't eat it no it might And for you.
Alun:
[13:47] It's not so bad that you would want to kiss it.
Adam:
[13:52] But it's a funny looking fruit, isn't it? It's enormous. It's really big. It's roughly the same size as, what, like a small water, a big melon maybe?
Alun:
[14:00] Dorian?
Adam:
[14:01] Yeah, big and spiky.
Alun:
[14:02] No, you're thinking of a jackfruit.
Adam:
[14:05] No, I'm not.
Alun:
[14:06] A dorian is about this, like maybe the size of two cricket balls.
Adam:
[14:12] No, no, it's much bigger. It's much bigger.
Alun:
[14:14] I think you're thinking of a jackfruit.
Adam:
[14:15] No, I'm thinking of a dorian. I've literally just spent a couple of days on a durian farm in Thailand.
Alun:
[14:20] Are you sure it wasn't a jackfruit? Jackfruit is huge, right? Right. Jackfruits are the size of like maybe two watermelons.
Adam:
[14:26] Right.
Alun:
[14:27] Durian.
Adam:
[14:28] Yeah. Go on. I've seen one the same size as your head.
Alun:
[14:32] It must have been large. I've seen some small durians in my time.
Adam:
[14:36] Also, also, varying sizes.
Alun:
[14:38] Are they varying in sizes? Yeah, yeah. So it wouldn't have been crazy for me to see a durian the size of...
Adam:
[14:44] Go on, what are you looking at now?
Alun:
[14:46] I'm trying to find... In my head, maybe the length of an iPhone.
Adam:
[14:52] That's a small durian.
Alun:
[14:53] That's a small durian, but still possible though.
Adam:
[14:55] I don't even know if it is. I really don't know.
Alun:
[14:57] I don't want to lead the audience astray with durian sizes, but i'm willing to i'm willing to yield to your expertise in this area but i will say this if you see a small jorian don't think it's not a jorian because it might be
Adam:
[15:11] They're incredibly spiky pretty heavy and dense there are usually five segments inside with stone maybe.
Alun:
[15:18] I've just seen one of the segments
Adam:
[15:20] Uh maybe yeah that could be it they.
Alun:
[15:21] Got the iphone size segment would you say
Adam:
[15:24] Yeah you know this is one of those rare scenarios where i've got a photo on my phone that i can post on instagram that proves me right so but.
Alun:
[15:30] Willy because oftentimes adam says he's gonna post something and it doesn't so
Adam:
[15:36] That is true that is true very rarely do i do what i say i'm gonna do um but it's pretty creamy in texture almost avocado like and it tastes a lot like vanilla custard.
Alun:
[15:47] The jorian yeah yeah i don't like the taste of it
Adam:
[15:51] Do you not like the taste or do you not like the smell?
Alun:
[15:53] I can't get it past my schnoz to taste it.
Adam:
[15:56] That's a shame. You have tasted one, though, and you know you don't like it.
Alun:
[15:59] Once, when I was 21.
Adam:
[16:02] Okay. Okay, I think now it's time. Yeah.
Alun:
[16:05] 11 years ago, I put a durian in my mouth.
Adam:
[16:08] So a lot of the durian, and by a lot I mean all of them, actually, are exclusively shipped, exported to China. So I don't know whether we can get hold of a durian in Japan.
Alun:
[16:19] It is quite mad that your story is that you went on a durian farm and I challenged you on whether you were thinking of a jackfruit.
Adam:
[16:27] Welcome to my life, guys. So convincing that he's making me question my own reality. But I guess what I'm trying to say is I spent a couple of days with this lady on the farm, had an amazing experience. She is, as I mentioned, a chef.
Alun:
[16:45] A durian chef.
Adam:
[16:46] Not a durian chef. One trick pony. They do cook with it. She cooks amazing Thai food, which I had the pleasure of eating for breakfast one morning. We did those little leaf parcels. Oh, yeah. Delicious. It was like a take on a larb and all this sort of stuff. We went out to eat a number of times together to local restaurants where she just ordered literally everything. I tried wild boar, a number of fish dishes. Obviously, she's ordering everything in Thai and then translating everything to me. So it was a wicked experience from that perspective. She even lent me her scooter. So I got to explore the local area, the region of Trat. I was ripping around, you know, the back roads, rice fields and all that sort of thing. Really, really wonderful. At the top of the farm, I could see Cambodia, the border, the frontier, lovely rolling hills, lots of farmland, mostly durian from what I'm told. It was like rural, rural Thailand. Really, really special, really different experience. And I'm very grateful to have been able to live that. And then some of her friends came for breakfast on the last day and they just so happened to be driving to Bangkok that afternoon. So they said, why not? We'll give you a lift all the way.
Alun:
[17:50] Too easy, isn't it? It was brilliant. What can you tell me about Angostine?
Adam:
[17:54] I can tell you that they're roughly the size of a...
Alun:
[17:58] This is going to be a giant, isn't it? Okay, smaller. Yeah. Easy to tell apart from the Dorians then.
Adam:
[18:03] Oh, they look nothing alike.
Alun:
[18:04] Like a little baby Dorian.
Adam:
[18:06] Yeah, maybe a tennis ball, maybe a little bit smaller actually. And they're purple often. They are also green. Sometimes they're picked green. And they've got one of those cute little, you know, four leaves or whatever on the top with a little stalk.
Alun:
[18:16] So, are we working on the farm or just visiting really, would you say?
Adam:
[18:20] So, visiting. And I said to the lady, look, I would love to learn a little bit about this. Can I help you? like for example.
Alun:
[18:27] Like try and figure out what size all these fruits are
Adam:
[18:30] Yeah yeah she said that's a durian tree and i said are you sure it's not a jackfruit tree yeah um, but i climbed a few trees i helped prune them it was really really cool we didn't harvest any because all of the durian had been harvested apart from the ones that weren't ripe to be harvested yet, uh i think a healthy tree with a few years on it can produce anywhere from 50 to 200 fruit.
Alun:
[18:51] Wow which is pretty cool must be strong
Adam:
[18:54] Yeah yeah they're quite when you prune them they're quite interesting looking they actually don't look like they have enough branches, but i mean they've been you know selected and stuff to grow the different durian, but it's really cool and then there's uh guys that climb up the tree when they're being harvested they grow on these little stalks and in one they're holding on for dear life right because they go quite high, lean over they're holding onto the tree with one hand and then in the same motion they chop with little snips the durian off and catch it catch the stalk and then drop it down into old mate who's um collecting it with a net a net or something.
Alun:
[19:29] Wow so apple scrumping yeah in the day
Adam:
[19:33] Is that what it's like oh.
Alun:
[19:34] Yeah a little net you'd have someone down below with maybe a blanket catching them preventing bruising
Adam:
[19:40] So i mean all that to say that all of that was made possible you know the the wine dinners and then becoming friends with these awesome people, you know, a dynamic that exists. They are a genuine group of friends and business contacts and associates and wine people in Bangkok. And then the farm experience that was as a result of that, because I just stuck my neck out and said, hey, can I come and help? Can I come and, you know, lend a hand or just see what you're up to? We went to a lovely sunset spot. Mate, it's just such a wicked experience. So much happened in two weeks. And it was only possible because I was sitting at that bar on my own and said yes once. Yeah. And I guess my takeaway is that when you ask...
Alun:
[20:26] You should drink.
Adam:
[20:29] Think of all the times you would have had no no what i mean is that as a as someone who goes to thailand for a couple of weeks and if you go on your own i think it can go in so many different directions yeah i love.
Alun:
[20:42] That's definitely true
Adam:
[20:44] I don't it's been a very long time since we've spoken about solo travel and solo backpacking but for me it was and you know i'm going to talk a little bit about myself here even more so but i i was worried that those experiences were behind me, really like it's getting quite personal now but i i was worried at the age of 36 that i would go to thailand and i wouldn't be not having.
Alun:
[21:08] Anyone to play ping pong
Adam:
[21:09] With no i just wouldn't i wouldn't be able to experience something like that because that that has happened that kind of thing where you meet the right person you say the right thing you get invited somewhere then all of a sudden you know, two weeks later and you've just had the time of your life that you cannot pay for but.
Alun:
[21:24] You've just had experiences like that recently all sorts of places you're living like that in new zealand you were living like that before then when we were traveling around Pakistan and stuff so why do you think it was
Adam:
[21:33] Over i don't know maybe it's age maybe it's you know living a fairly predictable stable life in somewhere like new zealand it's obviously not exotic really.
Alun:
[21:40] It is easy to get out of the habit because i remember when i had a big sent off backpacking then when i went to nepal i was like how do i do this like what do you do in a hostel how do you say hi to people so i get it
Adam:
[21:51] Yeah it's um i was just observing the fact that it's important to stay open and maybe not have a plan because when i went to thailand i didn't really have a plan other than just eat loads of food, so you know the fact that someone said oh you can do this and oh why don't you do that and if you want to come and hang out with us you can and i was on my own so i didn't have anyone to consult which i know we've done episodes on is it better to travel with a partner or in a group or um, you know on your own i am in camp solo i really am.
Alun:
[22:23] Well that's wonderful to here adam but you said you were over there trying lots of different foods so we should talk a bit more of that in a section that you like to call and by proxy we've all decided to call it that so as not to offend
Adam:
[22:37] You, it's rice for breakfast, here we are mate in rice for breakfast everyone's food related feature everyone's everyone it's.
Alun:
[22:53] Decentralized it belongs to everyone
Adam:
[22:57] Um the papaya salad also known as the sum tum yeah did you know that is that.
Alun:
[23:03] The name of the man who invented it
Adam:
[23:04] No or woman no no i did learn that it means sour and grounded salad sour as in acid, so i think that's the the thai translation sour well sour and pounded because it's something that you some tom, yeah grounded pounded something that rhymes with hounded and sour um that's the the literal translation so it can be anything a lot of people just think sometime means a papaya salad yeah but it means a group of salads that have been made that way.
Alun:
[23:37] Amazing some of which include papaya yes not all sometime is papaya salad but all papaya salad is some tom now since the moment i met you
Adam:
[23:47] Yeah.
Alun:
[23:48] You've always said that your favorite food that exists on planet earth is the sometime the papaya salad yeah why is that tell me more information about it
Adam:
[23:59] I think that against any other dish and i mean there are lots of dishes that have these things as well but i think it does it really well i wouldn't say i'm an expert but i do like eating However, it does have texture. It's got the crunchy, underwired papaya. It's got spice. It's loaded with chili quite often. It's got the acid, often from calamansi or lime juice. it's got more crunch from say peanuts it's super fresh it's really clean there's just so much going on it's fucking salty as well to kind of balance the acid sometimes up in the north in isan where i was they use fermented shrimp paste and all this sort of stuff so, it's just a overwhelming overstimulating bombardment of flavors and textures.
Alun:
[24:43] What do you see to distract us who say that the best food in existence can't possibly be a salad.
Adam:
[24:50] But can't it though?
Alun:
[24:52] I don't know. I've got to voice both sides of the war that's raging between you and people who fundamentally, and there's a lot of people, if you say the greatest food of all time and salad in the same sentence, they'll feel alienated because they like protein.
Adam:
[25:10] Well i do think that it's almost impossible to add anything to a great sometime to make it any better, i think it's almost impossible to improve a really good version whereas those same people that maybe think that are you are you alluding to meat is that what you're saying oh.
Alun:
[25:27] Well any protein i suppose
Adam:
[25:29] Yeah so i mean the egg i would argue and i don't want to start a fight here okay I would argue that people who are hell-bent on having meat and who think that something with meat in or some sort of protein is the best dish.
Alun:
[25:43] There's a lot of those people. They're like, it's rabbit food. I need a bit of meat on my plate.
Adam:
[25:48] Yeah, they're probably also the same people that think that adding cheese to something makes it better. And I would say, sorry.
Alun:
[25:56] Often they are. Yeah.
Adam:
[25:58] Sorry. You're not included in the conversation anymore.
Alun:
[26:01] Because of the cheese thing.
Adam:
[26:02] Yeah, because people are adding cheese to everything these days. It's being overused.
Alun:
[26:06] What's the most annoying thing that people added cheese to in your mind?
Adam:
[26:09] Well, there's some pasta dishes. If you ask an Italian, you don't put cheese on it. Yeah. But people go, oh, no, you've got to have grated cheese on everything. No, you don't. Especially not shit cheese. People, people.
Alun:
[26:20] I don't like shit cheese either.
Adam:
[26:22] People are too quick. they're too quick with the adding of the cheese to literally everything and it doesn't make it better i think we live in a society where people just think that adding cheese automatically makes things better yeah i would say, go to thailand take a deep breath and have a papaya salad.
Alun:
[26:38] And he practices what he preaches listeners because i offered him a baby bell the other day and i've never seen anyone look at me with such venom
Adam:
[26:45] Yeah and you know i am at the risk of sounding like a proper wanker. I used to work for a company in Hong Kong that had a cheese business within the same company and they've got over 300 cheeses that they import from France and we used to taste them on a regular basis, even a blind tasting, funnily enough. So I love cheese a lot and I love eating good cheese and I've been very fortunate to have some of the best cheeses there are.
Alun:
[27:12] Sorry, baby bell.
Adam:
[27:13] You don't see me fucking grating them on a dish where, you know, it's not warranted.
Alun:
[27:18] Fair enough.
Adam:
[27:19] So eat less cheese and eat better cheese would be my advice.
Alun:
[27:23] Yeah. Eat the amount of cheese pre-specified and ordained by your cheese, expensive cheese budget. Yeah.
Adam:
[27:31] If you're buying Cathedral City or some other Red Leicester or some other, you know, cheese that's been made en masse and you say you love cheese.
Alun:
[27:37] Is Cathedral City not a good cheese?
Adam:
[27:39] Well, if I say to you, what's your favourite cheese? And they go, uh, Red Leicester. I go, you don't know what cheese is.
Alun:
[27:44] There's a proud tradition from Red Leicester. But there must be good Red Leicester out there. Cheddar.
Adam:
[27:50] Cheddar's my favourite.
Alun:
[27:51] Hold on a second. But there must be cheddars which are absolutely fine cheeses.
Adam:
[27:55] No, no, there are.
Alun:
[27:56] There must be absolutely prestigious cheddars.
Adam:
[27:59] No, no, there really are. And I think there are even some English cheeses, maybe versions of cheddar that we're talking about that have beaten some of the best French cheeses in a blind tasting.
Alun:
[28:06] I bet there's someone who's made Red Leicester who's just artisanal Red Leicester. that's the greatest one of the top 10
Adam:
[28:12] Cheese but then we're in danger of always specifying that it is the best version of that so the best version of anything usually is quite good isn't it yeah do you know what i mean yeah yeah.
Alun:
[28:22] But so i don't think the the red lester or the cheddar i i think that's not an indication of in bad
Adam:
[28:28] Quality no my my attack is on the people who eat that cheese You say it.
Alun:
[28:32] In a funny voice. Cheddar. Ah, you buffoon. I like cheddar. You've got a man of taste.
Adam:
[28:41] And then you give them a cheese with any amount of flavour and they eat a little bit of the rind. And they go, oh my god, that's disgusting. It tastes like metal. No, it doesn't. It's just what actual cheese tastes like.
Alun:
[28:51] Babybel. There's no cheese connoisseur whose favourite cheese is cheese string.
Adam:
[28:56] Probably not no i don't know if that makes it into the category of cheese really.
Alun:
[29:01] It's made with it says 100 real cheese on the packet
Adam:
[29:03] Does it yeah my goodness anyway we're getting sidetracked so the som tam my favorite dish in the world i could eat one every single day and i tried to do that when i was in thailand one of the other people at this wine dinner was a lad from the isam region which is in east sort of northeast thailand it's where a lot of people some of the food youtubers out there say the best food in thailand comes from and it's where a lot of, Thai people that I met in Thailand also said their favourite Thai food comes from.
Alun:
[29:29] Isam. Check it out.
Adam:
[29:31] It's where the papaya salad comes from, the Som Tham, and variations of. So I thought, what am I going to do with my time? I headed up to Khong Can to find the best papaya salad I could. And the gentleman who was from that region, the wine dinner, sent me a load of recommendations of local restaurants. So I went out and tried one. you're just shocked you're gonna feel that.
Alun:
[29:52] No no yeah go on
Adam:
[29:53] Carry on um i sat down at this restaurant i was.
Alun:
[29:55] Gonna drop an advert in there
Adam:
[29:57] Um i sat down at this local restaurant and a lovely young lady uh who came to serve me and she spoke very good english which was great.
Alun:
[30:06] In a thai accent yeah okay let's role play i'll be you
Adam:
[30:12] No no um, and anyway i was sitting down there it was on my own And I just said, look, whatever you'd recommend. But if one of them could be a sometime, that'd be great. She said, yeah, the sometime here is fantastic. How spicy can you have it?
Alun:
[30:25] Oh, now Adam likes this question.
Adam:
[30:27] Yeah. I said, pretty hot. I can take it pretty hot. And she said, okay, well, like really spicy? I said, yeah, really spicy.
Alun:
[30:35] However spicy you think I can have it, dial it up a couple of notches.
Adam:
[30:41] And she went, okay, no problem. So she went away. She gave the kitchen my order. and then when it came a few moments later she delivered it, she went away i was sitting there minding my own business drinking my beer eating all the food it was tasty but i didn't think the som tam was that spicy oh shit i could see lumps of chili in it there was definitely some some red chili uh and, she came over she said is everything okay i said yeah yeah it's great thank you she said how's the som tam i said that's delicious but it's it's not spicy, she said yeah i've got something to tell you I asked for it really spicy and told them that you would ask for it spicy and they said, look at him he can't handle the spice we can tell that if we do it spicy he's not going to be able to eat it, and I was livid I said to her, I'm going to jump on Google and I'm going to give this restaurant a really bad review. And she said, oh my God, please don't do that. They're my friends. Did you actually threaten that? I jokingly said, oh. And she said, she said, really, really? I said, no, of course not. But I would have liked it hotter. And she was like, okay, don't worry. There's still one more dish to come out. So she went back to the kitchen, told them what I'd said.
Alun:
[31:48] You could see, could you see the guys in the kitchen from behind?
Adam:
[31:51] No, no, I was facing the other way. And then the next dish that came out, which was a meat dish with pork and stuff.
Alun:
[31:55] Too spicy for you, was it?
Adam:
[31:56] Fucking blew my head off. it was amazing but I finished all of it it was great I had tears streaming down my face she was you know laughing at me from a distance but she said that is how hot Thai people have it.
Alun:
[32:08] Not since Icarus has someone flown so close to the proverbial sun about:blank 30/41
6/18/26, 10:46 PM TRIPOLOGY FINAL MIX WIDE
Adam:
[32:14] Yeah but it was amazing and what I just want to say is it's in my favourite dish in the world I could eat one every day I probably should explain what is in a sondham because if you're listening to this you've never had a bicellad and you've got no idea of what's in it.
Alun:
[32:27] Did you not say it at the start of the rice at breakfast? Did you not?
Adam:
[32:30] Well, I said a few of the ingredients.
Alun:
[32:31] Okay.
Adam:
[32:32] But I don't think I went through. Go on. I've got a bloody list.
Alun:
[32:35] Oh, well, if you've got a list, yeah, go through it.
Adam:
[32:37] Usually unripe papaya.
Alun:
[32:39] There you go. If you're making this at home, imagine you're building this from scratch. You need some unripe papaya, you square.
Adam:
[32:45] Yeah, a bit of palm sugar for sweetness.
Alun:
[32:46] Get some palm sugar in there. If there's no palm sugar, it ain't a Tom Som.
Adam:
[32:50] Lime.
Alun:
[32:51] Get a little sprinkle of lime. Not too much. Don't be greedy.
Adam:
[32:55] Thai eggplant.
Alun:
[32:56] One thai eggplant if it's an eggplant that has aubergine written on the packet you got the wrong one tomatoes a couple of them don't go too crazy on the tomatoes okay if you put more tomatoes in then you have to have more sugar to offset the acidity of the tomatoes relax
Adam:
[33:14] Chilies of course for some heat.
Alun:
[33:15] Get them in there more
Adam:
[33:16] Than you think dried shrimp.
Alun:
[33:17] Often a couple
Adam:
[33:19] Shrimp paste garlic green beans peanuts and then sometimes crabs or.
Alun:
[33:24] Seafood only if you're not allergic to peanuts if you are then you have to change the ingredients list if you are allergic to peanuts but you put them in anyway don't eat the papaya salad we have to say that for health reasons um
Adam:
[33:35] But i had a number of different versions there are loads of different versions out there they are famous in isan that's where i've had the best one that i've ever eaten.
Alun:
[33:43] And i like the one from edam which is the place where the baby bell is made
Adam:
[33:47] Uh but it was amazing it was a highlight on my trip and it was it was great to sort of give my trip purpose in that way um i'm glad i went through with it it's the sort of thought that i've had in previous years and gone oh when you go to that place you should try and find the best whatever and this year i actually went and.
Alun:
[34:03] Did it and just try to have one every single day yeah same as the people who go to bangkok and they love that they're one of their favorite dishes is the 7- eleven grilled cheese sandwich so they decide i'm going to go and have one every day
Adam:
[34:16] Yeah and you know i've met backpackers over the years who have said there is nothing better than a 7-Eleven grilled cheese.
Alun:
[34:21] Sandwich. Are they right?
Adam:
[34:22] No, of course they're not right. There you go. I think I'm not going to believe anything that comes out of your mouth from now on.
Alun:
[34:28] You heard it here first. Jorians are the size of watermelons, and the grilled cheese sandwich from 7-Eleven ain't worth shit. We're going to go to the Patreon section now. There's a link in the description. Adam's dotingly put it in there. It takes you straight to the show after the show, but only once you've broken through the paywall, a little defense system we have up that you have to spend money in order to destroy. We'll see you there next week.
Adam:
[34:50] Cheers, guys. Loads of love. Bye-bye. Bye.
