The street food of Korat came to you before you could see it. The smell reached the scooter first, wrapping around you before the stall came into view. A woman at her stone mortar, working without looking up, the sound of the bong bong steady and certain above the noise of the street. A pot of soup, always the same soup, always the same woman, always exactly right. Spring rolls in a small paper bag, golden and hot, passed back to me one by one over my mother’s shoulder as we rode home. In Bangkok on our return trip it was Chinese donuts fresh from the oil and hot Ovaltine in a plastic bag, sweet and thick, tasting like before. On the floating market at Damnoen Saduak it was a tiny bowl of boat noodles from a vendor paddling between boats, so dark and rich I did not have the words for it at six years old. These are the dishes I grew up eating standing up, on the back of a scooter, on the water, in markets where nobody sat down and nobody needed to. The food of movement and memory. The food that found you before you knew you were hungry.
