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Curry Paste at a fresh food market in Chiang Mai, Thailand

I’ve written quite a lot on this blog about my love for visiting markets when I travel, and my favourite part of the world to do this would have to be Asia. When we were in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Veronika and I decided to do a Thai food cooking course, which combined my love for travel, food and markets. In the morning of the full day cooking course that we chose to do, we started off my visiting a fresh food market to buy some fresh ingredients for the dishes that we would be cooking.

A fresh food market has to be one of the most interesting places that you can visit when you travel to a new place. Not only do you get to see some interesting foods, you also get to really see how the locals go about their shopping. I saw all sorts of delicious and weird things at this particular market, and as is usually the case in Asian markets, there are different stands for different food types.

This photo is of a curry paste stand at the market in Chiang Mai, and although we would be making our own curry paste in our cooking course, I couldn’t help but go and breathe in the beautiful aroma of these delicious pastes. These different curry pastes are the key to all Thai curries, and it’s even better if you can make your own from scratch.