Episode 30: Naomi Duguid on the Charms of Chiang Mai

The Trip host Nathan Thornburgh would not be the first person to admit to falling deeply, darkly in love with the markets of Southeast Asia. There’s just something about the slurry of exhaust, sticky air and stickier rice, knockoff Premier League kits, fresh fruit, and dried worms, wild lime leaves, mango hawkers, and sausage mongers. They hit you in all the senses. They imprint on your brain. And nobody has helped Nathan and countless others decode that imprint and make sense of those markets more than Naomi Duguid—a guide, savant, author, and all-around bridge from West to East.

Naomi basically invented a deeply popular genre of book: the wandering, anthropological journalistic cookbook. With classics like Hot Sour Salty Sweet, Burma: Rivers of Flavor, and Taste of Persia. Of all the places she could have settled on Earth, she settled in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where she lives half of the year. That’s why Nathan, oh so thirsty at the end of dry January, chose Naomi to help him break his fast with fermented sticky rice wine and that delightfully downmarket thing they call Thai whiskey, which is actually rum.

Episode 30 Show Notes:

Hot Sour Salty Sweet

Burma: Rivers of Flavor

Taste of Persia

 Salt: A World History 

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