Bog Standard: Why Some Restaurants Just Aren't Flushed With Success...

I am continually bowled over by how much restaurant toilets vary in Thailand. You get everything from plush lavatories with fresh hand-towels, hand cream, incense, and a lollipop man to, well, let’s not go there.

The importance of good toilets is something that’s often overlooked by eateries, both in Thailand and back in Blightie and beyond. In Bangkok, for instance, I know many Thai and farang customers who choose a place as much for the cleanliness of the powder rooms as for the food.

Most restaurants that have been built in the last ten years or so in the Land of Piles, sorry Smiles, usually have decent toilets. But it’s a shame that many of the older, and in many cases far better restaurants, don’t have lavs that match their wonderful cooking.

There is a fantastic place near Nana Plaza, Bangkok, that is sometimes so packed you have to stand on the pavement and wait for a table to leave before you can tuck into their incredible roast duck and curries. I’ve seen Thais standing around for 40 minutes before getting a seat, the food is that good.

But when I went there, I couldn’t believe the toileting arrangements. When I asked the direction to the gents, the owner looked at me in slight surprise as though it was the first time she’d ever been asked.

Then she escorted me down a side street, and waited at the top of it while I relieved myself behind the bins. I felt quite awkward standing there with the old chap unzipped as people strolled by.

But the stench was far worse, stirring unpleasant memories of Glastonbury. So bad in fact that I couldn’t finish the rest of my delicious meal. The smell of nam pla no longer had the same appeal, for some reason.

Thailand also goes in for novelty toilets in a big way, like the picture (above) I took in a restaurant in Chiang Mai. But there is definitely a limit. The one (below) from an eatery in Chonburi Province is wrong on so many levels, it’s not true.

Its Canadian head chef apparently brought the tissue holder over from Vancouver. If I saw that I’d never dine there again. As I say, the importance of toilets to a restaurant's takings often falls between the, er, cracks.

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Food Poisoning Link Probe In British Couple's Death In Chiang Mai, Thailand

Police are investigating a possible food poisoning link between the deaths of a British couple and a New Zealand backpacker in Thailand.

Pensioners George and Eileen Everitt died in the same hotel in Chiang Mai where Sarah Carter, 23, and her two friends collapsed after eating at the city’s Night Bazaar food market.

The pair, from Boston, Lincolnshire, were found dead in their room in the three star Downtown Inn. Mrs Everitt, 74, was found lying on the bed. Mr Everitt, 78, was in a sitting position on the floor, with his face falling on to the bed.

Police said no drugs, medicine or poison were found in the room. And there was no evidence of violence or wounds on their corpses. Tests are being carried out on their bodies at Maharat Chiang Mai Hospital.

A police spokesman said: “We do not want to speculate on the cause of death but if there has been any poisoning it should be revealed in medical tests.”

The couple had been staying at the hotel since February 9, the same day Ms Carter (below centre) died from food poisoning. She and two friends were struck down hours after eating at a street food stall.

Amanda Eliason, 24, (below left) recovered after emergency heart surgery. Emma Langlands, 23, (below right) who ordered a different meal from the stall, also suffered food poisoning but later recovered.


Initially police said Ms Carter’s death was caused by eating toxic seaweed. Her father Richard said this has now been ruled out as the cause of the food poisoning but tests are continuing.

Thai police are now investigating the hotel’s kitchen and ventilation system.

In August 2007, 15 people died and more than 100 were taken ill in Thailand after eating poisonous puffer fish, which had been coloured to look like salmon.

The month before, police arrested a man in Samut Songkhram province who was planning to sell more than a ton of the illegal fish. They were to be sold to restaurants and made into fish balls.

Although puffer fish – called fugu in Japan - was banned in Thailand in 2002, it continues to be sold in markets and restaurants. Its ovaries, liver and intestines contain a deadly poison. It is prepared by highly-trained chefs in Japan and consumed by thrill-seeking gourmets.

A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said an investigation has been launched to try to establish how the couple died. She added: "We are in touch with the family and are helping them through this very difficult time."

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North Thailand's Khao Soi: Falling In Love With Chiang Mai's Street Food

I am writing this as I wait to board a plane back to Bangkok after spending eight days in Chiang Mai chatting to monks, visiting temples and narrowly avoiding becoming a Buddhist. Oh, and eating. I’ve been doing lots of that.

I thought about heading north up to the sleepy Mekong River towns of Chiang Rai Province and the famed Sukhothai ruins, but I thought the food wouldn’t change too much, and would be disappointing compared to northern Thailand’s gastronomic capital.


I wanted to leave the north’s most famous dish – khao soi – to last. And I wanted to order it in what most locals agree is the best restaurant to try it in – the Thai Muslim-run Sophia restaurant tucked away in a back alley near the night bazaar. But both times I cycled there, they had run out.

Instead, I tried posh and peasant versions in and around the walled city, and I have to say the latter won hands-down. There was something vital and hearty missing in the expensive restaurant offerings. They appeared too processed and precise.

Confusingly, khao soi comes with a range of spellings in different parts of Thailand – but means “cut rice” after the way the rice dough is traditionally steamed over a cloth and then rolled and cut into noodles. And there appear to be almost as many ways of making it too.

Mostly, the seasonings are already mixed in – and that is the way it is served in the city’s Night Bazaar food centre.


But look carefully and you can get it the traditional way, where garnishes of pickled mustard greens, cucumber, and beans as well as chopped shallots, fried chillies, lime slivers and coriander are served separately and mixed in by the diner.

You also get a range of types: the usual contenders of chicken, prawn, pork and fish, and sometimes beef, and in one Chinese-Thai restaurant, I had frog khao soi, which was revolting. I won’t write about it further, or mention the elastic bands, because you might be about to eat.

Yet however it comes, the basic components of this Burmese-influenced meal are the same: crispy fried egg noodles on top of boiled noodles and meat or fish in a spicy coconut gravy, similar to a massaman curry sauce. You notice how sweet the sauce is when you taste it without the pickled vegetables, which are fiery hot and as sour as wormwood. Thais love their fermented vegetables and often order them as a side dish (which explains why so many have taken to roasted pork knuckle and sauerkraut served in German restaurants in Thailand).


But as chef @granthawthorne pointed out when he gave me some great food advice on the city, you get an explosion of flavour when the garnishes are mixed in - and it immediately takes away all the sweetness. The dish really comes alive and you can see what the fuss is about. Or as Gregg ‘The Egg’ Wallace (I can’t believe I’m missing Masterchef!) would say: “It grabs you by the ears and gives you a great big smack on the lips.” Presumably he’d be talking about a conventional kiss and not a Glasgow kiss, but both would be appropriate.

The steamed beef khao soi I had during the Sunday Walking Market, when roads are closed off and the town is filled with traders selling art and crafts from the local hill tribes, was the best of the lot.


It came with a pair of tongs and three plastic boxes of garnishes – containing pickled veg, limes and shallots.


The beef was incredible, but due to an appalling lack of my Thai and their English, I couldn’t get them to explain how they got chopped nuggets of shin that succulent and soft and so full of flavour. And the sauce was blisteringly hot – or at least it was when I stirred in a second helping of the soused green beans, cabbage and cucumber.


In the night market, I had another good peasant version of khao soi kai, with a honey chicken drumstick nestled on top. The gravy, with its turmeric and cardamom more beholden to Indian curries, was sublime and had a much deeper flavour than many thin, fragrant Thai sauces.


The pricier versions in restaurants are usually served with much thinner noodles, which to my mind aren’t as good, and are unnecessarily Westernised.


You get chicken breast rather than with bone – just as the tourists like it. But you are much better off going to a street food stall (when they haven’t sold out) and getting a superior dish for a fifth of the price. It’ll give you a much truer taste of Thailand. If you want to cook it, chef Shane Brierly (@chefshane) has a great step-by-step recipe with pics...CLICK HERE TO VIEW



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Twitter Solves Thailand Green Plant Riddle

Whenever I go abroad I like to eat what the locals eat. It gives you a much truer reflection of a country’s cuisine and eating habits. Sometimes I go into a fancy restaurant to try a skilled chef’s interpretation of a local dish, but I’m a great lover of rustic food and when you go off the tourist map there are always some surprises.

It was during one of my jaunts around the back streets of Chiang Mai that I came across a plant I’d never seen before. It resembled sprouting broccoli that had gone to seed or perhaps unripe elderberries, and was bubbling away in a pork belly and pig’s tail stew and was absolutely delicious.

Thanks to some very helpful food bloggers on Twitter – including @meemalee, @granthawthorne, @chezpim, @essexgourmet, @applelisafood and @NorthernSnippet - I eventually found out it was called sadao, and is the fruit and leaves from the neem tree.


I especially owe @pearcafe a big drink for badgering a Thai chef in Bristol. He scribbled its name in Thai - and it matched the hieroglyphics pencilled by a passer-by in my notebook. "Man thought I was very strange coming in off street to ask!" she said.

Apparently, you can get it in jars back in the UK, but I’d never seen it, and I was lucky to be in Thailand when it was in season. At first I thought it might be green peppercorns, but as the stew was 30 baht (about 60p) and peppercorns are relatively dear, there was no way they could make it at that price. I grabbed a plastic stool and waited as the dish bubbled away on a calor gas burner.


I watched as the locals queued up for their evening meal. It reminded me how much of a takeaway nation Thailand is. Food at street stalls is so cheap, healthy and delicious that many Thais say they don’t bother to cook themselves – it’s cheaper to buy it.


They carry the dishes home in little plastic bags and then eat together. Walk past an open window at supper time and you can often see a Thai family crouched down on the floor picking through bags of brightly coloured food.

Another thing I love about Thailand is the way street food sellers sometimes have a little Buddha shrine tucked away they can pray to. This one was at the back of the stall, near the tarpaulin, and perched on a little tiled plinth.


As the locals ordered their barbecued fish, minced pork and vegetable curries, and batter cakes made of tiny fish, I tucked into one of Chiang Mai’s famous spicy sausages.

It was like a good chorizo in texture, with little squares of moist fat. The heat hit me straight away and then the lime and coriander. It was wonderful and had all the salty meatiness of a good banger. I’ve had some fairly poor sausages since I’ve been here – including one that was sickly sweet that I gave to a beggar. But the sausages at that stall were the best of the lot.


Eventually, the stallholder came over and handed me a polystyrene tub full of pork sadao. It reminded me slightly of the peasant soups and stews they serve in South America, designed so that a little bit of meat goes a long way. There were slices of green beans, onions and tomatoes in there, as well as pig’s tail and a chunk of pork belly.


But it was the sadao that was the star. It was slightly bitter and had a faint taste of celery – one of my favourite flavours. The broth was thin and moreish and fairly subtle compared to many Thai dishes. It had been pepped up with a little red chilli, garlic and fresh basil leaves, but only a touch. Most of the flavour came from the white pepper that had been added - which was another reason I intitially suspected it was green peppercorns. I sat there and sucked the bones and then had another helping.

When I got back to my hotel I had a chat with a chef I’ve met and she told me how sadao grows near temples in the city and is revered for its medicinal qualities. I described the dish to her and she gave me the basics on how to make it.


She said you start by frying pounded red chillies and garlic, and then when they have cooked down and coloured the oil, you add slices of onion and the pork. You add water and boil it rapidly for ten minutes, and then add the tomatoes and the basil leaves. You boil it again, and then throw in the sadao for the last five minutes.

It was a great dish, and the thing I loved most was it didn’t have that ubiquitous citrus flavour of lemon grass and lime leaves, or coconut, or fish sauce for that matter, which can get a bit samey at times. I’ve no idea what sadao tastes like in jars, but if you ever get a chance to try it fresh, I urge you to do so. If you ask nicely, I’ll smuggle some home in my suitcase.

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Cheffing In A Restaurant In Thailand

Last night I spent the evening working in a restaurant kitchen in Chiang Mai with my two new cheffing chums (let’s call them Dave and Si because they deserve their own TV show - more than the Hairy Bikers anyhow). Si wore a wolf hat for some reason while we cooked. It was a novelty take on the traditional chef hat, and I didn’t ask why he was wearing it. I can only guess it might have had something to do with the Changs we’d been drinking.

But as I was a guest in his kitchen, it was none of my business, and quite frankly would have been rude of me to ask. It was his kitchen, and if he’d decided to don a Pope mask, then it was absolutely his right to do so. One thing you learn in cheffing is never to question a chef’s judgement - or even his fashion sense - if you’re on his turf. It’s just not done.


Anyway, it was a simple exchange – I showed them how to cook a couple of European dishes and they taught me some Thai cooking in return. Like many restaurants in tourist areas in Thailand, the place had a British food section for people who like to eat sausage, egg and chips wherever they are in the world.

Their restaurant, in the old walled city, already had steak and ale pie on the menu, which was selling like hot cakes, so I showed them how to make a decent steak and red onion pudding (get me) and one of my favourites, Irish stew.

When I taught them how to make pizza – and how ridiculously profitable it is – they were delighted. There are mugs in Chiang Mai who happily shell out £6 for a distinctly average pizza, when they can get a bowl of brilliant khao soi or massaman curry for less than £1.

But don’t get me started on that. I wanted to show you the two meals they cooked for me at the end of the evening – fried enoki mushrooms and prawns in oyster sauce, and the goddamned hottest tom yam soup I have ever tasted in my life. They said it was how they ate it, but they were grinning away when I tucked in. Thais have a great sense of humour, and find it extremely amusing tricking chubby farangs into eating ludicrously potent dishes. And as chefs very much share the same level of schadenfreude, Thai chefs really should not be trusted.


I was pretty drunk by that time in the evening, and I’m not going to detail the exact ingredients because the last thing the internet needs is another recipe for tom yam soup. But it was interesting seeing how they cook in restaurants in Thailand. I once did a short stint at the Dorchester Hotel in London, and used to watch the chefs in the Oriental Kitchen, and it reminded me of that – blindingly fast. Faster than any chefs I’ve seen.

If you wonder how your tom yam soup arrives five minutes after you order it in Thailand, then this is how they do it. The Chang beers didn’t seem to slow them in the slightest, or the wolf hat. So two wonderful dishes in a few minutes. Eat your heart out Jammy Oliver – but then these were REAL chefs.

They lit up the stove and got a wok and a metal soup pan on the go. They put about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in the wok and a pint of water in the pan. Soon the oil was smoking and the water bubbling. In the mean-time, Si finely chopped about eight fiercely hot red and green bird eye chillies.


Dave prepped the ingredients for the oyster sauce dish and put them in a bowl – chopped spring onions, sliced red chillies, enoki mushrooms, raw prawns, roughly chopped shallots and oyster sauce.


Si moved on to other soup ingredients – putting lime leaves, lemon grass, basil leaves, galangal, sliced button mushrooms, spring onions and the chopped chilli into a bowl. He chucked the contents into the soup and let it bubble away for a minute.


He then chopped up big chunks of a white fish, which had a very similar texture and flavour to haddock, and sliced a large red chilli. While he did this, Dave put a generous spoonful of tom yam paste into the soup. There was no stirring; he just let the heat of the water do the mixing.

He then poured in about a tablespoon of condensed milk (this is common in Thailand, some chefs put in coconut cream, but it is far better without coconut, which to my mind turns it into a completely different soup). The condensed milk amalgamates the flavours, lends sweetness and thickens the soup slightly. He then put in a small ladleful of lemon juice.

Si, meanwhile, chopped a large unskinned tomato into eight pieces, and roughly chopped a couple of shallots and put them in yet another metal bowl (I felt sorry for the potwash). They then went into the soup.


He let this bubble away and then put in the fish, which in that heat needed less than a minute to cook.


There was then an explosion of flames as Dave threw the enoki bowl into the smoking oil, and tossed the wok a few times, before stirring it all round with a ladle.


And that was it – the meal was pretty much done in the time it had taken me to gulp down a big bottle of ice cold Chang (which isn’t long). Si then chopped up some coriander and spring onion tops and chucked them into the soup and served it. I was glad I ate the enoki dish first – it really was wonderful and melted in my mouth – and I wouldn’t have been able to taste it otherwise.


Needless to say, the tom yam was extremely hot, and reminded me of the time I'd been talked into eating a phall by a notorious curryhead, and soon I was weeping away as Dave and Si smirked.


Just breathing air into my mouth afterwards was painful, let alone smoke. But although I can’t pretend I didn’t suffer the consequences, it was fantastic. Next time though I'll remember to leave a toilet roll in the fridge.

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Thailand: Sea Snails Cooked In A Clay Pot

I have just got back from a rather mercurial evening involving delicious sea snails and the evil tuk tuk drivers who plague the streets of Chiang Mai. I’d headed out to the night bazaar a little concerned about the major food poisoning investigation there over the tragic death of a New Zealand backpacker on Sunday.

But any concerns were put aside, and perhaps put into context, by the journeys to the market and back. I wanted to walk there, really I did, but the food market was much further than I realised and after the 58th tuk tuk driver had slowed down and beeped his horn at me, I relented.

I slid into the back and the driver sped off, cutting up two mopeds, narrowly missing a stray dog, and taking the first bend at such a speed that it made the back wheels wobble.


It soon became obvious that the contraption’s brakes were down to the metal when we hurtled over a canal bridge and almost into the back of a passing car. When the driver did actually stop at a red light, he looked at me in his rear view mirror, cranked up his radio, and said: “Why you want to go to night market? Many ladies, many bars here!”

At another stop, he tried again: “You want lady massage? I take you there.”

Finally, after another test of wills and his shot brakes, he dropped me off at the night bazaar. The place was packed with tourists and I headed around looking at the stalls, and then stopped off at a restaurant called Seafood Mho-O-Cha boasting “the best and fresh seafood in Chiang Mai”.


The fish and shellfish were packed in ice and looked as fresh as anything you’d get on the harbourside, even though Thailand’s second city is hundreds of miles from the sea. There were the usual mud crabs, blue crabs, lobsters, prawns and fish, and then I saw something I hadn’t seen so far in Thailand, and knew I had to have them.


The sea snails were piled up in the corner, like fat brown conches, and the manager only wanted 200 baht (about £5) for half a kilo. I asked how they cooked them, worried that they might turn out dried to foul-tasting grit like the cremated cockles I’d had in Bangkok. She said grilled, or something I didn’t understand. I asked how she would have them and she said something I didn’t understand, so I went for that.

After taking more pictures of the seafood, she wrestled me back to my table and I sat down and looked across at the next restaurant, which also boasted the “the best and fresh seafood” in town. Trying to put Chiang Mai’s seafood scare out of my mind, I bought a cold beer and a sang som, and then a steaming pot arrived at my table.

The waiter removed the lid and I was hit by a delicious smell of lime leaves, chillies and the sweet scent of fresh and best seafood. I hadn’t eaten all day, apart from three mussels a barman had given me that were as small as my tiny fingernail, and got stuck in.

The broth the snails were cooked in was absolutely fantastic. It was hot and sour, and filled with whole pink shallots, lime leaves, fresh basil sprigs, lemon grass, thick coins of galangal, and slices of red chilli. The snails themselves were beautifully cooked, and much firmer than whelks. There was no chewiness though, just like you get when you order fresh whelks at a decent seafood restaurant in Europe. They really were superb.


The shells weighed a tonne and were quickly scattered across an empty plate. They were so sturdy, I imagine if you dropped one on your foot you’d be hopping round for weeks – beholden to those merciless tuk tuk sharks. I finished the meal and drank the soup and sat there wondering whether to have another pot full.

The manager returned and I thanked her for her recommendation and asked her the name of the dish again. She asked someone else and said it roughly translated to “Thai-style sea snails cooked in a traditional clay pot” and was a speciality of the restaurant, and the only place you could get them in Chiang Mai.

Full and content, I headed out through the market again, but my good mood was quickly destroyed by another evil tuk tuk driver. It was obvious he hadn’t heard of my hotel, but kept insisting he had.


I knew it was all going to go horribly wrong and sure enough it did. After another Grand Theft Auto race through the streets, he headed the wrong way past the canals and kept ignoring me when I told him to turn round.

He took me up a couple more dark streets, and suddenly I was outside a neon-lit building in the middle of nowhere. It looked more like a boutique hotel than a go go club, but it was obvious what it was from the scantily-clad young women waiting outside. In fact, surrounded by dark warehouses and no witnesses, it looked exactly the sort of place you’d be lucky to get out of with your kneecaps intact.

The driver turned his engine off and the girls descended. The trouble with tuk tuks, apart from the criminal bastards who drive them, is they offer no protection to pulling arms. There are just three chrome poles, which means you can get attacked on three sides. But after a few minutes, I managed to get him to drive off again.

Then it was another chicane through the canal area, and more areas I didn’t know, and this time he dropped me off in the centre of Chiang Mai’s red light district.

“Bar here,” he kept saying. “Many beautiful ladies for you!” I’d had enough. I’m not a prude, but there was no way he was going to get his free gasoline bar kickback from me. I slid myself out of the tuk tuk, scowled at him, and told him I wasn’t going to pay him and walked off down the road.

I went into a bar and ordered a drink, and the driver followed me in, trying to get commission off the owner, who pointed out that all I’d ordered was a Pepsi Zero, and there was no money in that. Eventually he left, and sat outside in his tuk tuk staring at me darkly for 20 minutes, and waiting for me to leave.


When I left, he shouted at me again, and things looked like they were going to turn nasty, so I jumped in another tuk tuk and kept looking round half expecting him to be following.

But what might have saved me was the complete ineptitude of the new driver, who quickly got lost and after a few minutes we were on the city ring road. I started getting panicky thinking he was in cahoots with the other driver, and we were going to end up in some horrible Tarantino lock-up.

But there was no gimp, thank Buddha, and after another 20 minutes of dark alleys, he somehow found my hotel, which by then had closed. I eventually managed to find my way in, past the air conditioning units and rubbish bags at the rear of the guesthouse, and thankfully my key fitted the back door.

I headed off to bed trying to restore my good mood by wishing excruciatingly painful deaths on all tuk tuk racketeers, and thinking about what a splendid meal I’d had. There is only one thing for it though – tomorrow I hire a mountain bike.

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Thailand: Major Street Food Probe After Tourist's Toxic Seaweed Death

A quick update on my last blog about the tragic death of New Zealand backpacker Sarah Carter, who died after eating toxic seaweed at a street food stall in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Health officials are launching a full-scale investigation of food outlets in the city’s famous Night Bazaar, where Sarah, 23, (pictured above, centre) and her two friends Amanda Eliason, 24, (above, left) and Emma Langlands, 23, (above, right) ate.

Amanda, who also ate the seaweed, had emergency heart surgery and is now believed to be out of danger. Emma, who ordered a different meal from the stall, suffered food poisoning but is not seriously ill.

"We have never had such a case in Chiang Mai before," local public health chief Wattana Kanchanakamol said.

A preliminary report into Sarah’s death indicated a viral infection, he said. Experts are trying to track down the cause of the infection by collecting food samples from the Night Bazaar food market.

"The examination result is expected to be known in the next five days," Dr Wattana added.

He said one factor could be the fluctuating temperatures in Chiang Mai (it’s blindingly hot here during the day and chilly at night), which could result in food deteriorating more rapidly than expected.

Health officials are also being sent to other tourist areas around Chiang Mai to carry out food hygiene tests.

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Thailand: Tourist Dies After Eating Toxic Seaweed At Chiang Mai Food Stall

I was just about to head off for Chiang Mai to continue my tour of Thailand's food stalls when I heard some very sad news about a female backpacker dying from food poisoning after eating at the city's famous food market.

Sarah Carter, 23, was taken to hospital on Friday and passed away two days later after eating contaminated seaweed. Her two travelling companions Amanda Eliason and Emma Langlands survived the ordeal and are being treated in Chiang Mai Ram Hospital.

Amanda remains in intensive care after recovering from emergency heart surgery while Emma – who is thought to have ordered a different dish - has been moved into her own room and is now eating.

Sarah’s mother and brother have flown out to Thailand.

Her father, Richard Carter, from Auckland, New Zealand, said he had spoken to her when she was first admitted to hospital.

"It appeared to be just bad food poisoning. She appeared withdrawn and not sounding that good, but seemed all right," he said. "But within an hour of our conversation the thing just spread to her heart and strangled her heart."

He said the three women, who had all met at university in New Zealand, had bought meals at a "curry place" in Chiang Mai's famous food market.

He said he had been told that the toxin that killed his daughter was extremely rare. "They get one death every two years, but it seems only the tourists get it, the locals are immune to it," he added.

Thiravat Hemachudha, director of neurology at Chulalongkorn University Hospital in Bangkok, said toxins are found in certain types of seaweed around Thailand, but are "extremely rare".

Fish, typically bass and eels, can eat the poisonous seaweed without harm but the toxin can remain inside them and be passed on to anyone eating them, he said.

It is not yet known if Sarah and Amanda fell ill after eating fish or a local seaweed delicacy that was contaminated. Rotting seaweed can contain hydrogen sulphide, a highly poisonous gas with the odour of rotten eggs, which can cause vomiting and diarrhoea, but is rarely fatal.

Thailand is generally known for having higher food hygiene standards than many of its other Asian neighbours, and tourist officials have been quick to point out that Sarah’s death must be taken in perspective.

They say although you can expect to get an upset stomach when travelling to countries like Thailand, dying from food poisoning is extremely rare.

Travel experts say eating at Thai food stalls is generally safe, and you are as likely to get ill by eating in a five-star hotel where the food may have been sitting around for some time.

Food blogger Chawadee Nualkhair, who has just released a new book, Bangkok's Top 50 Street Food Stalls, says one tip when eating Thai street food is to look at the tray containing the traditional four Thai seasonings of sugar, fish sauce, lime juice, and chillies. “If the condiment tray is clean, the food will be clean,” she says.

However, standards obviously vary hugely. “I once went to a beef noodle shop on Ekamai (in Bangkok) where I found a dead cockroach in the chilli pepper-and-vinegar container. Needless to say, that shop isn't in the guide,” she adds.