I finally talked to an older traveler who changed my whole approach to eating abroad

Last week at a hostel in Austin, I met a 72 year old woman named Carol who has been to 38 countries. She told me she never eats at restaurants near tourist spots and instead looks for places where the menu is handwritten. Said she spent $3.50 on the best meal of her life in a tiny alley in Bangkok. Made me realize I've been wasting money on overpriced food just for convenience. Anybody else have a random stranger totally shift how you travel?

3 comments

3 Comments

beth_park4d ago

That lady sounds amazing. I used to think the best food meant finding the place with the longest line of tourists, honestly. But hearing about her $3.50 meal in a Bangkok alley makes total sense, the handwritten menu thing is a great trick I'm going to try. It's wild how one random conversation can just flip your whole mindset like that.

wood.uma4d ago

One random conversation can just flip your whole mindset" - that part really got me. I've had probably a dozen of those $3.50 alley meals that turned out to be some of the best food I've ever eaten, but it took me years of tourist traps to actually try them. It's honestly a bit embarrassing how long I stood in line for overpriced pad thai before I finally let a local grandma drag me down a side street.

hannah_wells4d ago

Ended up in a tiny shop in Tokyo once where the owner only spoke Japanese and pointed at a picture of a fish on the wall. He brought out this bowl of ramen with a soft boiled egg and a slice of pork that was way better than anything I had at the popular places online. Cost about 500 yen and I still think about it. Sometimes the best stuff is the stuff nobody is writing about.