A Thai Buffet – the Size of a Football Field!

Sadly, my Thanksgiving dinner will likely be an Air Asia Inflight meal this year. ;(

I’m momentarily poised to take on Myanmar come Sunday (well actually, I fly to Bangkok then, but am allowing a few days to grab a visa there before I head to Myanmar on Thanksgiving day back in my native land).

In any case, I guess you could say I’ve got food on the brain (turkey ‘n gravy, Gram’s potato dumplings, pumpkin pie – sigh…) and thus wanted to quick share with you one of my most recent Thai taste treats (and trust that there have been many) here in Chiang Mai.

Indeed, apparently a Chiang Mai gastronomic INSTITUTION of sorts – the local Sukontha Buffet.

A boatload of Couchsurfers stuffing their collective chops

As a preamble to the recent Yi Peng/Loy Krothong festivities last Saturday, a large group of we CSers (Couchsurfers) met for happy hour on Friday night, and then made our way on foot to the legendary Sukontha Buffet (as luck would have it – coincidentally, the buffet turns out to be pretty much on the doorstep of my new apartment – who knew?)

Imagine… a veritable FOOTBALL FIELD teeming with all manner of taste treats – with seating for ONE THOUSAND. An all-you-can-eat buffet – with simmering hot-pots strategically placed at every 4 place-settings on long tables, free (non-alcoholic) drinks, and multiple looong buffet tables laden with thinly sliced beef, pork and chicken (along with 15 more varieties of hoofed and clawed critters I couldn’t begin to even identify). Plus seemingly every blessed sea creature on the Planet (prawns, crab, scallops, lobster, crayfish, a dizzying assortment of shelled mollusks, mussels and whatnot). Both fresh and cooked vegetables and legumes, rice, noodles of every imaginable color, shape and stringiness. Salads galore, enough tropical fruit juice varieties to make Jack Lalanne cry, and for dessert? An uncountable medley of donuts, tarts, candies, cookies, and ice cream with a dozen different toppings.

It was sheer culinary DECADENCE I tell ya.

And all for the preposterous sum of 209 baht (uh, about $6).

Wishing all my native compatriots back there in the U.S. of A.
a most tasty and THANKFUL Turkey Day!