We Americans embrace our greasy hamburgers, sweet soft drinks and crispy fried French fries. In Thailand the people have a portion of plain rice with nearly every meal. Today, I am retired and two years ago settled down in the Northern Thai provincial capital of Chiang Mai and having lived for many years in Chicago, I should know by now which food is preferable. In Thailand’s larger cities you’ll find a wide and varied range of restaurants serving dishes to all budgets and tastes. Chiang Mai is no exception. The locals here truly love to eat! Most of the city’s numerous restaurants are filled with Thais and Westerners alike enjoying a selection of various culinary delights. In this article I will not focus on the glitzy quality restaurants in which we only now and than eat. I would like to tell something about the Chiang Mai local’s day to day eating customs. The most popular fast-food establishments in the US are restaurants such as Burger King, Harvey’s, and off course McDonalds. In Chiang Mai we have the food stalls positioned across the city’s streets. The cheaply priced meals these street vendors prepare are ready and served within just a few minutes. The end result usually is a healthy and tasty meal. In addition, many of these stalls sell superb fresh Thai fruits including: strawberries, watermelon, mango, pineapple and oranges. The fruit of your choice will be cut into small parts, put in a plastic bag and you can eat it with the help of the provided sharp wooden stick. The price for this healthy portion of vitamins is only 10 baht, which is about 30 cents U.S. and the various fruits are always stored in ice and therefore having a refreshingly cool taste.Northern style snacks and fast-foods are available in the streets as well. Two of the most popular snacks are known as “Saikor” (Northern Thai sausages) and “Luuchin” (barbecued or fried meat balls on a stick) For 10 baht you can buy the sausage while a stick with about five meatballs on it costs five baht.However, these snacks are rather fatty. It might be better to sample a dish of cooked rice with in soy sauce stir fried vegetables and pork, chicken or beef. Again the vendor will deposit the take-away meal in a plastic bag, tightly sealed with elastic band. A dish like this will cost about 20 to 25 baht, which isn’t more than 70 dollar cents. You can buy a substantial meal together with a Northern Thai snack for less than one dollar. For most of the locals in Chiang Mai this is their most common daily dish. After receiving the bags with hot food they drive home on their light motorbikes, once they arrive at home the bag(s) are opened, one larger bowl is getting filled with plain rice, and several cups are being put on the table along with a cold bottle of water or a bucket of ice to cool the water. Most of us love quickly prepared, yet tasty and healthy food and we all like it to be affordably priced. Well, the big differences between the food in Chiang Mai and any city in the US are the services, qualities and prices…