Yola
Kalare: Restaurants and Night Bazaar
In Thailand you will find a very specific kind of local restaurant. I have seen them in every mall and in many night markets. The Night Bazaar in Chiang Mai is called Kalare. It covers a fairly big area, full of tables and with the local food stalls on the sides. Each stall advertises its specific food on posters, by way of very good collages, dishes in showcases and some even have dishes made of wax, silicone, or plastic so you can just point out what you want, eliminating the language barrier. Somewhere near the entrance or in the center, a small counter can be found where they sell coupons (in this case) or prepaid cards.
For example, you buy a prepaid card for 100 Baht (that's just over €2 and enough for one person) and proceed to the stalls that interest you, order your dish and cut the coupons that correspond to the price of the dish or you deduct the cost from the card. The same goes for drinks. And so you go from stall to stall. When you finish your dinner and have a credit left on your card or coupon, you can hand it in at the box office and receive the credit back in cash. Also distributed in trolleys at each point are chopsticks and spoons, sometimes forks, sauces but no trays or knives. So it is a kind of self service with lots of stalls, each with its own cuisine and specialties. You can find all the country's noodles specialities (noodles or rice cakes), all versions of rice, soups, chicken, duck, pork, beef, eggs, salads , seafood ( very scarce), insects, fruits and drinks and all sauces, especially soy, fish and chili. It is fun, invites "risk" with dishes unknown and encouraged to be tried by the locals. It is very cheap and, last but not least, there are always interesting activities near the tables, music, local and international occasionally, dances, and in some during the last hours the ubiquitous karaoke (usually on the weekends, which are most popular). So enjoy authentic dinner with entertainment for 2, at most 3, Eoros. Bon Appetit!
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