On noodle soups

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The journey of a thousand meals begins with a single dish. Mine was a bowl of thick, sweet, spicy laksa, eaten underneath a piece of tarpaulin slumping under the weight of the June monsoon rains, on a street in Kuala Lumpur.

I was excited but discombobulated,  poised and ready, and very aware that I was struggling to hold my chopsticks properly. A father and his teenage daughter smiled at me from across the small plastic table we were sharing, and eased my nerves as I ate tentatively, telling me all about the city I had just arrived in, what to do, where to go, and most importantly, what to eat.

Enduring travel memories are rarely the cinematic, Instagram filtered snapshots we tend to make them out to be. More often than not, they are sensory in nature. Many of mine are food based, shared and solitary moments of gratitude, mostly involving noodle based soups. Wherever I am in the world, I seem to gravitate towards noodle soups like a moth to a broth based flame. Burmese Mohinga, Vietnamese pho, Malaysian-Chinese lor and wonton mee. Oh, noodle soups of Southeast Asia, let me count the ways as I sit on a tiny plastic stool on a low table on the side of the road, chopsticks and spoon poised in anticipation of your spicy, life affirming goodness.

This experience is almost universal among travellers. The excitement at finding (or finding again) that tiny little stall where the food is fresh and fast. You may have to chase the vendor with their cart down the street, you may have to wait for what seems like an eternity in the midday heat, mouth salivating and forehead perspiring, but you know it's so worth it. You know this is where you want to be.

Roll on the next adventure, the next stall, the next dish.