BANGKOK — The coconut wood pestle hits the mortar, and the chili fumes rise in a cough-inducing haze. Salted crab releases its funk, along with bits of claw and carapace. Shreds of green papaya are tossed in, bathed in a blast of fermented fish paste tempered by palm sugar. The smell is alive and dead, asphyxiating and alluring all at once. More than anything, this green papaya salad, made in a street cart by a woman who has been wielding her pestle for three and a half decades, provides the perfume of Bangkok.

Source: New York Times December 14, 2019 09:56 UTC