We've seen street food vendors in every town and city on this trip, but Bangkok feels like the very beating heart of street cooking. Seemingly every third block, in every kind of neighborhood, from the upscale mall blocks to the grotty tourist run, is lined with carts, and stands are constantly blooming and vanishing throughout the day as waves of commuters and shoppers flow and ebb. Underneath the gleaming wats, outside the gates of the extravagant palace, at the doors to the metro and outside the boxing arenas, the smell of spice, oil and grilled meat wafts. In other ways, for all the beautiful temples, bustling markets, and cultural activities, or perhaps because of them, Bangkok felt like Big City, Anywhere, The World - but in this, at least for me, it seems its own.

Every kind of meal can be found on wheels. Most popular seem to be fried and grilled snacks on skewers, including meatballs, sausages, meats, spring rolls, and grilled rice patties. Then there are the fruit and drink vendors, with fresh and sliced fruits, smoothies, teas and shakes. There are entire meals to be had from carts I could fit in my backpack. Sometimes there is a stool to prop yourself on while you eat, but often their noodles, soups and curries are dispensed in plastic bags that look unerringly like bags of goldfish bought at a fair. There are a myriad of other choices: crepes, black jelly in syrup, ice cream, eggs, toasted nuts, and the list goes on into infinity.

There are so many options, you need a field guide to sort them all out. Luckily, one exists: Thai Hawker Food not only describes a large percentage of the carts and the foods you can get at them, it also includes drawings of the dishes and the names in Thai script, so you can resort to pointing at it if other methods of communication are not so smooth. I wish I had a book like this for every country we were visiting! Thanks to my friend Naomi, who once lived in Thailand, for giving me the heads-up on this, and lots of other Thai travel and eating tips.

Some of the highlights of our grazing the many street carts of Bangkok were boiled quail eggs tucked into wonton wrappers and fried; green fruits, sour enough to make my eyelids twitch, served with packets of sugar, chili, salt and sometimes tiny dried shrimp; and little rice-skinned dumplings filled with nut paste made on a little steamer right before you, then sprinkled with dried garlic. We had some lovely noodles and curries as well, and buckets of Thai iced tea, but nothing in that vein that we haven't seen perfectly done in American Thai restaurants as well.

Bangkok is so saturated with street-food culture that even some of the mall food courts are designed with a series of stations, each counter making one sort of dish, exactly as you would find it on the sidewalk outside. The mall court has the advantage of English signage and plenty of seating, and the food in the one we visited far surpassed my expectations, so I would definitely recommend it to anyone intimidated by street food, or as a warm-up for the real thing. We had a soup that struck me as an Asian menudo: the broth thick with gelatin, rich with five-spice, and stocked with liver, tripe and onion, as well as fried noodles topped with pork and veggies in a thick gravy and a green papaya salad.