Corinne Redfern
July 31, 2018
Her aunt taught her how to cook as a teenager, and now, 51-year-old Malli Chaiya, a finalist in Urban Adventures’ first ever global street food awards, has been running her papaya salad stall on Chiang Mai’s Kampangdin Road for 21 years. Corinne Redfern goes for a chat—and a tasting.
The first time Malli Chaiya prepared a papaya salad, she was 13 years old and trying desperately not to drip tears into the wooden bowl of finely sliced fruit, garlic, fish sauce and tomatoes.
“I’d just moved to Bangkok on my own, to live with my auntie and uncle, and I was terrified,” she remembers. “I’d grown up in a small town in the northeastern provinces of Thailand, and I wasn’t used to all these buildings and all these people. Everything was scary and new. I spent every day standing behind my aunt as she ran her food cart in the city center, watching her cook and trying not to miss my family.”
But if standing behind a food cart all day is hard, then hairdressing proved even harder. “I was expected to start work at 7am and continue through until 8pm every day of the week,” Malli says. “I was so tired and stressed. I had fallen in love too and married Narong—but I had no time to see him.”
She pauses and lowers her voice, setting down her knife and stepping out from behind her cooking station for the first time so that we can speak privately. “It was after I had three miscarriages that we agreed enough was enough,” she shares. “I was so unhappy. I couldn’t stop crying.”
Desperate, the couple used Narong’s savings from his work as a mechanic to buy a small metal cart and two plastic stools, and they positioned them on the pavement outside the front of their house on Kampangdin Road. “The first thing I did was buy the ingredients to make papaya salad,” she remembers. “I was so nervous, I had to keep tasting the mixture to make sure I’d got the measurements right. These days, I just know.”
Malli insists she hasn’t changed despite her growing reputation. She still wears the same green gingham apron over the same blue t-shirt and she still chops the vegetables with the same steady hands. But she speaks with a quiet confidence that belies her years of success. After all, expanding the business wasn’t her only triumph. “Within a year of buying the cart, I was pregnant with my daughter,” she says, beaming. “Three years later, I had a son too.”
Her children grew up in the background of the family business, accompanying their mother before school to Chiang Mai’s morning markets to buy fresh vegetables and helping to wash the plates when they’d finished their homework at night. Fast forward two decades, and Malli’s daughter is now studying in the Philippines, while her 18-year-old son attends the local sixth-form college.
“On a good day, I can earn 15,000 baht (USD $ 450) in six hours, and all that money goes towards their education,” Malli says, adding that she can barely fathom earning such an income. As a child, her family was so poor that she felt forced to drop out of school aged 11 because she needed to help support her rice-farmer parents.
The food appears to be flying off the small metal display shelf next to her, but on the off-chance that there is anything left over at the end of the day, Malli says she gives it to the women who work with her to take home to their families. “My auntie taught me the saying ‘clean food, good taste’, and it’s true. You can tell when you’re not eating fresh meat or vegetables, and I won’t take that risk with my customers.”
Her passion is clear, but Malli admits the work isn’t always easy. Over time, she’s developed methods for dealing with the madness. Some days, when she’s feeling particularly tired or stressed, she imagines her aunt watching her cook. Her death six years ago came out of the blue, and still feels like a punch to the stomach. “She was like a mother to me,” Malli says, turning away from the stove for only the second time this morning to speak more softly. “She taught me everything I know—I would be nothing if it wasn’t for her. She was only 65.”
Reaching forward to touch my hand, Malli says she hangs onto the memory of her aunt flying up from Bangkok for a holiday a few years earlier and experiencing the food cart for herself. “She said that she was so proud of me and everything that I’d achieved. Then she tasted the papaya salad, and said it was even better than her own,” Malli laughs. “I know it’s not true, but it was the happiest moment of my life.”
––––
