Lecker?

Today is one of my last days in Chiang Mai, so my colleagues took me out for a proper Northern Thai lunch. The restaurant was on the top floor of an old wooden house, you had to take your shoes off to go in, and once there, you sat on the floor. The best table had a hole in the floor underneath it so you could dangle your legs into nothingness.
I usually let Win and Nicky order for the table, but they generally have some pretty bizarre ideas about food (Nicky genuinely likes durian ice cream), and are determined for us to try "proper thai food". So lunch today involved, from the normal to the truly bizarre:

fish tom yam (fairly standard, but spicier than the english version and without coconut milk)
two whole fried fish, complete with heads
pork laap (shredded meat with chilli and herbs), but fried and crispy
tiny fried fish (eaten whole, including head and bones)
fried pig intestines
fermented egg salad
The fermented eggs deserve some explanation - they involve burying an egg for three months with some ash, after which it goes black and develops a kind of jelly-like consistency, but stays egg-shaped. This is the best picture I can find:

They look kind of fun, right? Stylish colour combination, maybe? And they taste better than they sound - just like a slightly more eggy egg. Especially when served with fish sauce with chilli and garlic, and a bit of shredded mango and maybe a few cashews.
But anyway, the moral of the story is that Thai food in England is NOTHING LIKE Thai food in Thailand. Well, the standard red curry green curry pad thai are all pretty similar, except they change the flavours a bit for westerners - less chilli and less fish sauce. And in Thailand, pad thai is a quick solo lunch, bought off the street wrapped in a banana leaf, rather than something to be eaten in a nice restaurant. But Northern food is totally different - think lots of pork, normally roasted or fried, rather than in a curry, sticky rice and an omelette here or there. For your vegetables you get possibly my favourite dish of all, fried chayote (a local dark green vegetable) with garlic and oyster sauce. And of course, the Chiang Mai staple, Khao soy, noodles in a spicy coconut milk soup, with crispy ones on top, served with bits of lime, chives and red onion.
If you venture out onto the street you get the truly weird and wonderful local dishes, involving every edible bit of an animal - pork skin, chicken feet, congealed blood, intestines. And eggs cooked every imaginable way - like egg shell omelette, for example. Or for dessert, a creamy coconut milk soup with a whole soft-boiled egg lurking beneath the surface. Thai people generally order "family style" too, with a big selection of dishes for everyone to share, meaning you can sample the weird stuff without being stuck with a whole bowl of blood soup, which is just grim.
And obviously, it all costs next to nothing. So then I get put off from eating Thai food in England, because it's only the boring options at generally 10 times the price, but nowhere near as good. Sigh.