I'm not really sure if this bean even exists in my home country or if it does it is some sort of specialty thing that would only appear at Asian markets and are probably shipped there frozen.
I was walking along once with a group of people that had some Thai people in it and noticed a rather powerful aroma coming from one of the street-food vendors and then one of the Thai women in our group started saying "they have Sadaw!" in such an excited way that it was like a child getting excited for Christmas or something.
I had heard of these beans before and even though I have been here for many years at this point, I had never tried them and wasn’t even aware that they were around, if they were. According to my Thai friends this is a southern Thailand delicacy of sorts and for the most part the veggie doesn’t make it all the way up here in the north and for whatever reasons, the farmers here in the north don’t really cultivate them either. They grow high up in really tall trees and are quite difficult to obtain. They have trained monkeys that will go an get them for the farmers in the south but they don’t make it to the markets up in the north because the farmers in the south can sell them all there and have no reason to take a chance on them spoiling in transit to sell in other markets.
Normally a shrimp curry rice plate on the streets would cost around $2 or so but with the “imported” Sadaw beans this doubled the price and well, they were quite stingy with how many they gave us. I am willing to try almost anything once but I was actually a bit afraid of this because while it is being cooked it gives off an almost horrible aroma / stench.
But when I bit into them I was kind of delighted. It doesn’t taste at all like it smells and it has a nice crispy snap to it as well. I was told after I had already eaten about half of them that the beans “stick with you” for a while afterwards meaning that when you use the toilet, it is going to be evident that you had Sadaw. That’s all I have to say about that and all I can say is that in this regard the vegetable is a lot like asparagus.
I can't imagine what the first couple of people were like when they first discovered this bean. I can imagine the conversation
that smells awful
yeah, we should eat it
Then when it is cooked it ends up somehow smelling even worse.
These beans are called Petai beans apparently, but I have never heard anyone in Thailand refer to them as such. They are "Sa-Daw" or just stinky beans. While it is really unlikely that you are going to encounter them in Chiang Mai because they are both seasonal and normally from quite far away, places like Krabi, Phutet, Phang-Nga, Hat Yai and other places in the south have them in great supply although they can be quite expensive (relative to the region, of course) depending on what time of year it is.
I highly recommend that you try them if you encounter them, but just be aware of the side effects that I mentioned earlier that I do not care to discuss in greater detail :P