I'm very lucky to be living in Bangkok for half a year now. On top of many wonderful things, it's been an amazing gastronomic experience. For me what makes up Thai flavor is the creative combination of contrasting yet complementary flavors, colors, and textures -- sweet, sour, hot, salty, crunchy, spicy -- and always, the exotic taste of fresh herbs (like Thai Basil, cilantro, kaffir lime leaves, mint leaves, lemongrass, etc). An indispensable condiment on any self-respecting Thai's table are chopped bird's eye chili in fish sauce.
They have an incredible appetizer dish here called Mien Kam. All the ingredients are laid out on a tray and you're supposed to place 1 or 2 pieces of each ingredient on a small cookie-sized round leaf (mind you, this is a leaf from some plant and not from a vegetable): small dried shrimps, ginger, peanuts, toasted coconut shavings, chopped chili, diced onion, diced lime. Top everything with a thick sweet coconut paste and roll the whole thing up like a tiny spring roll. Pop it all in your mouth in one go. I promise you, you won't believe the amazing explosion of flavours in your mouth!
How the Thais thought to combine all these different things to make such an incredibly simple but unforgettable dish is beyond me. Just one more thing that fascinates me about the Thai people.