Sorry for the delayed posting. Things have been crazy here. Days turn into weeks in Bali due to the lack of seasons and the weather always being perfect every day. My host explained that is why 2 weeks turned into 26 years for her. Next post will explain why I am so busy. Also, my lovely mother is in town, so I am trying to spend time with her.
Back to Bangkok…
We flew to Bangkok for one reason: to eat Thai food and learn the nuisances of the recipes we have at our restaurant, Siam Sally. I can promise you that the three of us did not get cheated. It is actually pretty funny—we had dozens of meals at restaurants and in the street markets, but only really tried the 4 main dishes in our restaurant that we felt needed the most work and fine tuning: Pad Thai, Tom Kha Gai, Sum Tom, and some weird mushroom dish I cannot really remember the name of.
We landed at 7:40 pm, went to the hotel, dumped our bags out and went straight the lobby to try the Sum Tom. The restaurant was nice and we ended up ordering about 3-4 dishes and were writing down reminders in small books and making mental notes on how everything tasted. After the first dinner we hopped into a cab and went to a hole in the wall called “Jay-Fai.” Jay-Fai is not a hard place to miss as you are walking down a crowded street in Bangkok; most noodle shops charge 20-40 Baht ($1) for their noodle dishes. Jay Fai charges 250-400 Baht and there is a line out the door. The restaurant has absolutely zero décor and the tables are plastic lawn furniture. However, after tasting the food (which in my opinion was the best of the week, even outdoing the Peninsula), my doubts were wiped away. The prawns were the size of golf balls and the herbs and veggies in their soup stocks were fresh and bountiful.
Woke up, ate the room service continental breakfast and were out the door to go to the big 10 story tall shopping center called MBK (mentioned in the first post). At the top of MBK there is a huge food court with over 60 vendors. I know what you readers are thinking, why the hell would we go to a food court in Bangkok to try Thai food? I was also skeptical at first, and I guess the only answer is that all food courts are not created equally. The entire complex takes tokens so that the vendor stalls you get food from do not have to deal with cash. The average token sale was around 40 Baht per person. When we went to the cashier and asked for 800 Baht ($17) worth of tokens for food the lady looked at us with a look of disgust and confusion and handed us a large cup of tokens. Typical Americans.
I cannot even count how many dishes we had there, but to give you some perspective, we were there for over 2 hours. If I would have to give a ballpark figure, I would say 13 dishes. This food court is where I discovered my favorite Thai dessert of all time, “NahmKai Sai.” Nahm Kai Sai is shaved ice with coconut milk, pandanus leaves, and a variety of “tidbits” that included jellied fruits, nuts, etc. See the picture below sothat you can see all of the lovely and colorful ingredients that you can throw in this dessert. It is basically like a creamy snow cone with natural candy in it. I had about 6 the entire trip.
The food court and the first day were the most memorable experiences of the trip. It is pretty funny when you look back at vacations like this—we ate at the Mandarin Oriental and the Peninsula as well, but the experience did not resonate as strongly with me in comparison to the street markets. Bangkok is also a strange town, as you get very very bored after about 3 days. There is really nothing to do there besides shopping and eating. We hopped on the plane and started preparing for the big catering project that we are doing. I arrived back home the same body weight! I guess it is because we walked a lot and Thai food is a lot of fish and stocks...not a lot of saturated fat.
Next post: Monuments in Bangkok, and what I have been doing with myself.
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