Bangkok from the Banyan tree.We have arrived in Thailand, the land of gigantor malls, street food galor, the scam, wats, rivers, coconuts, islands in the sea – one after the other after the other, and blessed and cool ac. Let’s take them in order.
The gigantor mall is a fixture of the Bangkok skyline, and not only that, each and every one is always packed. They are nicer than American malls, more expensive than American malls and have food courts the size of a normal American mall. The food courts act as sanitized versions of the food stalls that line the streets outside the malls. You can find fish balls, noddle soup, Chinese thai and Japanese food, frozen yogurt, a burger, anything you want. Also, all of the malls are bathed in amazing AC that allows for an escape from the icky sticky that is a Bangkok afternoon. It is amazing what a quick jaunt into the AC can do to refresh your barking dogs.
Even though the mall has the sanitized version of street stalls nothing beats the real thing, at least for me. For Kath it is a bit harder, as the stalls (in the malls and on the street) sell basically meat and more meat. I have tried squid, pork fat and beef on a stick. With the squid they slice it up real small after it is cooked and put it in a plastic bag where they bath it in incredibly hot and sour chilli sauce. YOWSERS. We had quail eggs wrapped in wonton deep fried and dipped in sweet sauce. We tried Chinese black jelly for desert and grilled bananas for breakfast. For 50 cents you can get a bottle of fresh squeezed mandarin juice and for 25 cents a bag of fresh cut mango, watermelon, banana or pineapple. Mango and sticky rice is a buck fifty and we haven’t even tried one percent of what is on offer. There are crepes and waffles, grilled fish, papaya salad made in worn and flavored mortars, the pestles encrusted in peanut and fish sauce. I guess we’ll just have to keep on eating…
As for the scam, Bangkok is full of them and we did fall for one the first day. Having done no research we hopped in a Tuk Tuk that promised us a cheap ride around the city. While he did take us to the Golden Mountain and the lucky Buddha and Jim Thompsons house, he also took us to his “sponsors,” who he said would give him free petrol if we stopped in and said hello. We spent half an hour in each store, got some free drinks and AC and then left. So far so good. He then took us to what we thought was a TAT office, the national office for tourism in Thailand. After another half an hour we were the proud owners of a trip to Koh Samui, bungalow on the beach and everything. Coming out of the office I noticed that TAT didn’t stand for tourism authority of Thailand but instead something like tourism and Thailand. Needless to say, the trip we bought, while good and real, was incredibly overpriced and for longer than we wanted. This woman was incredibly convincing in the office. Thinking we had been scammed we went online and read up and sure enough there was almost a direct description of what had happened to us listed on the internet along with scams for tailors and massages and other such things. I guess everybody needs to be scammed once, hopefully that is enough.
Now we find ourselves on this island, which is a beautiful island full of coconuts and beaches and warm inviting water. It is also full of resorts and lots and lots Germans and kids and did I mention the resorts, the fact that there are lots of resorts. But even the resorts are beautiful in their own way, and our bungalow is right on the beach and there is a cheap Thai restaurant up the road and things could be worse than being stuck on an island in the Gulf of Thailand for five days. I’m gonna take a dip.
Below are some food pictures more to come.
quail eggs and squid stick
River prawns about to be DEVOURED
Curly potato on a stick with red salt
diced squid from the chatuchak station with the hottest sauce ever.
mango sticky rice. second day in Bangkok.
Chicken roasted in fish sauce and papaya salad along with thai style iced tea
