Category Archives: Bangkok

by | 11/25/2011 · 1:18 pm

The Thanksgiving Post

Because I can't not use this photo

Somehow, the sacrifice of many turkeys puts people in the sort of mood to count their blessings. I am one of them (albeit a day later than everyone else). Of course, there is being thankful for my family, and friends, and people who are willing to put up with me for a few hours during the day in general. I can understand your pain, kind people. Thank you for that.

I am also thankful for the many great experiences I have had over the past year — especially the food-based kind. How lucky I’ve been! So here is, pretty much, a slide show of some snippets of my year, which has passed by far too quickly for my liking. Just imagine sitting in a rec room somewhere, wanting desperately to escape while I drone on and on about boring stuff. Ah, Thanksgiving!

1. While in France in the autumn, we escaped from our tour long enough to score a dinner at Alain Chapel for my birthday. It was a great birthday! My choice was simple: a roasted veal kidney, sliced at the table and served with a thick ‘n glossy red wine sauce.

 

 

2. Delicious China. Need I say more? Like many many other people, my favorite dish is the ultimate in Sichuan comfort food: mapo tofu, cubes of jiggly blank goodness coated in chilies and beans and good ol’ oil, one of the more bewitching combinations known to man.

 

3. Berlin is one of my favorite cities in the world. I look forward to going almost every year, when my husband attends a travel fair and I end up having the entire city to myself. I love that Berlin’s possibilities are endless. There is always something new to discover, and always something I end up missing out on. On my next visit, a trip to the pirate-themed restaurant will be an absolute must!

Here, the beef goulash with spaetzle at the Reinhard’s on Kurfurstendamm, otherwise known as Thai Tourist Central.

 

4. When my family go on holiday together, my dad always ends up being the cook. This might suck for my dad, but it’s a real treat for us, a throwback to when we were kids and dad had to cook dinner after he came home from work.

Quite sensibly, dad tries to shy away from cooking duties now, but sometimes, in a foreign country and surrounded by hungry family members demanding perfectly fried rice or a well-seasoned larb, he cannot say no. Here is his yum nuea, a spicy beef salad made with the local Limousin beef of the Perigord region.

 

5.  Obvious alert: street food. I can’t say I love it in all its permutations and varieties — you may not have guessed, but I’m not the biggest jok (Chinese-style rice porridge) fan in the world, and I actually dislike Thai-style som tum (pounded spicy salad) — but I am truly thankful for the vast range of street food out there right now.

And the variety keeps growing! We are getting Japanese-style okonomiyaki (savory crepes) and pasta sauced with different curries and even, I hear, stabs at Western food. Thai food is at an incredible moment in time when it is figuring out, again, what it really is, expanding and changing its parameters, to the delight or dismay of many. What’s next? I don’t know, but it’s definitely something to be thankful for.

Dry thin noodles (sen lek) with pork, "yum"-style, at Baan Jik in Udon Thani

 

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, Chinese, food, food stalls, France, French food, noodles, restaurant, Thailand

by | 11/03/2011 · 2:29 pm

Something Special

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I — like many of my fellow Bangkokians — am feeling a bit down. The kind of down that doesn’t bear talking about.

So why am I writing a blog post? To tell you the truth, I don’t really want to write a blog post. For something that is better done, funnier and far more likable, you should deffo check out writer/actress Mindy Kaling’s blog: http://theconcernsofmindykaling.com/, because we all need a little bit of inspiration now and then, and where better than from the author of “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?” (the answer is yes).

Do you want your inspiration to come from somewhere closer to home? I am nothing if not obliging. Let me do you a favor and direct you to another something special, http://mysousvidelife.wordpress.com/. Is she not adorabun? Someone get this woman a cooking show, stat! Another thing: despite being a “flood refugee”, she is still decorating Halloween cupcakes and figuring out fun things to do with all those shmackets of Ma-Ma noodles lurking in all our kitchen cabinets (no need to front, you know you have them too).

Are you still here? Geez. Well, if you’re not up for something fun and uplifting, I’m your girl. As one would naturally expect, the floods are taking their toll everywhere, including on the sidewalk. Many, many, many of my fave vendors are MIA: the buay loy guy on Mahachai Road; the khao kluk gapi (rice with shrimp paste) vendor in front of Baan Phra Arthit; the Hainanese chicken rice people in front of Great Shanghai; the chicken and bitter melon noodles guy behind Emporium; the Sukhothai noodle guy (why didn’t he call to tell me?) next to Klong Saen Saep; and the guay jab people across from Benjakiti Park. There are more, many more whose absences I have yet to discover and mourn.

 

Not available right now

These people spent their working lives making us happy; now they are gone, with nothing to mark their absence except maybe a shuttered storefront or, more disconcertingly, nothing at all. They have vanished into thin air.

Then there are the people who are stubbornly sticking it out. They deserve special plaudits, because they are idiots*. Riverside, prey to the fickle lords of high tide? Sign me up! Alongside the beef noodle folks at Nai Soi and the famously taciturn Roti-Mataba is Khao Na Gai Ha Yaek (085-124-5511, open 10-19.00). Just steps down Phra Arthit road from Roti-Mataba, this chicken-and-gravy on rice vendor is quietly packed most lunchtimes, but inspires none of the usual fanfare, which makes it very special indeed. Yes, there is the khao na gai (35 baht), as well as versions with gun chieng (sweet Chinese sausage, 40 baht) or runny fried egg (42 baht), or best of all, both (47 baht). There are also noodles topped with chicken gravy, deep-fried noodles with chicken gravy, and sticky rice with red pork. But the namesake dish is the best.

Wandering down the road at high noon, unable to find ANYTHING I once loved in a landscape that looked familiar but wasn’t, this plate of chicken gravy on rice crowned with torn fresh coriander, fried egg and sweet sticky sausage was a godsend, the best thing I had eaten in weeks. I forgot I wasn’t supposed to be hungry, and ate it all.

*Obviously, I don’t really think they are idiots.

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, chicken, food, food stalls, rice, Thai-Chinese, Thailand

by | 10/27/2011 · 3:45 pm

Staying Dry

Dinner in Pathum Thani

Lately, I’ve been signing off all my texts/emails/WhatsApps (what DO you call these?) with the exhortation to “stay dry”. As if people needed reminding to, you know, “stay dry”. What can I say? It makes me feel better. But what does staying dry really mean?

Yes, floodwaters are rushing toward inner Bangkok. This makes people react in different ways. In my case, well, I guess it’s still a mixed bag of feelings that I have a hard time articulating. There is confusion, yes, and a little fear, and of course fatigue. I am very, very tired. But the thing I feel most right now is … curiosity. I am not so interested in thinking of defeat, or worrying, or angering, or, (I can’t believe I’m saying this) even eating. Okay, maybe eating, if it involves a buffet with an unlimited time span. Maybe that.

Bangkok Hospital has a program sending volunteer doctors and nurses on daily trips up north to see patients and distribute medicine to people who need it. Transport usually involves transferring from van to military vehicle to boat. Sometimes they go to a central location, like a temple, and sometimes they go into people’s houses. Until a week ago, they went to Ayutthaya; now that it is impossible, they go to Patum Thani. Obviously, I have no real, concrete skills of any kind, but I volunteered to go anyway. I was curious. My brother and I became the awkward hangers-on-slash-pretend pharmacists (don’t worry, one and sometimes two nurses double-checked the “orders” we filled).

I can’t lie, at first it was bleak. The smell of the rotting water made me woozy, making me break out into a panic-sweat. Aside from the sound of the motor, we traveled a couple of kilometers in deathly silence — no phones, no televisions, the view of cars parked along the expressway off-ramp constantly in the background. Water had already reached the lowest cars.

Traveling along a major road

(Photo by Sutree Duangnet)

We traveled to a temple that had flooded out completely on the ground floor. The second floor had turned into a de facto evacuation center and about 80 people lived there, sharing resources and space and energy. The doctors saw everyone, dispensed advice, and prescribed medicine — the most popular items turned out to be calamine lotion, eye drops and Diazepam.

What struck me was that people were kind, even crammed together without most of their belongings, confined to a space the size of an elementary school dining hall. They offered us water and food. One corner of the hall served as the kitchen; there was one shower and one toilet. A cat and her kittens lived on the ledge, while dogs — the strong, lucky ones — would jump through the windows from time to time.

Life went on, in its way. Everyone was staying dry the best way they could. Kids shouted from the window to the ones, also living on the second floor, next door. A man came in, offering sweets to the children. As we prepared to leave, they were setting up for dinner: rice, grilled Thai mackerel, shrimp paste chili dip. Three papayas and a bunch of bananas were waiting for dessert. They gave us the food we brought them as we got into the boat, saying they were “afraid it would spoil”. We ate it all on the way home.

The view from the front of the temple

(Photo by Sutree Duangnet)

On the way back, things seemed better. The rotten water was there, yes, but there was also: a group of friends on a wooden raft, enjoying an early dinner; an enterprising store-owner who had walled up half of her doorway with concrete, selling her wares to shoppers on boats; kids paddling along us, trying to flirt with the nurses. Our boat man made dinner plans with friends sitting on a nearby roof, their feet dangling over the water. As we waded through knee-deep water to our transport, he reminded us to “wash our feet”. Perhaps a new way to sign-off in the coming days.

 

 

 

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Filed under Asia, Bangkok, food, Thailand