Bangkok Glutton

So, I’m going bald. This seems like it should be private information, except that it’s 1. obvious, and 2. if you can’t tell a whole bunch of people you haven’t met in real life, then who can you tell, right? This hair loss, which accelerated after my bout with Covid 19, is obviously a curse from CP Corporation or an irate Thai tourism official, and I have to either find a witch doctor to fight this curse with a bunch of raw eggs, or complain about it on this blog. I have clearly chosen the latter.

Anyway, the “I’m losing my hair oh no” alarm in my brain has ratcheted up from an anxious hum to a full on roar, so if you are here for some info on Thai food, today might not be the day to stop by. I’ve got more important things to discuss. Like, what do you think I should do?

1. Shave my head? Men do it, why can’t women? I can pretend I am bucking gender conformity. However, I recently hit my head very hard while watching my daughter pack for college and now have an enormous bump on my skull. That will go away though, right? Right?
2. Develop a fondness for head scarves and turbans. This means I have to change the entire way I dress currently (ie like a color blind hobo). I might even have to coordinate the scarf to the clothing. That seems difficult.
3. Wear a wig. I really don’t want to do this, because Thailand is hot.
4. Wear a hat. I also don’t really like to do this either, for the same reason as number 3. Also my mom once told me Asians look bad in hats.
5. Leave it alone. I don’t think I can bring myself to do this either.

In any case, I am wary of going out nowadays, because of the fact of said hair loss, and the fear of it being seen by anyone who is over the height of 4’9 (this is almost everyone). So when I do go out, I need it to really count. And what is more of a slam dunk, food wise, than the section of Bantadthong Road near Sam Yan market? (That said, we really need to find a new name for this neighborhood, like how people tried to rename Hell’s Kitchen in New York City as “Clinton”. Thaiton?)

On my second foray into this food paradise, I had grand visions of trying everything I had missed out on before: fish porridge, the aharn tham sung (made to order) shophouse selling great-looking stir-fries, the Chinese-style ice cream parfaits, even the black sesame dumplings in hot ginger broth at Ginger Soup. What we ended up doing: eating at Elvis Suki again. Still good!

But there was a reason why we went back. I mean, besides the seabass and the scallops. And it was because the line at Jeh Oh was a few people shorter than it normally was. In case you forgot, this is what the line normally looks like:

But this time, the line only extended to the red hanging lantern. That gave us hope. So we marched to the front of the line (or, rather, crept along obsequiously with our heads down so that no one would think we were trying to cut in front of them in line), searched for someone who looked like they knew what was happening (a man in a red sports shirt) and asked them how to get into the restaurant, after which he promptly asked us how many were in our party and then pressed a piece of paper with a number scrawled onto it in pen into my palm.

I asked how long it would likely take before our number would be called. “One hour,” he said.

So that is how we got to Elvis Suki. Because it is just around the corner from Jeh Oh, and we were likely to finish our little pre-dinner snack (if a whole seabass and platter of scallops can be considered a snack) before our hour was up. And it was! We got back exactly 50 minutes later, I scrambled up to the sports shirt guy to see what number we were up to, and it was a mere 8 numbers away. Even better, an ice cream cart had smartly pulled up right in front, so we had the option of enjoying Thai-style scoops while waiting outside. In the end, we waited maybe 10 minutes, tops. And when the man with the microphone attached to his face called out our number, it was exhilarating.

Now, I have been to Jeh Oh before, back in the time when Suan Luang Market still existed, and before the idea of serving a vat of tom yum mama was even a twinkle in Jeh Oh’s eye. This was back when Jeh Oh was most known for her duck porridge, which we ordered with a whole deep-fried fish and some stir-fried greens. We had a nice time with well-made food, and the crowd was respectable but quiet.

Today, Jeh Oh is packed with iPhone-wielding diners like Bungalow 8 was with cocaine-fuelled investment bankers in early-aughts New York. The feel among everyone is celebratory and self-congratulatory, mostly for having braved an hour-long wait on the sidewalk in the afternoon heat. The staff, for their part, are brisk and efficient. They do not sell beer (unlike in the old days, when you could get a beer woon, or beer slushy), but you can bring in your own. The duck is still good, served in a deep mahogany broth.

There are still other good things on the menu that are perfect for pairing with rice porridge, like a nice yum of cashews, a decent fluffy Thai omelet, ably stir-fried morning glory with red chilies, and squid stir-fried with salted egg yolk, a particular favorite of mine.

But who am I kidding? Obviously no one is ordering rice porridge here anymore. The star of the show, on every table in the shophouse, is Jeh Oh’s “tom yum” with two packages of Mama noodles, topped with a variety of items ranging from kebab-shaped pork meatballs to fresh crab legs. These bowls, most of which are large saucepan-sized, are then sent out to the tables with a couple of eggs cracked on top at the last minute, cooking in the hot broth as they are brought to diners.

I am a bit of a Mama noodle connoisseur. It’s almost always one of the first meals I have after I return from a long trip abroad. We always have several packets in the house for emergencies (ie I am too lazy to even order food). My husband favors moo sap (minced pork) flavor, while I think the shrimp tom yum flavor is the best flavor ever for any instant noodle. As Thais, we both prefer Mama brand noodles.

So I think I can be trusted when I say that there’s not a little tom yum seasoning in Jeh Oh’s broth. There may be a real tom yum base in there (it’s not unheard of for a rice porridge restaurant to have tom yum soup too), but it’s definitely zhooshed up with some MSG-laced magic courtesy of those little Mama packets. And that’s when I realized why Jeh Oh is so line-clamberingly popular: it’s like the tom yum Mama that you get at home, with some deluxe stuff on top. The “tart, spicy” flavor that bloggers rave about? That’s what can be found on your local 7-11 shelf. Thank you, Thai President Foods Plc!

Not that I’m complaining. I ate that whole thing up, almost singlehandedly. Gotta make my time outside of the house count, after all. But next time, I’ll remember that nothing is stopping me and my bald head from ripping open two packets of tom yum-flavored Mama noodles on my own, throwing in some shrimp and minced pork, cracking a couple of eggs on the whole caboodle, and calling it a day in the comfort and privacy of my own home.

After a rainy day, a stroll down the Bangkok sidewalk is less of a walk in the park and more of a studied advance, Indiana Jones-style, into an ancient temple guarding a magical figurine in the depths of a South American jungle. Any false step, and your fate will be sealed, but it won’t be a poisonous arrow through the eye or an enormous boulder ready to crush you. To some, this fate may possibly be even worse: a sudden, warm explosion of water that splashes up your shin, wetting your pant leg and getting between your toes. Yes, I’m talking about soi juice, and it seems to be a particularly Bangkok phenomenon, but if any other city can also lay claim to dirty body temp water lurking like a ticking time bomb underneath random loose sidewalk concrete tiles, please let me know.

But even the threat of a soi juice soaking isn’t enough to keep me away from Bantadthong Road in the Sam Yan neighborhood, my new favorite area for street food explorations. I passed by once while in a taxi and was immediately transfixed by the bounty of neon sign-fronted food outlets, many open-air, with a few old-school aharn tham sung (made-to-order) shophouses scattered throughout. From the back of a speeding taxi, it looked like 9th Avenue in New York, or a tantalizingly welcoming neighborhood that you pass through and can’t find again in a recurring anxiety dream (is this just me?) I made a pledge to myself to return one day.

It turns out, my friend Nong (@lovenongdesigns) made a similar pledge while zipping through the area in her own taxi one evening. So we both, with my sister Chissa and my friend Karen in tow, returned to the Sam Yan area one night with the express intent of exploring this area, newly sprouted from the ruins of the former Suan Luang market. I remember complaining loudly about Chulalongkorn University’s plans for this area after razing the former street food strip and displacing my beloved nam kang sai (Thai shaved ice) vendor to Saphan Lueang. When I returned after the razing, what remained was a sterile, questionably grammatically named shopping mall set next to a mostly-empty park and a collection of twee Chinese-style shophouses that would not have looked out of place in Epcot Center. Out of the former strip, only Nai Peng (now renamed Jay Fon), remained.

Now I am back to eat my words, literally. I mean, Suan Luang Square (the development that displaced the immediate vicinity of the former market) is not that interesting to me, exploration-wise, but the entire area around it is top-notch, ripe for a good long wander on an empty stomach. The shophouses have become lived in, even with their new-ish slicks of paint, and trees that look like they belong, not like confused out-of-town tourists, now line the alleyways that once housed car repair shops. Prime exploration fodder seemed to me to be the stretch of Bantadthong Road from Chula Soi 10 to the Centenary Park.

In fact, the only area that made me want to run away has the exact opposite effect on most people: the sidewalk in front of Jeh Oh, of the famous Mama noodle seafood bowl. This was the queue when we arrived at 5:30:

Needless to say, a quick bite there wasn’t happening. But a very patient and friendly group of Thai diners on the sidewalk who had yet to tuck into their seafood noodles did allow us to snap this photo, showing what these dozens of people were lining up in the street for:

But even without the brag-factor of getting to dine at the area’s most buzzy shophouse, we had options galore, and that included a clutch of secondary outlets for street food vendors that have begun living the dream and are expanding. One such outlet is Elvis Suki, a former favorite that I hadn’t been to for years after a disappointing visit to the original Yotse vendor with @tonedeafinbangkok.

Now you can ignore every bad thing that I said about this place before because Elvis Suki is awesome, and their delicious scallops — and more importantly, the baked seabass in banana leaves — are back to their former glory (eating my words, part 2). Like a handsome ex-boyfriend that you haven’t seen in a good long while, I’d forgotten about the bewitching mash of lemongrass, lime leaves, coriander and brown bean sauce that coated the skin, permeating the fish’s succulent white flesh. So one good thing about a second outlet for this vendor is that you can be sure that they will have the seabass in stock, which is a relief after years of hurrying to the original location at 5:30 because they only had 15 fish to sell a night. I was especially happy after hearing Karen say that she could eat this fish every day for the rest of her life.

As delicious as it was, we tried as best as we could to limit our food so that we would be able to sample the other eateries that beckoned like sirens in the surf. So our next stop was Banthat Tong Roast Duck, a spot on Chula Soi 12 that lured us in with their vividly yellow shopfront and lingering aroma of grilling duck, which can be ordered in place of kai yang (grilled chicken) at this Isaan-style restaurant.

For this diner, at least, the duck was light on the meat but big on the bones, a winged version of present-day Kim Kardashian. Karen said eating a piece felt like flossing her teeth with duck bones. The som tum polamai (fruit som tum), however, was great, even if it made us cry.

By this point in the evening, we were well and truly fatigued, even though we had only eaten a couple of meals and walked a few blocks taking photos of other people’s food. In line for dessert at Ginger Soup, we decided to just call it a night. However, we do have a wish list for our next night of exploration, and it might include these places:

Until then, I will have memories of the best thing Karen has had this trip, Elvis Suki’s seabass, juicy and sweet, pungent and herbal. With that in mind, we can consider this post a Chapter 1. I personally can’t wait to see how this particular book ends.

The sky in Mardin is a stark, bright turquoise, and completely devoid of clouds. Unfettered by floating water crystals, amplified by the ancient yellow limestone of the city, the sun makes a walk down the street feel like 5 minutes in the microwave. It may be climate change, but it feels like the sun has been here forever. And if this was what the weather was like when the “cradle of civilization” was first crafted, I cannot believe that humanity got off the ground.

Still, the beautiful Syrian brides lining up for photos on the walls around 3,000-year-old Mardin Castle are unbothered by the heat, even in their bead-encrusted white dresses and full makeup. They pose with the countryside in the background, overlooking the border with Syria 30 km away. It seems like an illustration of the cycle of life: against the background of a region where millions of people have lived and died since the paleolithic era, now we document the stirrings of new families, moved to come together even in this deeply shitty age.

It was a rocky start for me, personally, in Mardin. After a 10-hour drive from Cappadocia, where gusty winds grounded our hot air balloon plans but aided our purchase of about 500 carpets, Mardin initially felt like a serotonin-free morning after a bachelor night bender. My husband refused to follow Google Maps’ directions, insisting on driving directly to the hotel “parking lot”, which ended up being whatever free space was available on a windy mountain road on which cars had to take turns to move forward. Once we park, there comes the issue of finding a way into the hotel, but all doors marked with the hotel’s name appear to be locked. My husband tells us to split up, heading down the mountain towards the lobby, while we search for an entrance uphill.

Rounding around the corner of the hotel (door-free), we bump into three young men heading up from a coffee shop. “Where are you going?” they ask in English that is far better than our Turkish. When we say we are trying to find an open door into our hotel, they offer their services. “We are Mardin,” they say. “You are NOT Mardin.”

They take us back up the path, and then when it splits, tell us to turn right into the unknown instead of left, where we would be heading back to our starting point. “This is hotel,” they say, and I think it’s clear that our objectives are diverging: us, to get into the hotel; them, to isolate and rob us.

“No,” I say, pointing at the structure that definitely has our hotel somewhere inside. Even though there are people around us, I no longer feel that safe. Unsure what to do, I walk back towards our car, where my husband’s septuagenarian parents and my 12-year-old son are waiting — to help in case there is a fight? To also get robbed? I’m not sure. “We are fucked,” I say to a horse, dressed up in finery and tied to a stone wall in the sweltering heat.

Like a deus ex machina in a movie, my husband pokes his head out of one of the previously closed doors. My mother-in-law had somehow gained entry earlier, seeking a bathroom. Bless this woman’s bladder! The youths disperse, us saying “thank you” as they depart. Later, my daughter tells me they simply wanted to show us some of the town’s famous sights, seeking a tip for their guide services. I’m not sure if I am being a shriveled up husk of a human being for casting aspersions on their intentions, or if I was actually right.

Later that night, we get lost on the way to our restaurant. The glowing limestone, which gradually changes color as the sun sets, emits a luminescent moonstone sheen in the moonlight, and everything ends up looking the same. So when we finally stumble to the entrance of Leyli Muse Mutfak (https://www.facebook.com/LeyliMuseMutfak/), bordered with greenery and fronted by a tree-filled garden, it feels literally like Paradise.

Because everything in town is made of the same limestone, eating inside is cooler than outside. The interiors are outfitted with vintage radios, record players and clocks, exhibiting a design sensibility similar to Fred Sanford (no one will get this joke). The food, for its part, is excellent, even though it’s so hot I’m not even that hungry. We order a bottle of the local Shiraz and flatbread stuffed with minced meat, as well as minced meat shaped like flatbread, the Mardin version of meatloaf.

The next day, it’s also hot. We go to every museum in town, where we learn that Mardin is smack dab in the northern region of what used to be Mesopotamia, home of the birth of human civilization. At the better of the two museums (helpfully called “Mardin Museum”), we get the approximation of an ancient beef stew recipe from the Assyrian period:

“Chop/slice/dice (many) onions, shallots, garlic, chives, leeks, and scallions. Fry in oil until soft. Remove to bowl. In remaining oil, brown all sides of an eye round pot roast. Add reserved vegetables and season with salt. Turn down heat and simmer in small amount of water to which a half bottle of Guinness out has been added, turning once or twice during cooking. Remove meat. Reduce onion-beer mixture until it is a thick vegetable-rich gravy. Pour over meat, carve and serve.”

We manage to reward ourselves with a late lunch at swanky El Bagdadi, where, inspired by the museums, we get the sprawling “Mesopotamia platter”, comprising every single cold starter on the menu. It is beautiful and we ask for doubles of the artichoke bottoms, even though I have doubts that Mesopotamians actually ate any of this.

As night falls, we sit on the hotel terrace, where we have great views of the sundown over the minarets of the mosque. This is the one great thing about our hotel and something that makes a stay here almost worth it…even in spite of the difficult doors and the poky bidet thing that stabs my butt when I am just minding my own business on the toilet. I will come back to Mardin, maybe. When they install escalators.