Bangkok Street Food

For some reason, I was more excited about the food in Saigon and Hanoi than Bangkok. I don't know why. Maybe it sounded more exotic or something. In hindsight, Vietnam had some great hits. The thought of an iced coffee makes me salivate, and I could eat a bahn mi once a day 'til I die. However, of all the places we traveled to over the last two years, Bangkok turned out to be the king of cuisine. We barely made a scratch in the famous street munchies that make the city so famous, but at least we took pictures.

Okay, so this first example isn't necessarily street food. We stopped off in this restaurant on Khao San Road on our way to the Grand Palace. Khao San Road evolves into a hopping party when the sun goes down, but at this hour, we and hundreds of additional tourists were just searching for a cool place to avoid the heat. We sat inside and Sami ordered greasy Pad Thai (hey, someone had to do it). I had an appetizer of fried pork strips. I wanted to save my appetite for tasty street food along the walk. The pork, fried with sesame seeds, was crispy, hard and dry. The Thai chile sauce it came with was good though. All around it was not the best introduction to Thai cuisine.

This was something I snagged after the restaurant on the walk to the Royal Palace. These little guys are everywhere, and if we hadn't exchanged our Bangkok Lonely Planet at the English Bookstore in Korea, I would look up the name. I like to think of them as little Thai tacos. The yellow that you see is not cheese, but rather caramelized coconut shavings. They say they come in two kinds, savory and sweet but the sweet one is pretty savory and the savory is quite sweet. I actually bought another variety in Kanchanaburi, but I guess I forgot to take a picture. They are all about 3 for a dollar.

Having struck out in finding famous grilled chicken in Hanoi, I couldn't pass up the grill lady who set up shop just across the street from our hotel. She had a great English menu that listed the prices for each different piece. I bought two skewers of skin and back meat. Being a foreigner, she tried to skimp out on the sauce, so I made sure to point and the condiments and grunt approvingly. She got the message and placed the skewers in a plastic bag, squirted in a stream of soy or fish sauce, and then dusted in some salty, spicy seasoning. With my hand on the outside of the bag, I rubbed the tasty goodness all over the hot skin. Usually, I don't like fatty meat, but the juju she threw over the chicken pieces left me gnawing on every tendon. I made a mental not to visit her again for a piece with more substance.

Obviously, I wasn't expecting my best meal in Thailand to be found at the Bangkok zoo, but this salad was incredible. Hot and sour, salty and crunchy. Probably the same thing I glance over on Thai menus in the US in search of Pad Thai.

This was our favorite dish in Bangkok, and I say "ours" because Sami stole most of it from me. Tom Yam noodle soup purchased at a street stall on Khao San Road for around a dollar. The coconut milk tried its best to mellow the fiery heat, but I still sweated like Glen "Big Baby" Davis throughout spoonfuls. The rice noodles are a little more firm than the ones we sampled in Hanoi Pho, and overall I find the freshness of Tom Yam preferable to the Vietnamese specialty.

Sami's first pregnancy craving was the fruit in Bangkok. Every morning I woke to the sounds of a fruit vendor hacking away at watermelon and carving up papaya. Right now, you can purchase a small watermelon in Korea for about twenty dollars. When we were in Bangkok, we bought giant bags of the sweetest watermelon for about a quarter. Sami was in love with the watermelon, whereas I chose to be less monogamous, venturing into pineapple and papaya territory as well.

The fruit is served in plastic bags with a bamboo skewer, and I told myself not to worry about future environmental repercussions while sampling God's juicy fine fare.

These wontons I bought were served the same way. I actually don't remember much about this item except for the fact that a fellow foreigner came up behind me and quizzed me about it. "What's that?" "Is it good?" How much is it?" I don't know dude, everything is good just get it.

This is a terrible picture, but this sausage type thing stuffed with rice was bomb. I think it is just a good rule of thumb that if it is served on a stick, it's awesome. I should have eaten about thirty more of these, but it was one of those things where I wasn't really hungry and I wasn't sure how much it cost.

Finally, on our last night I decided to ignore my bulging stomach from the street food extravaganza and follow up on the promise I made to revisit the grilled chicken lady. Here is a better pick of her station.

Before she throws on the sauce and Asian taste dust, she warms the piece over a charcoal grill. This sweats the skin and makes the dust stick. This worked great with the tiny skin strips I ate earlier, but with this leg, she should have left it on the grill for another half hour. There is nothing worse than slimy chicken.

Sure enough, slimy and undercooked. I couldn't eat it. So much for my theory about food on a stick.