Lunching in Bangkok, Thailand

After being in Miami pretty much stationary for a few years, we decided to take a short visit to SE Asia.  Since there is a huge gap in time between my last posting and this one, I'm going pretend that I have been here all along without worrying about making excuses for my absence.  Hope no one notices.

Last week was our first week in Bangkok and we started feeling a little more confident about getting out and about.   The food is always a highlight for the day so I'm documenting some of our experiences here.   The first day I went to visit B to her job in a building nearby and together we went to the 9^th floor of her building were they have something like a Thai food court.   For what I can see, no one here cooks at home.  They either eat lunch at the thousands of street vendors that pop out just in time for lunch or they may go to many of the more formal brick and mortar restaurants around.  The food

 court seem to be very popular with the locals.  There you can find a variety of Thai food and most of it doesn't even have any translation so you're pretty much at the luck of the draw.  The one in her building offers a large variety of food and it's served without a lot of fancy stuff like utensils or napkins.  You can find those in a table nearby where you can wash and recycle your forks and spoons or your chopsticks.  We were able to eat there a delicious meal for about US$3 for both of us.  Another day we went to eat to a Vietnamese Restaurant on the first floor of her building, this one was more of a sit-down restaurant  and the bill came to be about $9 for both us.   Two other days of the week we went with her work colleagues.  One of lunches was a farewell meal for a couple of employees that were leaving to other companies.  At this restaurant they brought so much food and it was  served “homestyle”, where they just passed the plates around for you to serve yourself.  We managed to eat our fair share that lasted us till the next day.  Food here is very plentiful, cheap and spicy.  Even for us that we like the heat, often we have to ask for it to be “middle” heat otherwise we could not eat it because it could be so spicy.  But delicious.

I really haven’t gone out to explore a whole lot.  On Wednesday, Bel had to go to a clinic (for work) the whole day so I took a break from the computer and went to Chinatown which is by the Mae Pan Chao River which used to be where the center of the city was before the new “business” downtown evolved into the new center of the city.  There the streets are pretty narrow and the river is used heavily to avoid the heavy traffic that forms when too many cars want to go to the same spot.  That Wednesday, I went using the Sky Train,  which is a very fast, efficient, clean and cheap public transportation.  Once I  got to my destination and off the train I saw the river just down the block.   I walked to the river to inquire about getting on one of those water taxis to Chinatown.  They were charging me around $30 for an hour ride, I said that I only wanted to go to Chinatown so they gave me a deal that I couldn’t refuse: $8 for a short ride.  Hey, it sounded like a bargain to me.  However last Saturday Bel and I went back to Chinatown (looking for Indian food restaurant that has great reputation) and that same ride in a larger boat was only $0.50.  The first one had definitely taken me for a “ride”.