Exploring Bangkok

February 13, 2024

Quest for Burmese Food

Exploring Bangkok

It never fails, before we come to Bangkok I always have big plans. I've always wanted to ride our bikes in the "Green Lung" of Bangkok, the totally undeveloped swath of low lying land just across the Chao Phraya River. It's a huge area of raised walkways that you can ride bikes on. There are a few houses and a couple of places to eat lunch but other than that it is just a maze through swampy beautiful untouched lowland, unusual for being right in a huge city. But we've never had the energy to do that because we are always getting organized for our next move from there, gathering supplies or planning the logistics. Or, we are resting before our next adventure or we don't want to deal with riding our bikes through Bangkok traffic in order to get to the ferry to the Green Lung. We sure aren't going over there this trip because our bikes are packed. But I always think that we will someday.

This time I had an additional dream of crossing the Chao Phraya River and jumping on the train to Samut Sakhon, a small, outer suburb town southwest of Bangkok. A year ago I saw a YouTube video on OTR Food and History channel that intrigued me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBfbV3-SNj8 They explore the Burmese food in Samut Sakhon and since I love Burmese food and Burmese tea I was all in.

Samut Sakhon is a fish processing town with thousands of Burmese living and working in the massive fish processing plants. I simply wanted to go there to eat lunch in a Burmese restaurant. I would have been happy if I only found some Burmese tea because I love it as much as any coffee anywhere in SE Asia.

It would be a day trip to Samut Sakhon and fun to ride the little train which dead-ends at Samut Sakhon. But, like the Green Lung adventure I thought about how hot a day it would be and how much effort it would take and I bailed on the idea because I saw another video on YouTube just yesterday, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS8aHD_QeqU about a great little Burmese restaurant walkable from our hotel.

Another Bangkok sunrise through smoky pollution.

Another view of the dining area at our hotel.

So, that's where we headed on our first free day exploring in Bangkok. From our hotel all we needed to do was walk past the Chinese casket store at the corner, turn right and we were in Chinatown walking past store after store selling Chinese herbs. Carried along by the distinctive and exotic aromas of the dried herbs wafting onto the sidewalk we passed an occasional acupuncture clinic too. Interspersed, as well, were incense shops which sent our noses on other journeys. We turned down Yaowarat Road, the mainstreet of Chinatown, lined with bird's nest and shark's fin soup restaurants. Chinese character-covered banners danced in the breeze high above the street. We cut down an alley to another alley and found ourselves in the actual bustling centerpiece of Chinatown - Consumer Heaven.

Everything a person needs for Chinese New Year. Chinatown, Bangkok.

Roasted chestnuts are a big deal on Chinese New Year.

That's an enormous basket on the back of that bike.

This is the stuff we love and seek out. Old style Thai coffee on the left and Thai tea on the right.

A package of a lot of swift nests for bird's nest soup. They are made from the bird's saliva.

A simulation of swift nests one restaurant did in their front window.

Jam-packed in the little alleys were narrow but long little shops selling any number of things from hair ties to buttons. Each store didn't just have a few different whatever it was they were selling, they had hundreds different. I've never seen so many different beads, necklaces, little zippered purses, key chains. How many different plastic phone holders could you possibly look at? How could you ever choose one? Why so many? Cell phone cases. On and on the stores went, dozens, hundreds and the crowds of people were just as numerous. The alleys were so popular a shopping area that high above a canopy had been made between the buildings to keep people dry if it were to rain. Half of the shops were air conditioned but all were open air so we intermittently felt cool blasts of air. It reminded me of swimming in lakes or the ocean and as you swim out deeper you pass through pools of different temperatures. We were definitely getting deeper.

We never want to buy anything in places like that. It was all new, mostly plastic stuff of dubious quality. But it was amazing to see how much junk humans make. Most of it seemed fairly useless and we thought about the people somewhere making the stuff in toxic conditions, making stuff that they might not even know what it was they were making. We thought about those lives spent making all the stuff we were glancing at and not wanting. Lives spent making useless stuff just to have enough money to eat. Lives, some their entire lives, making useless plastic stuff. Thinking about it in this way made it less interesting to walk through. Ignoring the stuff I watched people. It didn't seem that anyone was buying much of the stuff. The crowds of people got thicker as we went along and craning my neck to see above them, I saw that the alley seemed endless.

Soon it was tight with people and once again I marveled at how the Thais never touch one another. No matter how packed the situation, Thais never make contact. I don't know how they do it but it is part of their character to never touch you. Their DNA contains something like opposite magnetic poles - when you try to push two magnets together they won't go, they won't touch, they will do anything but touch. I love that about Thais. You can be on a jam-packed bus and you realize no one is touching you. No one is touching any other person. It's a miracle. But it's a pretty cool thing to have in your DNA.

The thing that is not nice in situations like tight alleys filled with shuffling people looking this way and then that way mesmerized by more buttons than they had ever seen, are the motorbikes that try to make it through going too fast. They can be downright rude and dangerous. Because they are on motorbikes I guess they feel they have some sort of importance. They are mostly delivering things; more beads, more hair ties. They act as if they are an hour late delivering the boxes of hair ties. All of a sudden they are right behind you and you have to jump out of the way but that is hard to do when there are lots of people you would be jumping into which would be very unThai. I don't understand why motorbike deliveries are so important. Everyone moves out of their way knowing that hair ties must get through!

Eventually we came to a large street, Chakkraphet Road, and crossing it we suddenly found ourselves in Little India. Just like that we had crossed the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal and were walking down an alley of shops full of foil-wrapped and colorful Indian sweets and others with shelves of little brass deities of the Hindu pantheon. Ironically it was more mellow in Little India.

We recognized a few places we had seen in the video so we knew we were honing in on the tiny Burmese restaurant. We passed other tiny restaurants way back in the warren of smaller and smaller alleys. The stalls and buildings were so tight that it felt like we were indoors with a jumble of low awnings forming the ceiling. Just after the halal Muslim restaurant we found the no-name Burmese restaurant. The owner/chef told us she wasn't quite ready to open. It was only a little after 10AM afterall. No problem, we went to have some chai at an Indian sweets bakery. The chai was good and when I went to pay, the employee told me it was not the price that was on the menu but 35% more! My experience with Indians in India is that they are consistent; you can always count on something like that. You might say it's in their DNA.

Then we returned to have a wonderful lunch of mohinga (the Burmese national dish) and a bowl of khao soi (dry). Khao soi, which is all the craze with foreigners at the moment, is mostly only available in the north of Thailand. Khao soi originally came from Burma and I've always been interested in trying their version. Both dishes were an excellent taste treat. Both were quite spicy too. I loved the experience and was happy to have had an alternative to going all the way to Samut Sakhon. And you always have to save something you didn't get to do for the next trip.

The tiny no-name Burmese restaurant down near the end of a narrow alley.

A lot goes on in these tight alleys. You can see why I felt as if we were indoors.

There is so much food everywhere in Thailand. Almost all of it looks great to me.

We ran the gauntlet through the various alleys back towards our hotel. We did stop to buy three beautiful plaid tablecloths, our big purchase of the day! It was getting really hot and we had walked miles. We've found that it's almost too hot to do anything outside between noon and about 4PM. I still had packing, rearranging, plotting and fiddling to do. Always fiddling with this thing or that - wrapping a drinking glass in many layers of plastic bags as padding and protection on our final leg home. I've saved nearly every plastic bag that has come into our hands on our entire trip just for this purpose and to take home to recycle. You might say fiddling is in my DNA and so is recycling.

lovebruce

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George HallI've followed along for most all of your tour, found it very interesting. It's different from the type of touring I enjoy, but that's not a bad thing - just different. You had hard days, easy days, bad traffic days and good traffic days, lots of hot weather days and some not so hot days and dealt with a lot of surprises - just like most epic tours. Thanks for writing the journal and keeping me entertained as I plan and dream about my next tour. Best of luck,
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2 months ago

Bruce LellmanTo George HallGeorge,
Thank you for following along. You are right, it's not been your typical cycle tour or journal. I have always wanted to tell about all the other stuff that goes on besides just the biking part and since I have made many trips to SE Asia before I ever started riding a bike over there, I have a lot to tell about the culture. We didn't ride as many miles per day as we have in the past but that was mostly due to the heat. Slowing down has its advantages too. I hope you have a wonderful next tour.
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2 months ago