Five flavours: Day 11 Bangkok

Soundtrack: “Pink Pony Club”, Chappell Roan

“Bangkok, oriental setting, and the city don’t know that the city is getting … I’d let you watch, I would invite you but the queens we use would not excite you.” So go the lyrics by Tim Rice and Bjorn Ulvaeous, and in the context of the Chess musical fair enough. But I can tell you that Bangkok queens should excite you. Just don’t get too excited.

I woke up after too few hours sleep, too little water, and possibly one too many drinks the night before. Bangkok is a noisy city, and my generic hotel room’s airconditioner is possibly overpowered for the space: so it does make the room wonderfully cool, but even on the quiet setting it’s still rather loud. And turning it off isn’t really an option, as the room would likely heat up to uncomfortable in less than 30 minutes. So I was a little miserable in the head when I did finally drag myself out of the hotel, figuring a walk to breakfast would give housekeeping a chance to sort the room and I could then nap some more.

I headed away from the main road and found a little place offering every sort of kaprao khunchung imaginable, so I picked the “recommended” choice of beef (the menu also flags just about every choice as recommended) with a fried egg and what turned out to be a zero sugar iced tea. Two out of three picks were winners: I’d asked for slightly spicy beef kraprao and it was certainly within the realms of what a Thai person might consider slightly spicy was, but after rather unspicy Viet Nam the first couple of mouthfuls were a jolt to the system. Once I adjusted, it was delicious, packed with Thai basil and salt, a little bitter, and a now balanced heat. The egg also helped, it’s amazing how many dishes can be improved by throwing a fried egg on top. The egg would also hopefully help with the hangover. The commercial brand zero sugar iced tea wasn’t to my taste at all, overpowered with artificial sweetener. Lesson learned.

Buoyed by the food in the system and the chilli kick, I did a bit more wandering of the local area before figuring that housekeeping would be done so a couple of hours extra sleep would set me right. Sadly even though I’d heard them on my floor, they were no where to be seen and the room was untouched, so back out I went. I didn’t really have a plan, so I just walked and sweated along Sukhumvit Road, which is pretty much Bangkok’s tourist centre. The side streets are full of bars and marijuana shops, and I get the impression at least the latter market is now oversaturated so some have taken to \adding other diversions — “come and ply playstation while stoned” is one example. Each to their own, but I find Bangkok hard enough to navigate with a clear head. I don’t know how much business these shops are doing, I haven’t seen crowds of customers going in, and while the shops are visible it isn’t like I’m being constantly hit by clouds of THC — if anything, mostly I’m just smelling the car exhaust fumes and stagnant water from the sewers. I found one interesting patch of Sukhumvit that has become a Middle Eastern corner, lots of kebab shops and gold merchants. But generally there wasn’t much interesting in the mix, I did stop into one of the huge malls, Terminal 21, for a bit of air-conditioning. Each floor is loosely themed around a city, so there’s Rome, Paris, London, and others. It’s cute, fancy, and kitschy, but nothing really called out to my wallet to demand purchasing.

I stopped in for lunch at a little family-run restaurant in some random alleyway, whose menu was mostly in Thai with some scattered English and pictures. I went for a chicken stir fry dish with an incomplete description, and I’m fairly certain I ended up with pad see-ieuw. It was delicious, salty and spicy, chewy flat rice noodles, more egg, and well cooked chicken. The table condiments were truly Thai: three types of chilli, and white sugar. I don’t recall travelling to any other country and seeing white sugar as a condiment for noodle dishes, but here we are.

Maybelline cosmetics were doing something promotional at one of the major intersections: I’m not exactly sure what, but it involved 10 or so models all dressed the same assembling when the pedestrian light was green, and then being photographed. They all had branded umbrellas, but weren’t using them. Hopefully I’ll remember to go looking in a few months and see if there’s an ad campaign or something.

Back at the hotel housekeeping had done their work so it was time for putting in the ear plugs and catching 90 minutes of quiet rest. I think I’d sweated out any remaining alcohol by-products by then. I wrote yesterday’s blog in between looking at dinner options, so within minutes of me hitting publish I was in a car heading as close to the Chinatown night food market as possible. To their credit, the driver got me pretty close, the traffic eventually becoming a wall maybe 50 metres before the food stalls started. The sky is blue, the sun always rises, and Bangkok traffic is always shite. I’ve not yet been tempted to get a Grab bike instead of a car, as I’ll stick to slow airconditioned comfort to the faster and always alert bike option.

The Chinatown night food market comprises about 1km of food stalls on both sides of the road, which gets a lane or two blocked off hence the traffic snarl. On the other side of the barriers the traffic is much the same, though less a case of too many vehicles trying to get somewhere as too many folks who don’t know how to walk in crowds, so there are those who stop suddenly in order for their friend to painstakingly line up the right photo for IG; others walking slowly in order to film everything without actually looking where they are going; sullen teenagers on family vacations dragging their feet; families on family vacations who just randomly pause to discuss something, possibly with the sullen teenagers; all manner of nationalities doing their thing making it difficult for people like me to just wander aimlessly and indecisively from stall to stall deciding what I feel like eating, with consideration for how easy it is to eat and walk, and if the serving size will totally fill me or hopefully leave room for more delicious things. Oh, and there’s also avoiding getting too close the stalls with large woks filled with boiling oil, others with charcoal grills, and some requiring blowtorches as part of the cooking process. Keep your belongings close and your eyebrows closer.

First stop were for some prawn gyoza and a freshly queezed pomegranate juice. The gyoza was bursting with prawn flavour, crunchy on the outside. Then I stopped for some dragon fruit in a cup fresh and sweet. Another stall had large meaty mushrooms on a grill, served in a salty and tangy sauce. I don’t know if I’ve ever had Thai fish cakes on any visit to Thailand, so I took the opportunity to rectify that with a cup of cakes straight off the grill, explosions of fish and lemon grass just like the good ones I’ve had in Australia. I’m happy when I find out that a dish tastes similar and as good in its Australian version as the country of origin. I finished my food crawl with a serve of kanom krock, which according to the stall publicity has been ranked as the world’s fourth best pancake. Who doesn’t love having the fourth best, afterall it’s still top five (I’ve no idea if banh xeo are also top five in that list, but they certainly are in mine). These wonderful half balls of rice flour, coconut cream, and water (and occasionally wheat flour unfortunately for coeliacs) are cooked until crunchy on the outside and slightly soft in the middle and are then joined together to make a ball and eaten. Delicious.

So much delicious food in these street stalls, and cheap, I don’t think any one of them cost more than 100 THB (less than $5 AUD). As much as Australia does it okay with food truck markets and things, I doubt any of the thousands of folks slowly along these stalls would stop for a $10 AUD hot dog and $5 AUD bucket of chips, when for the same price they could be having gyoza and fish cakes and fruit and the world’s fourth best pancake (and probably a serve of mango sticky rice — I know I’ll be having plenty in Chiang Mai so am okay holding off for now).

As the Stranger bar was between the market and my hotel it made sense to call in there again (also the other drag bar, House of HEALS, is closed Tuesdays). Another star-studded line-up, with Kandy Zyanide, Gisele Rafael, L Gie Bloomz, Amora, Srimala, Notty Naughtygirl, and Cherilyn, the last two I’d not seen perform before. Apparently Cherilyn is a veteran of the scene, and was introduced as being from the “House of Jurassic Park” which I’ll give points as I don’t think I’ve heard that read before. All were amazing, athletic, emotive (Thai queens and crowds go wild for the Whitney live version of “I Will Always Love You”), and a highlight was during a set break when the DJ played Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” Kandy and Cherilyn just got up on stage and did move perfect the video choreo. Also for the former work folks (you know who you are) L Gie Blooms lip synched a rocking “Pink Pony Club”. The queens all circulated through the crowd, and I was touched that they recognised me — though I have been making sure to do the right thing and tip the queens. The crowd seemed to start as mostly tourists, but as the evening went later some tourists drifted out and more locals arrived. I was a little bummed that many of the tourists (i.e. occidental folks) weren’t tipping. The entry fee is 460 THB, and that includes 400 THB of drinks (okay, so these are bar prices, and there’s a bit of a mark up) so it’s not like the queens are getting paid thousands out of that. Remember to tip your queens.

I exercised a little more sense and skipped out on the last set, as I know I’ll be getting up fairly early in the morning. I also kept to my two included drinks (as beers) and then stuck to water. Tomorrow’s plan is the Royal Palace, and it won’t do to be hungover in one of the most special places to the Thai population. I refuse to be that arsehole tourist. I was also tired, between it all I did over 30,000 steps today, so my dancing feet were starting to lag (not a great thing in Bangkok, and the paths and kerbs are rather uneven and prone to providing tripping and ankle twisting opportunities, and I’d like to avoid that). Having not had a tuk tuk ride yet, I felt okay splashing the 300 THB to get back to the hotel, even though a Grab would have cost maybe half that (assuming the app worked out the correct pickup point). The tuk tuk is also an experience, I don’t know how fast they go but this one was barreling along. We got to a police stop, I don’t know if it was checking licenses or what, bey just took one look at the tuk tuk and waved us through, so maybe there’s some deal where tuk tuks are above the law. Or something. Whatever, this over-lit scooter, with a welded on cage, got me back to the hotel in a decent time, and in one piece.