On our first day in Bangkok, we woke up eager to get out, see the sites, and begin our quest to cram as much food into our faces over the next two weeks as possible. We were staying in Chinatown, which had been described to us as absolutely the best place to stay to try as many different kinds of food as possible.
This is Yaowarat Road, one of the most famous street food areas in the world. It was two blocks from our hotel. The better view is at night, but we’ll get to that. But first – where to start?
How about a restaurant famous for it’s rice roll noodles and crispy pork belly? Sounds great!
While it is certainly possible to get a traditional Western breakfast in Bangkok, we discovered that it seems just as common for locals to sit down and eat a portion of the same thing they might have for lunch or dinner. And when THIS is on offer, why wouldn’t you? This was spectacular, and we were worried that we might have peaked too early. (Spoiler: we did not)
We spent another few hours bonking around Chinatown looking at cute art galleries and painted elephants:
We also consumed, according to my notes, a Hong Kong style coffee / tea hybrid drink, a glass of langan juice, and a chocolate Madeline.
We didn’t have a FOMRAL plan for the first day other than eat, wander around, eat, attempt to recover from jet lag, and maybe eat a bit, so we decided to hop on the subway (no durian allowed) and head over to a nearby park where we heard there were monitor lizards to be seen.
On arrival at the park, we were confronted with what turned out to be a bridge commemorating the deep, historical friendship between Thailand and… (checks notes) Belgium? Sure, why not – it didn’t NOT look like the bridges I saw in Belgium this summer. (Turns out there were a LOT of friendship monuments in this park for various random countries.)
Also lizards.
After this we hopped on the elevated train to go look for a nearby (missing, as it turns out) geocache. But all this “doing things that are not eating” had helped us worked up an appetite. We had heard that shopping mall food courts could be surprisingly worthwhile in Bangkok, and since we were immediately adjacent to a large shopping mall, we decided to give it a shot.
Friends, I have never seen so many “Michelin Recommended” symbols in one room. Here’s some crab fried rice from one of them.
For the rest of the day, we just sort of bopped around the city. We went to the tallest building in Bangkok, thinking we’d check out the sky deck, but were given pause by how expensive tickets were. We’d been eating world class food for pennies – it was a bit jarring to be asked for approximately forty dollars Canadian to ride an elevator.
So instead we just kept walking around.
We sat in a lovely Indian inspired temple watching people come in to make offerings after work, and then we sat in a coffee shop surrounded by lavishly presented Marvel memorabilia.
We wandered down to another cache hidden in front of a massage parlor, but the women hanging out in front were all happy to point it out to us, as soon as it became clear that’s what we were doing.
By dinner time, we were basically getting delirious with jet lag, so rather than cope with anything too complicated at that point, we decamped to another mall for papaya salad and mango sticky rice. I say “another mall”, but Icon Siam is sort of next level, as it turns out.
After dinner we grabbed a ferry back across the river and walked back to our hotel, pausing only to first, marvel at whatever the hell THIS is:
And second, snap another photo of Yarowat Road. Looks a little different at night, doesn’t it?
Thailand was off to a good start.
