OK, right up front, if you are planning a trip to Bangkok, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 Baht, do not EVER play Monopoly (it’s a TERRIBLE game, seriously. In this dissertation, I shall…). Just immediately go to Chili Paste tours and book their “Old Bangkok Food and Culture Walk.”

I would say just trust me, but we can do better than that.  Buckle up. But not literally, because tuktuks don’t have seatbelts.

Chin, our guide, picked us up from our hotel promptly at 9 AM. We had a tuktuk driver with us for the entire day, who would go off and park when we set out on foot, and then rejoin us when it was time to shuttle to another part of the city.  For the record, Bangkok traffic is terrifying, especially in a tiny vehicle with no doors or windows. But also kinda thrilling.

We started the day by walking down a narrow alley to get to a different, narrower alley to discover a home with a small cart outside the door and about six people gathered around inside making dim sum. Or rather just one kind of dim sum – pork shu mai.  Apparently, they make thousands of these things every day, and then granddad goes out and sells them until they are gone.  Which doesn’t take long, because they are amazing.

This was off to a hell of a start.  What next? Coffee?  Sure, I love coffee.  Leigh, on the other hand, opted for an iced tea, which turned out to be a Thai iced tea that came in a bag.

How about visiting a shop where they make Chinese sausage?

We got to taste the sausage, as well as go inside and watch some of the sausage being made, too.  I don’t know what everyone complains about – it was fine.

Oh look – a big vat of chicken feet!

Time for some flaky pastries?  Sure!

Or perhaps some noodle wonton soup, with sausage and crabmeat!

Oh look – deep fried sprats and chicken skin – here, take a bag of each!

If this post seems a little short on words and description it’s because I’m trying to convey the sheer overwhelming PACE of this tour.  At this point, we were still entirely on foot from our starting point.

It was becoming clear that while Chin definitely had some fixed stops she did every tour, there was also a GREAT deal of improvisation going on.  (“ADHD” would possibly not also be an inapt description, but in the best and most delicious possible way.)  We’d be walking down the street, or through a market, and she’d stop and go “Oh hey!  Look at this – this is delicious, you should try it!” And suddenly, we were.

We’ve been on food tours before (for example, in Prague) where there were a number of carefully curated stops, and each shop had been alerted to expect us and had a specific sample platter ready to go. And don’t get me wrong – those are great!  But this was NOT that.  While many of the merchants knew Chin, not all of them appeared to, and there’s no way the random careening from food to food was an entirely preplanned itinerary.

It was amazing. It also meant that as the day went on, we slowly accumulated a bag full of snacks we had no hope of eating in our one remaining day in Bangkok with access to a refrigerator.

Also – just to be clear.  All of the pictures (and eating) so far took place in under an hour.

At this point, we boarded the tuktuk and made our way to a heavily Vietnamese area north of the palace where it was time for lunch.  Well, I mean, we had to have a snack first to get ready.

Sweetened beef floss.  Delicious.  Everything was delicious.  But now it was time for lunch.

Which turned out to be a whole-ass Vietnamese FEAST.

At this point we could have been done with the tour, and it would already have been an amazing day.  But this is a day-long tour.  We were only half finished.  However, perhaps bowing to biological necessity, Chin took us to a nearby monastery complex for a bit of the “culture” part of the food and culture tour.

Interestingly, the murals in this particular temple were done in a much more Western style than was typical at many of the places we visited.  We also wandered through the lovely peaceful grounds of the adjacent residential complex, the relaxing calm broken only by the shrieks from the school playground across the street and the constant roar of construction equipment and motorcycle engines.

Leigh had asked if Chin knew of anyone making or selling silver jewelry, so at this point we made a stop at a charming little shop where she bought a few pairs of earrings. (Note from Leigh: I was not intending for this to become part of the food tour — I just thought she might provide a recommendation that we could follow up on later! At this point, though, we were happy to have the break from eating.)

But enough of this calm.  Back to the food!

How about some daifuku?

A nice bowl of offal soup?

How about some pineapple on a stick? (And by “some”, I mean “what appeared to be an entire damn pineapple chopped up and thrust into our hands.)

Some sort of sausage wrapped in a leaf with palm sugar? Why not?

At this point we were wandering around a market area, and we took a quick break to visit the Buddhist shrine inside the market. (After being handed a coconut cake for later, of course.)

We didn’t get any great pictures of the shrine itself, but this is the hallway underneath.

Stop!

Smoothie time!

We were first handed a tiny green fruit to try.

This is a bilimibi fruit.  It can be eaten out of hand, and is sour and delicious by itself.  But, and hear me out, what if you blended it with fingerroot (sort of like ginger but different), passion fruit, pineapple, and roselle?

You get literally the best smoothie I have ever had in my life, that’s what.

Holy crap.  I will have DREAMS about this smoothie.

We continued to drink this as we were ushered around the corner to a fruit stand where we were issued not one, but TWO coconuts.  You know, so we could compare them.

Additionally, it was one old coconut and one young coconut, so we were prepared to perform any sort of coconut exorcism that might end up being required.

Back in the tuktuk, and off to the south side of town to visit a small shopping mall.  This served a number of purposes – it let Leigh look around a few more jewelry shops (although the private one earlier was definitely more interesting), it let us spend a little time in the AC, and it gave us another small break from stuffing ourselves.  We still wandered around and LOOKED at food, however, and the “oh look at this!” “oh look at this” “oh look at this!” was still on full display.

But soon enough, it was time to resume eating!

How about a squid on a stick?

Choux pastry swan?

Banana roti?  (We somehow managed to have BOTH of us forget to take a picture of this one, but trust me, it was also delicious.  EVERYTHING was delicious.)

Flower market?

Wait – flower market?  You can’t eat that.

It was still fascinating, however – all of the floral offerings we had observed being presented at the various temples we had wandered through in the previous two days were clearly being prepared here or somewhere like it.

The day was getting late, but we still had a few more stops.  The tuktuk made its way to a Michelin recognized store famous for its mango sticky rice.  We were handed a portion of that for later, but also an entire mango.  “These are special mangos – they don’t normally sell them separately.”

So we ate a mango.  It was a lifetime top three mango, for sure.  Pity we also forgot to photograph it.  We were getting tired at this point.  One last stop in store, however.

We returned to our starting point in Chinatown, and made our way to…

…oh, look! Peking Duck! You should have some of this…

…made our way to a tea shop that we had passed earlier, but hadn’t been open at the time.  And we sat down to a fairly intense tea tasting, with a complicated, multi-step process of washing, pouring, rinsing, brewing, and pouring again, for each of the five or so teas we sampled.

And with that, the food tour came to its conclusion at 5 pm.  What an amazing day.

Oh, and here’s the haul of what we had in the bag by the end of it:

More or less clockwise from upper left, a bag of pineapple oolong loose leaf tea, some crunchy fried fish, chicken skin, beef floss, some crispy crepes (I know we picked those up at some point, but damned if I remember when, even though we’d clearly already eaten half of them [Note from Leigh: I’m pretty sure these were handed to us while we were at the flower market]), one of the little green bilimbi fruits, a coconut cake, some sausage, two pastry swans, a box of Peking duck wraps, and a portion of Michelin-recommended mango sticky rice.

Whew. That list would make the world’s weirdest rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

What else to do after a day like that but go out for cocktails?

Holy hell, what a day.

In addition to eating absolutely everything we possibly could, we also did have every intention of seeing some actual, you know, sights in Bangkok.  Our plan for day two was to visit the big three historical sights in the city: the Grand Palace, and the temples of Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram Rajwaramahawihan, (of course I cut and pasted that, what did you think?) or “Wat Pho” for short, and Wat Arun.

We’ll talk about each of those in turn, but first let’s talk about breakfast.

In our research for the trip, I had found some rhapsodic descriptions of a pork leg rice street food seller who was, in theory, located right outside our hotel.  But it turns out they weren’t.  So we went looking for them.  Pretty sure we didn’t find them, but who cares?  We found pork leg rice, and it was amazing.

Also, this was approximately 3 bucks Canadian.  I will stop commenting on this fact, probably, but just to be clear – food was insanely cheap throughout the trip, even at the high end.

Thus fortified, we headed for the Grand Palace.  En route, we were delighted to encounter our first scammer.  “Look honey!  A grifter!  Just like in the videos!”  Specifically, this was a nice woman in a polo shirt who looked like a tourist assistance person who came up to us while we were checking our map, and asked us where we were headed.

When we told her the Grand Palace, she told us that the queen mother had passed away (which was true) and that as a result, the palace would be opening late. (which was not)  She suggested that we take a tuk tuk over to the south side of the river and tour the temples there.  And wouldn’t you know it, at just that moment, a random tuk tuk just happened to pull up and ask if we wanted a ride?

We did not, having been warned about this exact scam by an incredibly Canadian Bangkok YouTuber named “Cal.” (Thanks Cal!  Your videos were awesome, and a great help in many ways.)

So we thanked her politely and moved on to the very much open Grand Palace.

A word about the queen mother, though – she passed away about a month before we arrived, but because the royal family occupy a quasi-divine mythology in Thailand, we were just at the start of a year of official mourning.  There was black and white bunting and photos of her EVERYWHERE.

This included just about every temple we visited, which was definitely a contrast to the church-state separation we are accustomed to in the west.

The tour of the Grand Palace consists of two main areas – the temple of the Emerald Buddha, and the palace itself.  Most of the palace was indeed closed due to official mourning, but we were able to explore the temple.

It’s hard to describe, even with pictures, the maximalist aesthetic on display here.  This was a common theme of the whole trip, particularly in the temple-rich environs of Chiang Mai, but unsurprisingly, the complex attached to the royal palace is at the top of this particular heap.  Just a few of our MANY photos:

The one thing we CAN’T show you is a photo of the Emerald Buddha itself, since this was one of the very few temples that didn’t allow photography.

From the temple, we proceeded through to the Grand Palace, but we only got a look at the outside, because mourners.

Many, many mourners.  Mass mourners mobilizing for monarchal mother’s memorial.

Ahem.  Sorry.  But the upshot was that the royal palace and the various museums associated with it were closed.  So after having our picture taken by an ACTUAL tourist support person (It FELT disrespectful, but it was their idea, and all the Thai mourners were also taking selfies) we moved on to our next stop.

The next stop was Wat Pho, a large temple complex just south of the palace featuring a very, very large reclining Buddha.

At this point I turned to Leigh and whispered “I like big Buddhas and I cannot lie.”  Then I tripped over something and stubbed my toe, so I should probably be more respectful.

And to be clear, the building housing this enormous statue is just one small part of the larger temple complex.

The second picture shows three of the four Chedi dedicated to the first four kings of the Rama dynasty, of which the current king is Rama the tenth.

At this point, we were absolutely overwhelmed, and also it was time for lunch.  Wanting to get away from the absolute tourist black hole that is the area around the palace and Wat Pho, we took a ferry up river a few stops to a smaller local market area called Wang Lang, which Google Maps helpfully describes as “A large open air market with many snacks.”

It certainly was. Sadly, we completely failed to take a PICTURE of our actual lunch (two different delicious curries). We did get a blurry photo of a pandan cake that we had for dessert, but I won’t trouble you with it here.

Because we then walked to the far more photogenic THIRD of the big three sights in downtown Bangkok, the temple of Wat Arun.  The walk wasn’t dangerous or anything, but it also wasn’t very INTERESTING.  It was along a light industrial street with a naval yard on one side, so not much to see.  Probably not on many tourist routes.

The temple itself, however?

Definitely on the tourist routes.  Wat Arun, which literally means “Temple of Dawn”, is one of the iconic sites of Bangkok, and is prominently situated at a bend in the river so as to be visible for a long way  both up and downstream.

It’s absolutely stunning.

It is also absolutely infested with Instagrammers.

We were tired at this point, it was hot, and we had walked a long way.  So we basically just parked at a balcony and watched life’s rich pageant for a while.  Life’s rich pageant consisted of many, many people in rented Thai dress, frequently accompanied by rented Thai photographers, taking just that absolutely perfect shot for the ‘gram, artfully ignoring the absolute staggering wonder of Thai architecture that they were standing right next to.

I know, I know…

It really was stupendous, though.

At any rate, after a nice long rest at this gorgeous temple, we made our way back across the river to explore a bit more of Chinatown.  We walked through a number of absolutely TINY market streets that you would assume were just too small and full of people to accommodate motorcycles.  But you would be wrong.

By this point we were getting tired and hungry. So we decamped to a rooftop bar for our first serving of Pad Thai of the trip, along with some pomelo salad and cocktails.  But also this view.

From here, we made our way back to Yaowarat road and really took in the absolute madness that is one of the great street food areas of the world at night.  Faced with an overwhelming number of options, we opted for some nice coconut ice cream, and called it a night.

But we really had no idea what an overwhelming variety of food could look like.  Not yet.

(Is that good foreshadowing?  It’s supposed to be foreshadowing.)

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 FORMAL 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 work 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.