Having enjoyed some of the best experiences of our 3 months of travel on food tours in Malaysia, we had no intention of leaving Thailand (perhaps home to the world’s most popular ‘international cuisines’) before joining at least one food tour here. So bring on the Historic Bangrak Food Tasting & Culture Tour.
At the end of the afternoon, we both agreed that today’s tour had been a lot less memorable than the Malay tour from a culinary perspective, but this was (mostly) made up for by the diverse group of fellow foodies who we had the pleasure of getting to know during the course of the tour. One young couple from Philadelphia in the U.S. were particularly charming – they were not well travelled (I think this may have been their first overseas adventure), and they were fascinating by our stories, even vowing by the end of the tour that they would be visiting Edinburgh sometime soon to check out the Fringe.
Things got off to an inauspicious start when two pre-booked guests failed to show at the agreed meeting point, beside a convenience store in a train station concourse. It was Saturday morning, and with a steady stream of people of every shape and size passing through the station, our poor guide spent the next 30 minutes eyeing up every passing white person, desperately hoping that her missing guests had finally shown up. Eventually, she gave up, and we marched off in search of our first restaurant.
And what would you expect for the first stop on a Bangkok food tour than… traditional Chinese food?! I don’t think anyone was especially thrilled by the chicken and duck entrees we were served, but we were seated on a long banquet table out of the sun (on another very hot day), so we very content chatting away while our guide worried about the missing guests.
Just as we were about to leave, her phone rung… and of course, it was them! So we were asked to retake our seats for 20 minutes longer while our guide rushed off to meet the lollygaggers!
Our next stop was just around the corner, at the straightforwardly named Muslim Restaurant. Our guide pointed out the antique portraits on the wall. These were the great-grandparents of the current owners… now fourth generation, and still serving the same menu. The food here was a lot better, the highlight being a dish which our guide refused to identify until everyone had had a taste – sheep brain curry!
With two stops down, and three still to come, we took a break from eating to check out another of Bangkok’s stunning Thai-Chinese temples, Wat Suan Plu.
Next door is a school run by Wat Suan Plu’s monks. There can’t be many more impressive buildings to look across at from the window of your school classroom!
In the same courtyard we found another gold leaf Buddha, this time in the “Alms Bowl” posture which signifies compassion and caring for all beings.
Being one of the tallest buildings in Bangkok, from our vantage point in the temple courtyard we could see the top of Lebua hotel, famous for its appearance in the recent film, Hangover 2. At the beginning of the film, a helicopter shot introduces us to one of the main characters as he drinks at the hotel’s rooftop bar, Skybar. Lebua is one of Thailand’s most expensive hotels, with rooms costing upwards of $500 per night, and of course, they now offer guests the ultimate in luxury courtesy of the three-bedroom “Hangover 2 Suite”!
To reach our next food stop required us to cross the river, so it was time for another passenger ferry. These ferries looked even more traditional than the ones we’d used during the earlier bike tours, appearing almost like a floating temple!
A short walk from the pier on the other side of the river is Yam Rot Saeb, our third food stop, and the one most of our tour party, Kit and I included, enjoyed the most. The food here was delicious – three dishes, the most memorable being a papaya salad. Having earlier polled all of the tour party on their tolerance for spicy foods, our host ordered a selection of mild and medium dishes. However… wires must have been crossed somewhere, because one of these salads proved to be one of the spiciest dishes any of us had ever tasted! Of course, it looked just the same as it’s less spicy counterparts, so it came as quite a shock when taking a bite!!
Back on the south side of the river, we passed through a market where street food was being served, and our guide bought banana fritters for everyone. We are quickly discovering this to be one of the most popular street foods in SE Asia – we had already tried banana fritters at least twice before, and (of course!) each time we are told these are the best you can get!
The next stop on the tour was a real change of scene, and quite unexpected. We walked through some busy shopping streets before stumbling into the delightful Panlee Bakery, a French patisserie serving all manner of cakes and biscuits along with Western brunch options, all served with a rare pleasure in this part of the world: real French coffee. Here, we sampled pandan buns (with their bright green filling!) and sweetened ice coffee.
The final stop on the tour was slightly off the beaten track, so we walked several blocks past some unexpected sights, including the Bangkok Seashell Museum (who knew an entire museum could be dedicated to seashells?!) and some impressive topiary!
While Panlee was certainly pitched towards more affluent Bangkok residents than the restaurants we had visited earlier in the day, our final stop was the most “upmarket” of the tour’s five restaurant stops. Strangely though, the food at Kalpapruek Restaurant was the least inspiring. We were herded upstairs to a long table across from a number of Thai people who were dressed to impress and looked distinctly unimpressed that their lunch was being disturbed by a group of noisy tourists!
We ate Thai green curry (very tasty – but nothing new), followed by a scoop of the house speciality – sorbet.
And that was it! Before saying our goodbyes, we grilled our guide on the best places to go shopping for gifts. She recommended to us Bangkok’s largest market, open only on weekends, and that is where we spent most of the afternoon…
Once only popular among wholesalers and traders, Chatuchak Market has become one of the Bangkok’s most popular tourist attractions. The 35-acre site is home to more than 8,000 market stalls, and on a typical weekend, more than 200,000 visitors come here to sift through the goods on offer.
After a long afternoon of shopping (at least part of which was spent in a nearby mall after failing to find everything we needed at the market), we had begun to feel a little peckish again. Good thing then that we had a second culinary adventure planned for the evening: a dinner cruise on the Chao Phraya river.
The starting point for the cruise was many miles from our AirBnB accommodation, and not accessible by public transport, so we once again found ourselves hailing a cab. Big mistake! This proved to be the worst time of day to be on the road in Bangkok, and we spent several minutes at a time waiting agonisingly at red lights. We became increasingly concerned that we would miss the cruise, so much so that when we got within sight of the pier we asked our driver to let us out so we could run the final few blocks.
To say we cut things fine would be an understatement! They were literally pulling up the gang plank as we sprinted down the pier, leaving us almost no time to mop our brows and put on our best “never in doubt” faces as we passed all of the already seated passengers on the way to our table!
As we were already aware, the Chao Phraya river is no Thames or river Seine. Chao Phraya doesn’t have a particularly spectacular sky line, so this was never going to be a once-in-a-lifetime dinner cruise experience. It was fun though, and the food was good. Being in Thailand, it was cheap as well.. our three-course dinner cost about the same as a meal out in Balham!
The biggest problem was the price of drinks. Not surprising I suppose – we were a captive market after all – but even a bottle of Thai wine cost more than £25, which was probably a week’s wages for our waitstaff!
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