Thailand Part 3- The North // Food

Leaving the South of Thailand knowing that there was still so much to see was hard, knowing I was leaving all this natural beauty for a place I really didn’t hold much regard for was even harder. Our flight left Krabi and took us back to Bangkok. Readers of my previous blog entry will have a pretty solid impression of what I thought of Bangkok and so will understand my disinterest in returning. However, let me assure you know this read will offer a whole new side to the city, a city I have now fallen for, I don’t love it like I love Hong Kong but I’m certainly more fond of it now.

We stayed the opposite end of the city this time, which confused our taxi driver a great deal- “why so far from the centre”, he kept saying. If I’m honest we had picked our location based on one thing, as we only had a night we wanted to go to Nana Plaza. For those who don’t know, this is another of the cities major Red Light Districts but aside from the obvious it also hosts some fantastic markets and entertaining nightlife options. Although it is on the tourists radar it doesn’t bow down to them like Patpong or Soi Cowboy, and therefore has a more genuine vibe. The other great thing about Nana Plaza over the other exotic areas is that it is set over three floors. So unlike the others you can actually enjoy a beer without being tugged by the ladies (pun intended), or having to watch the Colonial-60-something falling in love with his 20-something-evening-purchase. You can be in the middle of something extraordinary and surreal and actually enjoy it. There is no denying that Nana Plaza is the most extreme of the Red Light districts, known widely as Adult Disney Land but sitting at a bar on the ground floor it’s anything but seedy. Hatty found it amusing that I would sometimes (possibly more than I thought) get a little distracted but even with the stunning, scantily clad ladies walking about this is a very couple friendly place.

But before we made our way to Nana Plaza we had two tummies that needed filling, normally a shopping mall isn’t where I would seek to score my evening meal but there was something about the Siam Centre that grabbed both our attentions as we pulled up alongside it on the Sky Train. Inside is a labyrinth of escalators some take you half a floor, some a full floor, some skip two floors. In a matter of seconds you can find yourself two floors higher on the other side not just of the mall but the road. It didn’t help that large sections were closed off for refurbishment either. Once you get your head around it though there is some logic. The Siam Centre is set across four floors and houses over 400 shops, and attached to it is the Discovery Centre which is a further 32 floors and contains yet more things to see and do. We had walked its every corridor, been out and back in by accident more times that I care to mention and despite seeing regular signs for the food halls had found nothing.

Beginning to give up hope we slumped down alongside one of the many art installations that fill the gaps between the clothes shops and beauty parlours. Then out of the corner of our weary eyes we spotted something that resembled a restaurant. We went to its front door and opened the menu that sat on a plinth outside, the first page was a map displaying a number of food outlets and each following page revealed their delights. I flicked through the pages but couldn’t decide on which one I wanted to try and find then Hatty clicked, they are all in here! We entered the single coolest eating establishment I had ever been in, I was handed a card and shown to a table, I was very confused but as the realisation of what this place was I began to realise I had scored big time.

Plearnwan Panich is a genius concept, it is laid out like a street market and each food stall around the space is hosted by a guest restaurant so each time you go you might see (eat) something new. You go to each stall and order the dishes you want, some offer speciality drinks but there is also a brilliant bar (coffees, shakes and beers) based in the centre of the street. Each place you order from swipes your card, you take a seat and the waiter brings the food over from each stall. It’s a gluttonous piggies heaven. When we went there was a noodle bar, burger joint, ice cream stand amongst others plus the main bar which offered a range of sweets. First course was the infamous Black Burger from “Caspar Burger”, a ½ pounder beef burger cooked rare and housed inside a black bun- it gets its distinctive colour due to the squid ink that is mixed into the dough, a portion of fries, a hash brown burger, chicken nuggets (I’d had a craving for about 2 weeks so this was a highlight) and a cherry aid. That sorted my fast food fix. Next I ordered the “Little Gems”, I had no idea what these were at time of ordering but when they arrived in their banana leaf parcel I was transported back to my childhood. The joyous little biscuits with iced gems on the top, sickly sweet and pretty hideous to my adult palate but the nostalgia was worth the eating. Next came deep fried dough balls with a coconut custard (green for some reason) and condensed milk dip, think the best doughnut you’ve had then times that by a thousand. Alongside them I had the chocolate buns (Thai Style), a Dim Sum dish which was spectacular. Feeling pretty fat I moved onto some refreshments, a strong and delicious double espresso, some purple fruit juice concoction and a Pink Rad Sala- basically a glass of warm milk with pink Angel Delight mixed in to it. Hatty matched me dish for dish (opting for the vegetarian alternatives of course). I tempted myself with the long list of noodle delights and countless flavours of ice cream which came in cones, on waffles or pancakes, or for a bowel of Caspars signature deep fried mash covered in cheese and chili but I was starting to see double from my sugar intake so we handed our card in and awaited the mammoth bill. Let’s not forget we were in a kitsch restaurant inside an extravagant shopping mall in the city centre. So when the bill came and totalled £10 I really had to stop myself from sitting back down and going for another round. 

It was a brilliant experience and I highly recommend it. This blog offers the best visual description of Plearnwan Panich, there are words too if you can read Thai) http://hello2day.com/plearnwan-panich-siam-square-one/

Waddling out of the street onto the street-with me? We found ourselves in a street market that was just starting to come alive, thankfully there was little to no food in sight but enough quirky clothes and handicrafts to keep you entertained. The market is rammed both with stalls and locals, everyone is sandwiched in the tight alleyway and can only move if you step at the same time as the six or so people either side of you, it’s like the worlds biggest “three legged race”. Things are unbelievably cheap here and of decent quality too, it didn’t take long for me and Hatty to have our hands full of bags. We walked both sides of the market which extends more than a mile each way. Once we’d done this we veered off down one of the many side alleys where there is yet more entertainment, more markets of course, live music and street performers. It was excellent fun but in all the excitement we had walked some serious distance away from our destination. So we hopped back on the Sky Train and set off for Nana Plaza.

Leaving Bangkok the following morning I was pleased I had seen the city again, away from the tourist hotspots this is an energetic and inspiring city and I’d gladly visit again and again.

We caught a train to our next destination, Ayutthaya. I’d never heard of it before and had little idea what was here. I read on the train journey that it was an Ancient City and was steeped in history. Well after basically sitting on beach for the past two weeks maybe it was time to get some culture. The map provided by the guesthouse listed just some of the hundred or so Wats (temples) that you could visit but before we could think about doing anything we had to eat (are you surprised?). The first place we saw was the driveway of an old couple, there were some plastic chairs and tables laid out, he was drinking a beer and watching telly, she was standing by a camping stove balanced on some crates. We sat down and he handed us a menu, to our surprise some of the items had English descriptions. I ordered a vegetable stir fry and a beer, Hatty ordered a tofu soup and a Coke. I got a spicy pork curry and Hatty got a chicken stir fry. We didn’t get any drinks. Close enough. Given that Hatty was a vegetarian this was double dinner for me and double hungry for her. I sunk the food quickly, paid the bill (£1) and we went in search of other options.

Next door was a “Milk Bar”, Hatty, understandably played it safe and went for a salad and I (not that I needed anything) went for the raw prawns and chili and mango dip, a milkshake and an espresso (which came in a mug and was made with cream- again “close enough”). We actually ended up in here for quite a few hours picking different items of the menu from Thai delicacies and obscure ice cream sundaes, the entertainment came from the table of teenage boys getting progressively more pissed.

The following day we picked six of the Wats to see, hired a moped and went out for the day. The temples are impressive to look at but they rarely have any information boards so there is a limit to how much you can learn and there is certainly a limit to how many times you can say, “Wow”.

It is enjoyable to wander round the ruins and without meaning to state the obvious they do make you feel like you’re in an Ancient World which is cool but to be honest it was the journeys between the Wats that was more fun. I love having the bike and I love having Hatty on the back. Travelling through India and Thailand and I’m sure it will remain as we go through South East Asia we have restrained how we express our affection for each other. I’m not talking smooching in the street, hands on her bum I mean we’ve not even been holding hands and it’s amazing how much I miss this basic contact. But on the bike she has to hold on to me and as we go from place to place this contact with the woman I love is fantastic.

Enough soppy stuff.

Next stop, further North was a place called Khao Yoi, it’s big draw is its National Park which is home to wildlife from Hornbills to Gibbons to Elephants and much more between. Our pad for the coming days was set only a few km from the entrance of the park in the middle of nowhere. It was a family run guesthouse and it was here we got some of the best hospitality of the trip and it wouldn’t be right not to mention the food. At first glance it appeared the menu consisted of Frog, you could have him curried, fried, in a soup or on toast. I don’t have an issue with eating Frog but you kind of have to be in the mood for it. Closer inspection did reveal some alternatives and the first of these was a dry curry, the base was fresh lime, chilli, basil, coriander and ginger which was made into a dry paste and cooked with chicken mince. It was blow your head off hot but absolutely delicious. Every mouthful was more painful but as the undeniably fresh flavours danced around my mouth I salivated for more punishment.

The following morning we realised we didn’t have any money to pay for the trekking experience we had booked so I asked the owner where the nearest ATM was, he told me it was too far to walk but said he’s take me. So we jumped on his moped and sent in search of an ATM. After a ten minute ride we found one, which was out of service, ten minutes later another one but this time is was just turned off, some thirty minutes later we ended up at a shopping centre and had six ATMs to pick from. I managed to get some Baht and we headed back, on the way he stopped off at a market stall and grabbed some breakfast of sticky rice, chicken stock and a raw egg.

The truck arrived not long after to take us to the National Park for our day of trekking and hopefully seeing wild elephants. The park is over 2,000 km² and so the day is split into a mixture of driving and trekking. We hadn’t been on the road long before the truck pulled over and the guide ushered us all out of the back. Somehow he had spotted to snakes in a tree as we were driving; it took me a while to spot them even after he had pointed them out to me. Once I clocked them though there was no mistaking them, bright orange and entwined around the branches, they weren’t that chunky but were pretty long and for someone with a fear of these satanic serpents they were big enough. Everyone got their fill and we jumped back in the back of the truck.

The next stop was to marvel at the “giant squirrel”, before revalling it to us the guide asked us all how big the average squirrel was in our native lands, all our hand gestures were around the same moderate size, his however were some three or maybe four sizes bigger. The “Giant Squirrel” is pretty giant, not dissimilar in size to the Red Panda, at the very least they share the same fluffy tail. It was high up in a tree and so to get the best view we took it in turns to look at him though a telescope, he was magnificent.

We still hadn’t arrived at the parks visitors centre but were once again pulling over, this time it wasn’t what the guide had seen but more what he had heard, a Gibbon. We stood on the roadside for around 20 minutes without a sighting but patience is certainly the name of the game, then he spotted it, high up in the trees a large male Gibbon. Again this called for the telescope to really get a good look of him but he was again magnificent. I then learnt that Gibbons unlike monkeys don’t have tails, and unlike monkeys don’t have sex for fun, the female gibbon is pregnant for 7 months, when she gives birth the young gibbon stays attached to her for the next three and a half years. If the young is male he will go off, find a female and then make a family in a new territory, if she is female she will stay until a male comes to whisk her away. It is only after the young have moved on that daddy gibbon is allowed to get some hot mummy action. I also learnt the difference in the calls of the male and the female and later when trekking was able to identify the noises above me, although this earlier sighting was to be my only one of the day.

Once inside the park and exploring by foot we saw a variety of colourful birds, my favourite was the Hornbill. The park is littered with monkeys, in the trees and on the ground. The day before, a French tourist was standing directly under a branch where a monkey was eating, the particular fruit has a very hard outer shell that they discard after eating the soft fruit inside. The monkey threw it from the tree and it hit the Frenchman on his head, cutting it and sending him off to hospital. As a result of this our guide was less keen for us to stand under the line of fire so we watched them graze from a distance.

After hiking for three or so hours we reached a watch tower we had lunch and then got back in the truck and headed for a waterfall. The park boasts some 40 waterfalls some of which they allow you to swim in. I had come prepared for this as this is something I have wanted to do for a long time but today was not to be the day. It was impressive and peaceful.

The next part of the day was used to search for wild elephants, an experience that would be ridiculously cool if we managed it but like the waterfall today was not to be the day. I hold this down the fact that the before mentioned Frenchman had tagged along on this part of our day as he had missed it yesterday. Everyone in the truck agreed he had tarnished us with his bad luck. I’m sure this made his pounding head feel much better.

Despite not seeing the elephants I didn’t feel disappointed, much like not seeing the tiger in Ranthombhore I understood that these were wild animals in their natural habitat, we were a group of often over excited humans in a truck, hardly subtle. Besides that I had spent my day unknowingly surrounded by them which in a way is cooler. I had seen countless monkeys, a gibbon, some colourful birds and my personal favourite the charming giant squirrel.

At the time the trekking did seem laborious, I was certainly bored at parts but on reflection it was a rewarding day out and certainly beats sitting in an office.

The highlight of the day however was the evening meal, again skipping past the various frog options on the menu I arrived at “Tom Yum Thale”, I ordered this simply because my brother is called Tom. However warped this logic might seem it paid off. This “hot and sour” seafood soup is ludicrously good and I can honestly say the best dish I have eaten on this trip and certainly a contender for best dish I have ever eaten (excluding anything my mum makes obviously). The main ingredients are; tomato, onion, lemon grass, kaffir leaves, galangal, sweet chili paste, fish sauce, green chillies, coriander and limes and of course lots of seafood. It came in a washing up bowl and had half the ocean in it, but aside from the sheer volume of food it was the aroma it gave off that gave everyone else in the restaurant instant food envy. Although by the end it was aggressively spicy I was already addicted and so endured the pain, the sweats and soldiered on until every drop was either in my gut or on my front. If it was legal to marry food I would marry this dish.

 The following day in Khao Yoi was a bit of a tumbleweed day, not wanting to do the trek again led us to basically the option of sitting in the room all day. Given that the WiFi was excellent and the food here was phenomenal this didn’t seem too bad. Our intention was to put a plan together for our next moves. Our Thai visas run out soon so where next, for how long and where to from there. We got as far as booking flights to Laos and knowing we wanted to spend some time in Vietnam and Cambodia. We also worked out where would like to be for Hatty’s birthday in May and settled on Malaysia which we would get to via Singapore. But as for actually booking anything that got a little tiresome. Hatty had decided to search the guesthouse we were staying at to leave a review and it was then that she broke the worst news to me. It came in the form of a review from a man who has been living in Thailand for the past 6 years. He had stayed at this guesthouse recently and proclaimed that the Tom Yum Thale was the single best example of Tom Yum he had ever eaten during his entire time in Thailand. There I was slurping away last night full of glee and settled on what my Thai staple would be from now on in and he goes and drops that almighty clanger. I want to prove him wrong but I know I’ll only be left wanting.

With this souring the air a little we think about what else we can do today, the nearest bike hire is a 400 Baht (£8) taxi ride away and taxis take anywhere from half an hour to an hour to drive past so that was out the window. We were miles from any town so walking was also out of the question. I figured, if you don’t ask you don’t get, so I asked the owner if we could hire his moped. Well this was out of the question, he is an avid Liverpool fan and as such has a Liverpool bike, parked alongside his Liverpool car, facing the Liverpool mural. It was his pride and joy and he wasn’t handing over the keys. I’m not a football man but the family team is West Ham so it wouldn’t go down well, certainly not when all of Hattys family are Liverpool mad, her brother had a Liverpool wedding cake for crying out loud, I’d never hear the end of it. So as luck would have it the only other option was to borrow the chefs bike, just a normal bike with no markings. Phew.

We headed in the direction of the town, of which we had had a sneak preview of on our way to the park the other day. It was everything but traditional Thai and intrigued us greatly. The whole town is for lack of a better word, novelty. There is a Wild West hotel with a Cowboy restaurant complete with Cowboy Saloon and attached Cowboy shop, it’s a town within a town. As you drive this road it gets stranger, there is a Restaurant that has life size Marvel and DC characters scattered inside and out. A fake military base complete with medic tent, tank and aeroplane. Endless cowboy themed bars and restaurants and at the end of this strip is a shopping centre which has been designed to resemble Italy, nowhere specific just Italy. From the architecture of the shop fronts to the things they sell- ice cream, coffee, pizza. There are even scaled down version of Italian landmarks. But before we enjoy this surreal country-within-a-town-within-a-town we opt for the superhero restaurant. Hatty has two young nephews and we’re pretty sure they’d like to see their Aunty having dinner with the Hulk or Ironman. We sit down and get given the menu which consists of as you might expect American classics, the waiter comes over to take our order which we give him and then he tells us that the kitchen is closed. We obviously didn’t know the code word so instead took some snaps and moved onto the next one. This landed up in the Wild Wild West and it was here that I ordered the most interesting dish of the trip.

Ladies and gentlemen I present to you, deep fried snakes head. Yep. Actually the menu lied, its not just the head you get, their very generous here in Cowboy land, you get the whole damn snake. I really don’t know why I ordered this, I hate snakes. When it arrived I actually jumped out of my skin, for a split second I thought the slimy bugger was alive, I felt its breath on me, its flickering tongue hissing out to smell me before turning the tables and eating me. It was beautifully prepared on a bed of chilli and lime and the flesh was very meaty, it was very palatable but the adrenaline never quite wore off and I felt very unsettled. Hatty on the other hand, sitting smug with her salad had not stopped crying with laughter at my girly shriek. The whole situation was made evermore awkward by the waitresses decision to pull up a chair and just stare at me. We were the only people in the restaurant.

I’d had enough of playing Indiana Jones and so we headed out of old town Americana and straight into Italy. This is what the world will be like after a zombie attack, there were literally no other humans here, a Tannoy system played eerie Italian lift music and signs creaked in the wind, some shops were closed, some open but unmanned. It felt like a very odd dream and if Ironman was to wander past or Superman fly overhead it would not seem strange. We found some life forms in a coffee shop and I ordered a double espresso to which the lady said I would have to wait 10 minutes, she then walked away. The place also sold ice cream so we ordered two ice creams, which she made there and then. We sat down and ten minutes later two, double espressos turned up. Hatty doesn’t drink coffee. I drank the quadrupole dose of caffeine and the situation just proceeded to get weirder.

Our initial decision to go to Italy was to escape the rain that had started to fall but no sooner had we landed the rain had stopped. Deciding that this day had become more scary than enjoyable we got back on the bike and set off for our home-from-home in Thailand. At that split second it started to rain.

We left Khao Yoi the following morning and made our way back to Ayutthaya. We needed to go back on ourselves as we had tickets from Ayutthaya to our end destination, Chiang Mai booked for the following morning. This put us back in the Ancient City for a night, having done all the Wats we could handle we were more than stumped for what to do, our hostel was a very basic £4 a night job and so staying in all night wasn’t appealing. Thankfully today is Chinese New Year and from a brief wonder around the town earlier in the day we had seen decorations going up and market stalls being built. It was looking like there would be a real buzz here very soon. We waited. And then we waited some more. At 9pm they were still putting everything together, aside from those putting up decorations the town was asleep. We went back to the hostel and did the same.

The next morning we travelled by train to Chiang Mai, this is a ten hour train journey and for the £6 or so that it cost it was very pleasant. Air-con, free food and as we got further north the views got really special. But for my account of the journey and my time in Chiang Mai you’ll just have to wait.

Over and out.