By Joanna Lee

Food. Food. Food. I was so hungry just now; I could hardly use my brains. Well, its not that I use it very often, but just now was just bad. I could not wait to get myself to Chinatown to get my article down and also to get my stomach filled.

The quest was simple. All we needed to do was to get ourselves to Chinatown and to look for a story to write and to makan. Sounded easy enough. Well…not that easy. First of all, we had to get a tuk tuk, then we had to bargain the price, and while on the ride we had to pray hard that we get to Chinatown in one piece. That’s a lot of work.

Upon reaching there, (thankfully in one piece) another problem popped up. There was just too much food, too much to choose from. Practically the whole street of Chinatown is filled with food vendors; it was food heaven.

Check out what we ate …

Down town Bangkok- Food Heaven

Seafood for the soul

Old school stuff- Kaya and bread

All in all, we spent about 250 baht each on food tonight. Cheap and GOOD. We were going from shop to shop trying out the varieties of food.

For the first time in days, we could speak to the people without the help of our student guides or having a hard time speak to the people using simple English and actions to show them what we wanted. The people there spoke mainly mandarin and hokkien. This is good with me, not really good in those two dielects, but it was enough to get the message through.

That was good enough for me.

By Kerry-Ann

Being Malaysian, its not surprising to have asked, “what’s for dinner?” when you’re having breakfast.

Day 2

We visited Klong Toey, the slum area of Bangkok. Despite being able to hear the echoes of our growling stomachs, we were not very interested in the idea of a meal after what we saw. However, by nightfall we were ready to look at what the streets of Bangkok could feed us with.

I’m not sure exactly what it is with eating the same food in different places, but I guess you could say that’s what we did, because Tom Yam was on the dinner table for the second day in a row. Not as tantalizing as the first day, the Tom Yam in a little quaint shop along the heart of Khao San road, was perhaps catered for the less masochistic. Crab omelettes came as a recommendation, but I would say otherwise.

My favorite part of the day was dessert. Venturing out into the streets alone with my room mate at 1:30 in the morning, we found the most appetizing food – pancakes!

They were not like waffles or the Dutch influenced Apom Balik pancakes back home, instead they were actually made from dough and fried. In short, they were roti canai’s, topped with chocolate sauce or bananas and cheese.

Heaven.

By Kerry-Ann

The first tip I got about food in Bangkok was “don’t eat the food from road side stalls” Well, me being me, I planned to defy exactly that. Thai food has always been one of my weaknesses so I decided to write on cuisine just to see how real my love for this nation’s food was.

Day 1
Arriving from Kuala Lumpur was no joke. Let’s face it - we either didn’t have enough money or we didn’t want to be rushing to the loo 30,00 feet above ground level, so we settled with McDonalds. Both for breakfast, and then later for lunch as well.

We arrived at about 4 PM in Bangkok, with a plane full of hungry beavers. I mean, hungry eaters (either way, it sounds wrong). And all we wanted was to go makan.

As the cab hit the streets of Bangkok, all we could see was food! Chicken, pork, insects, fish (and humans depending on how you define ‘eating’). I couldn’t see how my peers eyes were ogling at the food, but their audible “ooohs and aaahhhs” was a definite sign that they were ready to gobble just about anything.

We were taken to the Balcony Tom Yam Kung Restaurant near our Inn. It was a rather cozy restaurant cum café cum bar (in Bangkok anything can cum la), with black and white photos of Bangkok decorating its white wooded panel walls to give it a touch of class. The building was a house, so it felt like we had a private function, (I would like to say, the celebration of buying my first jet plane).

Our student guides had ordered Tom Yam for us. This reminded me of my buddy Kristin who is always bragging about the Tom Yam fried rice in SS15. However, after tasting the Tom Yam our guides ordered for us…well, I don’t think we can even begin comparing Tom Yams from back home.

The Tom Yam came thick and ornamented with chilies of red and green, lemon grass, and coriander leaves. Its scent was enough to indicate just how torturous it was going to be. I took a spoon full and yes, I was the first Eurasian girl on the moon. However, the mango salad (kerabu) and catfish slices and lots of rice were enough to get around the sheer cruelness of the Tom Yam.

We were all astounded by the next dish - fish with slices of ham in it. I didn’t eat the ham, but apparently I didn’t miss much because it was just plain awkward. Looking forward to more surprises on day two!