Bangkok Chinatown

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For a place I was going to give a miss this turned out to be the culinary highlight of the trip so far. I met up with Dave and Anna from my local the Queens Pub in Hull - they were just starting their travels around SE Asia and I managed to give them some advice about Cambodia. It was good to see someone from home after 2 months away. Anyway a few beers and off round Chinatown in search of something to eat - you don't have to look very far at all as almost every pavement is covered with stalls cooking and frying all sorts. after trying some really nice deep fried unidentified frying objects (I think it was prawn) we managed to find a little place that had loads of large dishes displayed outside with pork, fish, chicken, prawns, squid, etc in some very interestingly coloured sauces. We all picked a dish and waded in. The 2 fish dishes were superb - one with a beautiful ginger and garlic sauce. The squid was Daves fave and I think everyone liked the pile of steamed greens which reminded me a little in shape and texture of purple sprouting broccoli but Anna thought was something they'd seen in India called Touch Me Not - the name refers to the plant closing up it's flowers when touched. Mina has a Thai name for it too. These greens were cooked with loads of small unpeeled cloves of garlic and oyster sauce - I polished off most of the garlic cloves at the end and stank of garlic for 2 days! We then tried to find a street called San Peng but I reckon the directions we were given were a little out but only just because on the other side of the main drag was a street that was exactly what Lonely Planet had described as San Peng - all the shops were closed so we concluded it must be a daytime sort of place.
Yesterday I had visited a large modern shopping mall, about 15 mins in tuktuk from where we were staying. The first thing that struck me was how far you had to go to get out of Chinatown - it must be the largest one in the world. Anyway, the ground floor of the mall had about 40 food stalls selling all the stuff you normally see sold on the street - evidence that things are changing? Or just evidence that the Tjais can't go for more than 25 yards without eating? Everywhere you go there is food being sold and consumed one way or another - it's great!
The following night Mina nad I went to a large street corner right next door to the
Shanghai Mansion hotel where we were staying and sampled the gigantic prawns - we'd seen these last night AFTER we'd already eaten. These prawns are about 5 inches long and 3/4 of an inch thick - 10 will set you back 300 baht - about 6 pounds. There were alsio some even BIGGER prawns at 3 for 400 baht - these monsters were the same type that were featured in Rick Steins Far Easter Odyssey recently - very aggressive and ferocious and feed on smaller prawns these are approx 10 inches long and 3 inches round - I decided to give these a try another time, maybe in Malaysia. We also had some lovely deep fried fish with a very potent red chilli/garlic dip - this was on top of the equally potent green coloured lime, garlic and red chilli dip that was served with the prawns. We also ordered the Touch Me Not again.

I can honestly say I have never seen so much food done so many ways ever and cheap is not the word. The meal for 4 with drinks was 200 baht - 4 quid! This beats Hanoi by a country mile and Hanoi was bloody good!

After 3 nights in 4 star colonial style luxury at the Shanghai Mansion Hotel we are off to Malaysia tomorrow (9th) and hopefully more good food. One interesting point is that I have managed to maintain my weight at 82Kg (13 stone) despite eating for England. The SE Asian cuisines don't appear to be very fattening on the whole - and yet bags of variety and flavour!

By for now folks.

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