Food, Food and more Food

I only took one picture this day so this post will mostly be full of my bad writing. My friend and his family are foodies so a lot of their travels revolves around food. They booked a tour with a company that is associated with the youtube star Mark Wiens and it was all about trying different types of Thai food in Bangkok. This is not the type of thing I would normally do on my travels but it is good to try something new and I enjoyed the day.

The first small market we stopped in I had been to before on my wanderings in Bangkok. We ate at different stands and had different dishes than what I had eaten when I was here before. I should have brought a pen and a note pad to ask the guide to write down the names of the dishes I liked because it was all in one ear and out the other. I think the first stop was considered to be central Thai food. I will have to look for what I think was a fried radish dish that I really enjoyed at this stop.

We wondered through some street markets with the guide pointing out different ingredient and tasting different things. I think we ate some mangoes along this section and also ate some Khanom krok which are a Thai desert that are a sort of half moon shaped custard topped with coconut or something else, I forgot.

This is a picture of Khanom Krok in the pan I stole from the internet.

I pointed out snake fruit or salak along the way and the guide found some later that was peeled that we could try. This is an old photo I took of snake fruit.

I believe that our next stop was for Sukhothai Noodles and this counted as out Northern Thai Food stop. It seemed to be the normal type of noodles just with cut up green beans and that made it the Sukhothai version. I stole the following picture from a review of the place I think we ate at.

We wondered through an area of town I have never really explored, it is east of the Grand Palace. We then went to a coconut ice cream shop but I had coffee ice cream. I stole another review picture of the shop we were at with black sesame and mango ice cream.

We took tuk tuks to the river and took a ferry across. We walked through a market first stopping for a couple of different Thai deserts and then went to a boat noodle shop. I have never really understood boat noodles. I thought it was a type of noodle but learned it is just that they use to be serve the noodles from a boat, like the floating markets and it is not a specific type of noodle.

Our next stop was for Southern Thai Food. I don't recall the names of any of the dishes we had. I do remember we were given leaves that I think the guide said were cashew leaves. She said we need to compare the taste difference of eating the leaf alone and with food. I found the leaf really bitter alone but with food I did not notice it having much of any flavor. They also talked about the southern food being hotter as far as spice. It seemed to be more of what I would call an India or Malaysia spice but some of the other dishes earlier in the day seemed much hotter to me.

We ended up at the Talat Phlu train station and I don't recall taking any type of transport since crossing the river. It seems to be a bit over 2 kilometers from the river but don't think we walked that far so I must be forgetting something. I would go through this train station the following day on the train but that will be in the next post.

We ate a bowl of ice at the train station. It is sort of like a snow cone but what I would call the toppings are on the bottom. I thought they had forgotten the flavors I had asked but they were there at the bottom of the bowl. Really sweet but great on a hot afternoon.

The guide said we should take motorcycle taxis to our next stop but no one seemed to like this idea. The guide got what I call as a big tuk tuk to stop without anyone in it and got them to take us to our next stop. The big tuk tuks usually work like a bus where they follow a specific route and you push a button when you want to get out. Following is a picture I took of one back in 2012.

We had arrived at the place we were going to start our long tailed boat tour but had some time kill so had a drink before boarding the boat. I have taken a lot of boats in Bangkok but have never done a tour so was looking forward to this.

Getting in and out of a boat when you are a fat old man is not as easy as it sounds but I made it both in and out without too much trouble.

We stopped at one point to feed the fish and saw a lot of monitor lizards on the trip.

While on the boat we stopped to take pictures of Wat Paknam Phasi Charoen. I had been to this temple back in 2020 when the Buddha was still under construction. The first picture is from 2020 and the following is the completed sitting Buddha from 2023.

I tried to talk about the pagoda that was inside the pagoda at this temple and the guide did not understand me or was not aware of the inside of the temple. We did not get off the boat since this was a food tour so I was a bit disappointed to not see the beautiful interior of this temple again but here is my picture of it from 2020.

This is another picture from 2020 of the temple across the small canal named Wat Khun Chan. This is the only view we got from the boat but I knew we were seeing elephant butts since I had seen the other side as shown in the next photo.

I was not able to capture a good picture of the large sitting Buddha with the whole base in a picture but this is the best I got. This is also from 2020.

We ended the day with Isaan food at Talad Phlu. I think this was the only stop where I had eaten all of the dishes in the past. I said goodbye to everyone at this point. A fun tour and a good day even if it is not really my thing.