Thailand – Bangkok

After way too long without international travel, my itchy feet prompted me to book another food tour with Intrepid, this time to Thailand on the Real Food Adventure.

I flew out of Perth far too early on the first day of school holidays, not terribly well assisted by attending a wine tasting event the night before. Thankfully, all went smoothly, and even though Perth Airport is undergoing renovations and the Customs and Passport Control people are now called Border Force (replete with new uniforms), I managed to bumble my way through. The flight was a bit bumpy, but we landed in BKK without incident, the only danger being the length of time we were unable to use the bathrooms because of turbulence!

The long queue at the BKK taxi rank.

Arrivals in BKK is always crowded, but this time the queue for the taxi rank was huge, snaking its way past two sets of doors into the airport (and letting out some nice cool air occasionally) and past the smoking area. Half an hour later, cursing not taking the train into the city and then a taxi from there, I was on my way. Unlike last time, this taxi seemed to be in okay working order, and didn’t need the driver to coast into each set of traffic lights in the hope we didn’t need to come to a halt and thus stall… This driver just didn’t turn the meter on, which I didn’t notice until halfway through the trip. Ah well, he only overcharged me by 50 baht or so, and at least I got to the hotel okay.

Here I met up with L, as we had an extra day before the tour started, to see a little of Bangkok. I also started the trip as I meant to go on, by booking a massage in the hotel’s spa straight away.

Stir fried abalone and soft shell crab

Muscles twinging, we decided to eat in one of the hotel’s restaurants (Chinese) and tried stir fried Abalone. Then it was time for a (relatively) early night, stymied by noisy, smoking neighbours in the connecting room next door. Thank goodness for earplugs.

Pedi from MBK

Day two began with what was supposed to be a quick visit to MBK, Bangkok’s huge cut-price shopping mall. It starts with a supermarket and stalls on the ground floor, and goes up for seven levels, including a technology level, a furniture level, a games level… We stopped for a quick massage, which was newsworthy mainly because they multitasked — I had a quick pedicure at the same time as the massage!

Tuk tuk to Chinatown

We realised that it was close to the time we were supposed to meet the tour group, whoops, so grabbed a taxi back to the Royal Princess Hotel, just in time for our meeting with S, the Intrepid tour leader, and our intrepid band of foodies. Amazingly, P who was on the Vietnam trip last year was also on this tour, and we were joined by K1 from the UK, L2, an Aussie living in China, and K2, another Aussie and the only guy on the tour.

Chinatown

Our first activity was to head out by tuk-tuk to Chinatown, to experience the street food and amazing vibe there. We tasted many, many great things such as pad thai, roasted duck with rice, fresh juices, satay pork and sweet crispy pancakes filled with meringue/marshmallow and topped with sweet egg or savoury coconut , but the highlight has to be coconut icecream. Wow!