Medium Spicy. Bangkok at 50.

At the stroke of midnight

This is the story of a surprisingly relaxed holiday in Bangkok this February.

Why ‘surprisingly’? Bangkok and ‘relax’ are not two words that I would use in the same sentence. Unless one is talking of its massage parlours. The ones with ‘no hanky panky’ as K puts it. Our previous holiday to Bangkok was in 2006. It was our first international holiday together. Months had gone into deciding on the destination. We chose the Far East as a destination as the plan was to go and spend our marriage anniversary in Thailand. We would fly there from Kolkata where we went to spend Durga Pujo with the family.

Bangkok was suggested to us then by a Bengali gentleman named Abhik. He ran a travel agency called Wanderers. He recommended Bangkok and said it was the cheapest among the ‘big three’…vis Bangkok, KL and Singapore. He booked us into a hotel called Ambassador which was bang in the middle of Sukhumvit, the busiest tourist district of the city. He booked us into tours of the Royal Palace in Bangkok. Ayuthaya and River Kwai are away from it. We went to Pattaya for our anniversary and stayed at the Amari Orchid Hotel. A hotel which was far more luxurious than Ambassador. Abhik also told us that the street food in Bangkok was inexpensive and tasty. That clinched the deal.

We ticked all the boxes on the trip. We had sausages and curries from its street vendors. Oyster omelettes and pad Thai at the night market food court. We ate at the Cabbages and Condoms where they give condoms instead of mints with the bill. We spent a day roaming at the Chatu Chak weekend market. We had our first yoghurt-based ice-creams there. K introduced me to Haagen Dasz’s ice creams and told me they were the world’s most expensive ice creams. We went to the floating market. We shopped for pirated DVDs (none of them worked!) on the streets of Sukhumvit. We were surrounded by sleaze, sex workers, ladyboys, porn video stalls, and massage parlours which presumably left you happy at the end. We went to Pat Pong to a strip tease show performed by what would be called a binary person today. We shopped at malls and packed our bags with Thai sauces and condiments. 

Things are a lot different now. Mumbai, and the rest of India, has many large modern malls. Most international brands, including high-end ones, are available in premium malls. 

The cars on our streets are no longer archaic when compared to those in Thailand. One gets international brands easily and at good value in India. One exception is if you want to buy Nespresso pods. Then you tank in Bangkok. 

Our (Mumbai) airport is newer and way better than the one in Bangkok. To start with, our toilets smell better! Suvarnabhumi Airport is albeit larger and has far more food and shopping options. 

These are some of the reasons why we did not enter Bangkok awe-struck this time. Plus we have been lucky to have been on several international trips in between. Not ‘awe-struck’ perhaps, but very happy.

We went there to bring in my 50th birthday. It so turned out that I ‘tumbled’ into my 50s. This happened just after we checked in and then walked outside the street in search of a cafe. We walked for less than a minute down the pavement when I slipped and fell flat on the pavement.  Thankfully there was no major damage apart from a few bruises and cuts on my palms, elbow and shoulder. I had a few cuts on my left knee and had to ice and clean it through the trip. The pain in the knee restricted my movements to an extent, further ensuring that we got to ‘relax’.  The wounds began to heal as the trip progressed. We even managed to go to a spa on the last day. The very experienced masseuse made sure that my knee did not touch the massage bed.  

So how did we spend five nights in Bangkok?

K booked us into the Shangrila Bangkok which is on the riverfront, far away from the hustle and bustle of Sukhumvit. The hotel is grand, spacious and designed in the classical luxury hotel mould. K had chosen a river view room. This was a game-changer. Looking out at the river, which flowed into the far horizon, was truly magical. The area around our hotel was completely different from Sukhumvit. With its local markets, residential apartments which looked as if they belonged to the suburbs of Kolkata and open electric wires all across, it hardly looked like a modern city. And, there was no sleaze around. From what one could see at least. One felt relaxed to be here with no pressure of ‘doing things.’ The days merged into each other.

Our hotel offered a boat service which left every half an hour and took hotel guests across the river to the Icon Siam mall and back. The mall is large, bright and has a lot of shopping options. Most importantly, a Nespresso store. The regulated landscape of a mall made it easier for me to move around compared to if one had been outside. A large part of the brands on offer are available in India too. K did a bit of shopping as her job leaves her with no time to shop in Mumbai and has to shop online. 

The focus of the trip was food. As always! If you like Far Eastern food and are not too fussy about what you eat, then Thailand is the place for you. Not just Thai food, you get Japanese, Cantonese and a lot more across the price spectrum. Apart from Asian food, the options for European food are plentiful. They have many more expat chefs compared to Mumbai. And far more access to international produce. You will find Indian restaurants there. We ate at none so cannot tell you how they are. We did eat at Gaa by Garima Arora but more on that later.

 Here’s a list of where and what we ate:

• Shangrila Bangkok: Room service: Beautiful Angus burger with medium rare patty. K was with her steamed sea bass. We had taken a breakfast included package.  The breakfast spread was monumental. They had an Indian food counter. I felt bad to find it rather empty. My favourites include the Vietnamese fried eggs with red sausage and chives, and the ham and bacon sandwiches that I made for myself. Pity that the coffee sucked. I tried the espresso and the macchiato. Both were disastrous. The espresso that we had from the hotel coffee shop was lovely though. We had bought a couple of pastries to bring in my birthday from there. They were lovely, especially the dark chocolate tart. 

• Nalin Kitchen: I am rather kicked about this one as I used Google Maps to find the place even though K is the online-savvy one in the family. It turned out to be a small and cute place. Well-lit, pastel-coloured walls, air-conditioned, clean with prompt service. We went there twice during the trip. Our fellow guests on both occasions were fellow tourists. No ‘local gem’ this. We had a lovely stir-fried cabbage with garlic the first night. It was so delicious that it would make its biggest haters fall in love with cabbage. We ordered a duck and pineapple red curry which was brilliant. The cooking of the duck, which retained its juiciness, was amazing. The curry was a lovely balance of tart and heat with a mild touch of sweetness. We were asked if we wanted ‘spicy’ or ‘medium spicy.’ A question we came across numerous times during the trip. ‘Medium spicy,’ was our answer each time. My days of wanting to eat ‘the way locals eat’ are receding. The focus now is on what gives me joy. Unless one is on a food-specific trip, which this was not. 

• Icon Siam: There is a local hawker’s food court when you enter. It would match up in size with the large food courts of the city. The aromas there were redolent of far eastern food courts; if one could make such a generalisation. The ‘spicy’ sausage was brilliant. The meat was juicy, fermented and had bursts of the flavour of lemongrass and bird’s eye chillies across it. This was akin to the sausages I had at Chiang Mai on an earlier trip. I had a green curry fried rice which was nice but nothing special. We went to a restaurant called Rosnyon for lunch one day. This was in the section outside the food court which had a cluster of restaurants offering different cuisines. It is a Thai place. We started with Chiang Mai sausages. The one served at the restaurant was dry and rubbery unlike that in the food court. The stir-fried greens were acceptable. The chicken green curry, ‘medium spicy,’ was nice and they had used boneless leg pieces of chicken. A funny thing happened here. I asked the hostess for Thai green curry and that left her foxed. I realised what the ‘problem’ was. This was Thailand. Every curry would be a ‘Thai’ curry. Unless specified otherwise. There was a coffee shop called Coffee Bean in the same section. It was a restaurant as well. We stopped there before catching the boat back on both days. It was a sweet place to sit in. K loved her cappuccino as I did my espresso. 

• Jae Koy: This was recommended to me by chef Seefah of Bandra’s Seefah restaurant. “You will like this. Locals go here,” she said. K and I cabbed it from the hotel. The cabbie was quite impressed that I knew of Jae Koy and smiled back in response when I gave him the address. The aromas, as well as the design of the place, reminded me of the South Asian places that I like to visit while travelling in the region. The ambience was spartan, clean, fluorescent light lit and the place smelt of fish sauce, kaffir lime, galangal and all things nice. Almost all the tables were occupied by locals. The menu was fairly extensive and K was bemused by how intensely I studied it. The names of the dishes were given in English too along with pictures of them.  I went for a seafood pad Thai. The one dish, apart from curries and papaya salad, that people the world over know of Thai food. What I liked about the pad Thai was that it was not too sweet. Nor were the flat noodles too sticky. The seafood in it was nice and fresh. K had a steamed seabass and was quite happy with it. The fish was juicy and subtly flavoured. I tried the barbecued pork tongue. I am used to ox tongue and this was different from the latter. It was more chewy and had a strong ‘meaty flavour.’ It combined well with the spice and dipping sauce it was served with. I did not take to it at the start but finished it once I acquired the taste…which was rather fast. I asked for sticky rice. It was served in a plastic bag as it was in other places.  The service was very sweet. The young man taking our order knew no English. We overcame the hurdle by pointing out the dishes on the menu. The kitchen seemed to be a happy kitchen with the chefs breaking into songs as they cooked,

• Phukej: We had our last dinner of the trip here. Our friend Sue, who had gone to Bangkok with her husband Nathan earlier, suggested this. It is located in one of the quiet lanes of Bangkok. The decor reminded one of the cafes/ small restaurants in Bandra back home in terms of its youthfulness and cosiness. We went on a weekday night and the restaurant was not very crowded. The food that we had was very different from what we had been exposed to till then. The food was in the style of that found in Phuket. Phukej was the original name of Phuket one learnt. The stir-fried pork neck with dried shrimp paste that we had was the most memorable dish of the trip according to both K and I. The beef in cumin curry that we tried was lovely too. The meat was really tender. The flavour of the curry was multi-layered with the cumin giving a touch of home.

Stir-fried pork neck. The dish of the trip

• Din Tai Fung: We had a couple of meals, including my birthday lunch, at Din Tai Fung.  Friends wrote in about their happy experiences of eating at Din Tai Fung outlets across the world when I posted stories on social media about our eating there. The Cantonese fare in the Taiwan headquartered chain offered a break from Thai food for us. We had the iconic Xia long bao of course. Pork soup dumplings. You bite into these let the soup drizzle down your mouth and follow it with the intricately flavoured and very juicy and fatty minced pork filling. I had hard noodle bowls too. With roast pork once and pork and shrimp and pork dumplings on another. A true noodle lover’s delight.

• Gaa: The other non-Thai restaurant that we went to was an Indian restaurant. What? Did I hear you right, you say? Yes, yes. We never eat at Indian restaurants while travelling abroad. There was a reason for this exception. Gaa by Chef Garima Sharma has recently earned its second Michelin star and that was quite an achievement. We booked ourselves here to celebrate my birthday. We used their website and got the slot that we wanted. The setting of Gaa was really special. They had golden nets that enclosed each sitting section which made one feel as if one were in a private dining room. It was nice to see the Thai hostesses meticulously describe Indian dishes and ingredients. We got to meet the chef too which was a bit of a fanboy moment. The food was in the genre of what one has had in places such as Indian Accent in Delhi and Mumbai, Avartana (Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai), Tresind Mumbai, Noon, Mumbai. I have not had a chance to eat Gaggan Anand’s food. The way I look at these meals is how unique each dish is in the course and how memorable they are. That’s where the skills and the creativity of the chef come in.

And that sums up the trip. Lots of food. Lots of lazing. A decent bit of shopping. Not enough walking. I could not have thought of a better way of spending my birthday. 

How does it feel to be 50? I am a bit unsure about the answer. I have myriad thoughts on this. This includes whether this is indeed a landmark. Life is not a cricket match that one aims for a century. The occasion does leave one with a fuzzy feeling to be sure.

Refreshed and ready to head back