Behind the Noodle Curtain

Best noodle soup on soi 33 Sukhumvit, Bangkok

The noodle soup of the vendor at soi 33 Sukhumvit in Bangkok, in front of the 7-11, has changed. Drastically. For the better. The noodle soup last year was flavourless to the point  tastelessness. Could be lack of good ingredients. Or any, for that matter. Stopped going there.

It seems that vendor is gone because I don't recognize anyone working the stand now. A friend, who was just grabbing a taxi and saw me waiting for a meal, said "Try the noodle soup, man." Then he pointed to an older Thai man as the master of the noodle broth. I'd not seen him on my last trip, which ended last April. Anyway, I'd already visited the place once before this month so, thanks anyway Duncan!

Note, three people have confirmed my feelings about this vendor's soup.

Now this might not seem like such a big deal to westerners reading these words. And some Bangkok expats might lay a similar claim for their neighbourhood noodle shop. No problem. It's just that the location of a really good noodle soup is something to be passed on to friends and acquaintances. (By the way, at the next sidewalk space you can get a super chicken, pork or shrimp fried rice. But only buy if a younger man is the cook. I'm afraid the older lady cook is not so skilled or hygenic!)

After eating, I stopped by an open bar on the way home and told the bartender. She had just had a bowl the night before. She said the key  is the  rib soup bone used to enhance the great flavour. Well, I'm buying that.

The  ingredients were better than average. The shavings of pork were seemingy a perfect texture and  also very tasty. And those Thai pork dumplings, which you won't always find in a roadside noodle bowl, were lovely. It also seemed the greens used for colour, texture and taste contrast were really fresh.

Bowl costs 30 baht. $1 Canadian. And it's very filling. At least this version was. And you know what, it's the best breakfast a person could have. It's light, yet fills that gap. It makes me feel so much better and gives me a great boost in the morning. When I eat a fat-laced western breakfast, I start to slow down and sometimes, even feel a bit nauseated.

The soup stand also serves khao mun gai (sliced chicken on rice with slightly spicy ginger sauce), which Thais were lapping up. The tables were full so that is a guaranteed sign the food is good.

BTW, the noddle soup, when with  egg noodles, is known as baa mee naam. With rice noodles, it's guay tiaow naam, although the latter name is used generically as meaning noodle soup, it seems. The rice noodles are small (sen lek), or  large (sen yai). If you want pork, it's muu, chicken is gai, and beef is neua, although you won't find the latter too often.

Anyone with corrections to the above, especially the Thai names, please let me know.

LINKS:

For pronunciation guide to rice noodle soup, go to Thai-Language.com or Thai2English.com.

Siam Square rocking on Christmas Eve day

Kids try out Powerisers in Siam Square. What goes up, must come down as one kid below found out.

Being next door to Chulalongkorn University, apparently ranked No. 1 in the nation, helps Siam Square business. No other reason for the chock-a-block clothing boutiques, skin health stores (girls only, please), and junk food shops selling colourful candies, stuffed desserts, greasy  chicken and pizza (replicas).  Actually, the students went on break this week but it was still busy. The square -- not to be confused with Siam Centre, Siam Paragon and Siam Discovery, across Sukhumvit and the BTS line --  also features a lot of entertainment for the kids.

And you know what that means! A marketing opportunity.

One of the mobile phone services, 1-2-Call, set up shop. The huge promo featured specialty boutiques and, well, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me just what this was all about. And neither could 1-2-Call, since its "event"  was mostly plastering its name on table banners and cardboard signs. If it was selling something, the cacophony of music and logo-laden representatives managed to distract me from the message.  I was kind of hoping to see a table full of voice and data deals, with willing, helpful sales girls wanting to fill their quotas. There was one table but I, the farang, was skillfully  ignored. Usual reason most farangs will tell you is that no one wants to risk using their English language skills.

 An interesting distraction behind the Starbucks concern were guys wearing metallic and spring contraptions that gave them a 25-30 cm boost in height. These Powerisers, as could then bound down the sidewalk like  centaurs. Which they did. But behind the coffee shop a guy was giving a demo of the leap-o-matics. He could put himself about two, three meters in the air, do flying kicks and other balletic tricks. The kids gave the devices a try. You know the rule: what goes up must come down and one kid that I saw took quite a spill. If you get the landing wrong, you’ve got another 30 cm farther to fall. The kids shown in the photos are from a local university, which one I don’t know but I see them all the time at Siam Square.

There was usual Christmas street decorations. Nothing worth photographing. Look at last year's photo report  and you'll get the idea.

 

The kid almost went head first into the brick and concrete planter.

No, he's not riding a truck. He's the demo guy, with apparently no ceiling.

Hotel internet coupons a pain in butt

Haven’t been online much since arriving in Bangkok because of the high cost of internet access coupons at the hotel I’m staying. For 200 baht, you get 2.5 hours total. I can blow several hours a day in online activities. So if I bought a 200 baht coupon every day, that would be  1400 baht a week and 5600 a month. That’s two to five times the cost of Thailand home internet service. There is an unlimited access coupon for 1000 baht, which expires after 30 days. But I knew I wasn’t going to stay beyond 10 days.

Coupon time is highly annoying. You don’t want to let your online time trickle away as you write. Also you have to plan your web visits and then  open multiple tabs, sign off, then read them. As you can imagine, you have to re-login to click on links. So you have to sign off and on a lot.

I’m moving to a serviced apartment on soi 22 Sukhumvit for 11,000 baht a month, plus electricity and water (the latter amounts to about 1300 baht a month). High-speed internet access is part of the rent. You hook up to an ethernet line in your 30 square metre room. I didn’t find the place; an American friend found it and was so pleased he’s renewed his monthly stay.

Once I’m moved tomorrow, Dec. 23, I’ll be much more active.

High above Bangkok streets work goes on

While having a smoke out on the deck of the Honey Hotel Bangkok pool, I spotted these window washers doing their death defying thing on top of the 325-room Grand Millennium Sukhumvit Hotel at Asoke and Sukhumvit roads.  I can barely look over the railing of a second-floor balcony without getting vertigo.

There are lots of examples of this type of worker activity, whether during construction projects or simply building maintenance. Last night, I saw workers perched precariously at a massive project at soi 19 and Sukhumvit, their feet curled around vertical re-bar or spread-eagled among the frames of hydraulic floor hoists or hanging back off a support tower being gradually filled with concrete via a high-flying bucket from a crane. All of this going on at night, about 8 o’clock, with not much illumination to speak of. All for about 200 baht a day -- $6 Canadian.

I ask: What happens when the window washers get to the end of the narrowing panel of windows? Do they haul themselves back up. Is there a building hatch? Or do they lower themselves all the way to the ground?

Coyote dancing at Fortune Town IT mall

An entertaining moment at Bangkok's Fortune Town IT mall

If your camera can’t talk to your computer, you’re lost. So I had to venture out to the Fortune Town IT mall Saturday and buy the vital camera-to-computer USB cable.  With two cameras -- 8 megapixel point and shoot and 12 megapixel DSLR, both Canon -- and no communication conduit, I wouldn’t be able to illustrate my blog posts. And my reader(s) would be bored to tears.  Yep, important stuff.  And I’d see my stats numbers plunge.

That’s lesson number 1: Bring all the equipment. Lesson No. 2 is: shop around.  I began shooting with the Big One almost as soon as I hit the top of my soi today. Under Asoke BTS station, workers are replacing the horrible sidewalk surface with concrete tiles. The day before my head snapped around when I  spotted a female worker, jeans and jean jacket, white hat, slim, trim, short body, all the right bumps, bouncy pony tail peaking out from under the brim of her white sun hat.  (So sorry, but more on her pictorially speaking real soon.) I shot from a distance and within half an hour, my battery was down to 35% after constant metering and I still hadn’t made it to my prime destination out at Lat Phrao, north end of the city.  

I had to take action. Lesson No. 3. Always carry a spare battery. Maybe even two. So out to Fortune Town at Phra Ram 9 on the MRT subway. Always a pleasure using the Bangkok subway but that’s another blog post. (My promises are mounting . . . oh, oh.)

I checked five shops. I was looking for a Canon LXP-E5 rechargeable Li-Ion battery. Prices went like this (in Thai baht: 31 to the Canadian dollar; 33 to U.S. dollar; 53 to UK pound): 1990, 2220, 1950, 1900. Odd that the cheapest came at the last boutique I checked. So I saved 320 baht.  Off-brand copies went for 800 to 890 bt. “Assembled” in China. When you translate baht into dollars, $10 doesn’t sound like much, but 320 baht is four beers.  In Canada $10 is bit more than one beer and tip. Get it now!?!?!?

The cable is cheap anyway so bought a shortie for 40 baht; an alternative wire on a reel comes in at 50 baht.
       
I was feeling pretty proud of myself as an aware consumer. Loud dance music suddenly shook the third floor walkways nearest the southern escalators (Fortune Town is huge and long and the IT mall has five floors, I think). Clerks and customers stopped wheeling and dealing, smiled and bobbed up and down as four coyote dancers proceeded to draw attention to a broadband service. I whipped out the Canon SD850 IS and began shooting. Then took a movie, which I royally screwed up. (And I still haven’t learned to upload video anyway . . .)

Pictures tell the story better:

   

And last, below, that cascade of colour is a bus, shot from an outdoor cafe at Fortune Town IT Mall. Not uncommon to see buses adorned with all manner of colourful charms to protect against misfortune (hahaha):