I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.

I really don’t — but I guess it will come across a lit­tle that way.

I don’t win things. I know that every­body says exactly that but I really don’t. Okay, I won $754 the first time I played Lotto. What a killer game thought I — and I spent sev­eral thou­sand dol­lars over the next few years try­ing to do it again before I stopped, and made what I thought would be a difficult-to-comply-with res­o­lu­tion to there­after avoid the weekly what-if flutter.

It wasn’t and I don’t. Mostly.

Nobody I know really wins Lotto. Peo­ple in rural towns win it. Not urban wastrels like myself — peo­ple who’d be as likely to blow it in a year or two on irra­tional artis­tic black-holes, or fund­ing hope­lessly won­der­ful but always mar­ginal records, as I’ve tended to do in years past when I have a sud­den wad of cash. Other peo­ple buy houses, I give the money to record­ing stu­dios in what must be the most fis­cally fool­hardy action pos­si­ble in a nation of where a gold record is unlikely to cover the cost of the give­away T-shirts let alone any­thing more substantial.

Then my uncle won first prize in Lotto, but sadly only as a part of large con­sor­tium. This, it occurred quickly to me, meant he had expended his — and you may argue the whole family’s — random-chanceness on about enough to make an only just mea­sur­able dent in his annual — not exces­sive — outgoings.

This week how­ever both Brigid and I won. My wife makes me feel like a win­ner every­day, but what I’m try­ing to say is that is, we both won a prize.

And from the same mag­a­zine -  Bangkok 101, eas­ily the best vis­i­tor aimed mag­a­zine in this town — and, really more impor­tantly, only one of two that doesn’t seem to crawl around Pat­pong or Soi Cowboy’s gut­ters, cater to over­weight Irish pub dwellers, or, and I don’t know which is worse, project some sort of post Raj expat lifestyle com­plete with Polo Ponies, priv­i­lege, and columns com­plain­ing about every­thing in, and explain­ing how ‘they’ should fix large parts of, this sup­pos­edly not-like-home pisspot of a city/country. Fuck off. Really.

BKK 101 has, unusu­ally, per­haps uniquely, for Eng­lish lan­guage mag­a­zines in SEA, humour, depth and style, and deserves the plug (if you are com­ing this way…) I’m giv­ing it here.

So yes, two prizes. Quite different.

The first was a river­boat cruise. A moon­lit din­ner — which they awk­wardly pitch as roman­tic — and boo­gie set against a mov­ing back­drop of the famed sights on the Chao Phraya River, on one of those mon­strous neon and gaud adorned float­ing restau­rant barges that trek up and down the river that defined and still defines this city, every night after dark. A kind of poor-mans inland loveboat.

And of course, nor­mally wild horses…

How­ever, we decided to walk the plank on the Pearl of Siam if only to take the piss, and duly booked, mak­ing a men­tal note not to eat too much of what would doubtlessly be hor­ren­dous, reheated, spice­less and Farang-friendly (mar­gin­ally) Thai food, and thus avoid any chance of food poi­son­ing wreck­ing the sec­ond won prize, a din­ner for two at the minimal-fab and nor­mally silly expen­sive Bed Sup­per­club.

After a drink at one of the city’s great secrets, Balco, that elu­sive and almost unique thing: a well priced bar with an an impres­sive view of said river, we joined the queue of flip flop and tourist mar­ket t-shirt wear­ing Aus­tralians, South­ern Euro­peans, Kore­ans, Chi­nese and Japan­ese, and stag­gered on, won­der­ing repeat­edly if per­haps we should’ve stayed in the rooftop bar long enough to miss the gang­way being raised.

But we didn’t and here we were, I imag­ine because we were on a free­bie, being grace­lessly ush­ered into the bow­els of the big boat, where the win­dows were only mar­gin­ally above the water-line, to our table — nat­u­rally num­ber 13.

I looked anx­iously for life jack­ets and exits. Hav­ing hap­pily noted both I sipped my luminous-pink jelly-like wel­come drink. It tasted like the syrup found in those cans of fake cher­ries which Brigid, who knows these things much more-so than I do, are really olives dyed pink, mixed with some FDA approved solid­i­fy­ing agent and extra sucrose to kill (or cre­ate per­haps) the flavour.

The Japan­ese and Korean tour par­ties we were shar­ing our semi-submerged deck with seemed quite impressed as did the smil­ing evan­gel­i­cal cou­ple from Idaho across the way, in their match­ing his and hers tan safari outfits.

Brigid thought briefly about a cock­tail until I men­tioned the local spir­its that sell for 150B per litre in the 7/11, and we both set­tled instead on a Singha.

The boat was still docked when we were invited to eat. We wan­dered cau­tiously to the front of the deck, where a throng of our fel­low deck­d­wellers were semi-silently push­ing and shov­ing each other to max­imise their own suzerainty over the large plat­ters of salmon sushi and prawns. To my eye there seemed to be enough for all, but the party of elderly Kore­ans at the front were tak­ing nei­ther chances nor any bull­shit from an equally aged group­ing of Japanese.

Per­haps the rift ran deeper than the fish.

As I waited for a moment of calm, this caught my eye:

Tech­nol­ogy, huh?

I moved on.

The larb-gai — or a rough approx­i­ma­tion of it — actu­ally looked ok, so I added some to the side of my plate and then went to the prawn cakes (with plum sauce it said — I could see none at all). I made a point of ensur­ing that every­thing I took looked very well cooked — I side­stepped the fishy look­ing salad — and I sat down and ner­vously put a small piece of the chicken in my mouth.

It was good. Really quite good.

Brigid pointed to the prawn cakes and nod­ded. They were even better.

Gosh.

Feel­ing a lit­tle more assured — and hun­gry — we returned to the buf­fet and added cur­ries and more. I returned twice and then found the fab­u­lous green sweet sticky rice(-ish) stuff. I was drawn back to that plat­ter twice more.

Then, it’s Thai­land  — the food is always at least ser­vice­ably good, right? Well not always around Silom, Khao San or Lower Sukhumvit, but this was bet­ter than that. It even had above tourist lev­els of spice in a city where most West­ern vis­i­tors usu­ally order that dish called Pad Thai — with no spice — and think they’ve had Thai food.

Mean­while we were on our way. We’d left the River City dock with­out me notic­ing but I did notice that the mid-western evan­ge­lists had man­aged to score a cou­ple more pink wel­come drinks and were get­ting notice­ably louder as the sugar hit. The world over, Amer­i­can tourists, espe­cially those from the vast bits between San Fran­cisco and New York, always involve the whole room in their con­ver­sa­tions, whether  inti­mate in detail or not.

Please, nobody feed these two redbull.

The band, or at least I assumed it was a band — we only had a remote audio feed down in the bow­els of the boat — lurched from a creeky take of Feel­ings to the per­haps a lit­tle inap­pro­pri­ate Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, dur­ing which the singer paused and said, in a bro­ken mid-Pacific accent:

‘On the left is a temple’

And indeed there was: a very bright big one. Lovely.

‘On the right is a church — it is very old.’

Yep — the Japan­ese and Korean mas­sive though, seemed more inter­ested in the numer­ous TVs, which had odd footage of peo­ple lev­i­tat­ing in India and flam­ing coffins being tossed into the sea in Taiwan.

We went upstairs.

There we found — on the roof deck — the folks who had obvi­ously paid to be there, unlike us.

The slowly pass­ing shore scene was rather glo­ri­ous — this river, night and day, is quite some­thing and the var­i­ous tem­ples, 19th cen­tury Por­tuguese churches and more, were lit and very pho­to­genic. Then, day or night, they are always quite splen­did. I for­get just how much so until I see them again and am as sim­i­larly awed as I was the pre­vi­ous 200 times I’ve done so.

That said, the light­ing at night adds another spec­tral dimension.

Some peo­ple took lots and lots of pho­tos for Face­book, and rotated quickly back and forth with cam­corders pro­duc­ing — you just know —  mov­ing images that cause instant head twist­ing nau­sea as you try to fol­low the them on the sin­gle occa­sion they’ll ever be looked at by anyone.

Most peo­ple — about 80% — just looked bored, and gazed form­lessly into the dark­ness or at the band. Aus­tralians do this a lot. I guess when you have Ayers Rock, The Syd­ney Opera House and that sub­ma­rine in a play­ground half way down the Hume High­way — sev­eral hun­dred miles from the Ocean and in a town which also oddly calls itself the Jazz Cap­i­tal Of The World — it takes a lot to impress.

In New Zealand we have a won­der­ful har­bour but no man-made con­structs at all to get excit­ing and breath­less about, so we tend to be more eas­ily awed by this sort of thing.

The band were perched in a tiny spot at the front of this deck, and were enthu­si­as­ti­cally fin­ish­ing their set with some­thing they said was from the ‘fab­u­lous Man­hat­tan Trans­fer’. Per­haps it was in another life.

The crowd, how­ever, were mostly grim faced and looked com­pletely dis­in­ter­ested in their sur­round­ings and stony.

At the front a mid­dle aged ocker cou­ple with a teen son — who prob­a­bly wasn’t con­sciously try­ing to emu­late Kathy Burke’s Perry — were hav­ing a domes­tic tus­sle which had ended in a silent stand­off. It was obvi­ous that he — Perry’s dad — sim­ply didn’t want to be there. A rea­son­able guess may be that he’d wanted to go to Pat­pong and she’d insisted on the boat.

Or per­haps he came home late from Pat­pong the night before with lip­stick on his pri­vates and had no idea — he said — how it had arrived there.

He tried to hug her. She pushed him away and he skulked off.

The PA farted a cou­ple of times and then burst into life, and the orig­i­nal record­ing of the always appro­pri­ate red­neck love song Achy Breaky Heart arrived loudly. Perry and his mum rose and began line danc­ing in front of us.

‘Tam­worth’? Brigid mused.

More tem­ples passed as — obliv­i­ous — they shook their butts and rotated in per­fect tan­dem. They’d done this before.

The band returned and announced:

‘It’s time to rock’n’roll’

and banged instantly into All Shook Up. Nobody on the deck moved. The singer, who seemed to be on the last gig of a dis­ap­point­ing career, looked ner­vously at the crowd and then back at the band. They’d lost the moment. Elvis might sat­isfy the Ger­man tour groups but this lot were hav­ing none of it. Killing the musi­cal faux pas with­out sen­ti­ment, she announced hap­pily that the next tune was: Achy Breaky Heart.

Perry and mum were back up in a heartbeat.

As it fin­ished the singer asked, ‘Who likes Lady Gaga?’

Perry and mum didn’t but were quickly replaced by a hot blooded young Latin cou­ple  — doing some well prac­tised moves they’d picked up from some old Enrique Igle­sias video.

The rest of the deck seemed unmoved by any of it. They sat.

Next to us stood a happy power drinker. He was order­ing and swiftly sculling Sing­has in lots of two.

Drown­ing his pack­age deal depres­sion maybe — or just a pisshead.…

As soon as we docked Brigid and I ran to get a cab. There were few — just the nor­mal smat­ter­ing of you’d-have-to-be-nuts tuk-tuks and the meter-is-broken tourist touts — so we went into the Sher­a­ton, adja­cent to the dock, to try and find a kosher one out the front.

I’ve never been to an Indian L’Oreal con­ven­tion before.

I have now. Swarms of bejew­elled Indian hair­dressers and overly coif­fured sales peo­ple with that unique South Asian take on the 60s Roy Orbi­son cut wan­dered past.

Then through it came a note per­fect cho­rus of Please Please Me and we saw, in a mostly empty bar, the fab four — or at least a Thai replica of said band, knock­ing out Lennon-McCartney clas­sics (and a George tune or two).

They took a break and I took a snap­shot of John. He was cool. ‘We know all their songs’ he said. ‘Hang around — we do requests’.

We did.

We looked at the bar menu. 350B for a Stella. Fuck me. I decided to order a Fer­der­brau, the Ger­man styled weiss­bier made with mixed results — but drink­able — by Singha. It was only 220B, which is only about 220% more than you’d pay for a pint in a non-hotel bar. It came. It was a 200 mil glass. One won­ders how The Sher­a­ton can jus­tify a 1200% markup over whole­sale. That said, I’ve trav­elled long enough not to pon­der these things too much.

Who the hell drinks in hotel bars. We do I guess, and there was a smat­ter­ing of other faux-Fab-4 fans order­ing as well. One round prob­a­bly pays the whole band.

The band struck up and asked for requests — the words Rev­o­lu­tion Num­ber 9 almost left my lips but instead they formed around Birth­day, since it was Brigid’s.

Sec­ond verse, same as the first — except it’s not.

Just under twenty hours later we found our­selves walk­ing into Bed Supperclub.

Bed is very famous. With some justification.

There is one in, I think, Florida and, newly, one in Paris I under­stand. I’d been sev­eral times before, the includ­ing once to see the for­mer lead singer of Cul­ture Club play a set of cheesy electro-ish house, which, given George’s his­tory, had evoked an inevitable feel­ing of pathos. Time (Clock of the Heart) indeed.

I loved Cul­ture Club and the way they slot­ted into both the pop charts and the alter­na­tive post punk scenes cred­i­bly and so effort­lessly. It was sad to see where he’d ended up.

That said, the night­club side is an amaz­ing venue to see a DJ — the best sight­lines on planet earth — from huge con­tin­u­ous wall sofas on a mez­za­nine — an incred­i­ble sound sys­tem and a large effi­cient bar. It works.

The Lau­rent Gar­nier gig was one of the best elec­tronic shows I’ve ever seen. Mind­blow­ing.

This, how­ever, was the first time we had eaten in the other half, the all-white restau­rant tube which looks like a set from some 60s spaghetti sci-fi movie or Woody Allen’s Sleepers.

As we were ush­ered to our ‘bed’, the pout­ing waiter, who looked vaguely ridicu­lous in his harem pants, as if he too had stolen some­thing from an old set, this time an MC Ham­mer video com­plete with one of those ridicu­lous Kid’n’Play hair­cuts, said:

‘Tonight is Model night!’

Whoa — and as if on cue, a cou­ple of tow­er­ing, spindly legged, pic­ture per­fect, things saun­tered gor­geously in and sat at the far end of the almost end­less bed which dou­bled as a place to eat — albeit at a spe­cially placed table — no bed­ding down with the hoi pol­loi for these gals.

‘And later — salsa danc­ing…’ Ham­mer con­tin­ued, albeit with a board sneer obvi­ously directed our way. We rapidly removed the meal voucher from his view.

I ordered a beer, a Paulaner. It was only twice the stan­dard beyond-Bed rate, and we sat down with the menu. Predictably the DJ seemed to be lim­ited, as pol­icy I guess, to a selec­tion of tracks taken from the odi­ous Bud­dha Bar albums — awful, wispy col­lec­tions that plague almost all the more ‘fab­u­lous’ restau­rants in South East Asia.

Sound sophis­ti­ca­tion comes in an incred­i­bly over­priced box it seems.

A per­fectly formed Ger­man cou­ple ¹ in pris­tine white flow­ing resort wear, as you do in Asia I under­stand, arrived with who I assume, from looks, to be the woman’s elderly mother in tow. They said — very, very loudly so we could all hear — that they were thrilled to be back. We were sup­posed to be impressed. They were regulars.

Arriv­ing with your bemused old mum may have trashed that.

Would you you bring your ancient rel­a­tive — one who looks like she’d rather be in slip­pers with Coro Street (as I admit I would’ve been after a cou­ple of hours) —  to a very twee and pre­ten­tious joint where one is expected to lounge fab­u­lously on huge white beds and eat messy food bal­anced awk­wardly between your lap and the unsta­ble white thing they’ve des­ig­nated as a table?

MC Ham­mer pursed his lips and told us firmly it was time to order. Now. Com­ply­ing with the instruc­tion and still a lit­tle in awe of his over­stated and briefly fash­ion­able — about 22 years ago — pants, a look com­pleted this time by a pair of curled-toed Aladdin slip­pers, we both opted for the three course set menu and took, as our main, the rec­om­mended Waygu burger — medium rare.

With­out utter­ing a word, Ham­mer strut­ted back to the kitchen.

The dish­washer came on. Really, really loudly. It blended badly — nay, drowned out — the ambi­ence of the sub-Yoga beats of the Bud­dha Bar discs. The gag­gle of mod­els sat silently rigid a few metres aware — blank faced and utterly per­fect. The waiter took them some­thing that looked like limp lettuce.

Model food.

The food arrived. I have no idea what my starter was — it was that mem­o­rable. We ate it and for­got it the moment our plates were cleared.

The mains then appeared, about the same time as the first part of a floor­show began.

Three guys dressed as some­thing — one was in a plas­tic bag — came out and the words pro­jected on the screen behind informed us all that we were about to see an inter­pre­ta­tion of an ancient Brah­man leg­end. The guy in the plas­tic bag climbed out and handed it to one of the oth­ers. He then peered know­ingly upwards, as the third picked up his pre-positioned acoustic gui­tar and began to force­fully strum with implied meaning.

What it implied I’m not sure.

Very slowly, stretch­ing out each syl­la­ble so we could savour its mean­ing, he began to sing:

‘Imag­ine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try.….’

My gag reflex was auto­matic. I tried to hide it but that sim­ply meant the reflex mutated into a muted guf­faw — and Brigid told me to behave.

He con­tin­ued at a pace obvi­ously designed to give us the per­sonal men­tal space to reflect on the profundity:

‘No hell below us / above us only sky…’

I looked at the mod­els — they were still stony faced but had shifted a lit­tle — I guessed they had found some mean­ing in the words, per­haps find­ing the link between the ancient Brah­man leg­end and Lennon’s turgid third form verse.

I took a bite from the Waygu burger and gagged a sec­ond time. As the song faded and the three per­form­ers very, very slowly shuf­fled away, heads down — as the solem­nity of their mes­sage demanded —  a lump formed in my throat.

It came from the solid con­gealed knob that was the medium rare Japanese-raised burger pat­tie, and it quickly became lodged in the back of my mouth and refused for a moment to move. Panicking, I even­tu­ally forced it down with more of the expen­sive Ger­man lager.

The thought that the very last thing I was ever going to hear was a tune writ­ten by a wildly rich junkie in a man­sion in Sur­rey telling me to give away all my pos­ses­sions — sung by a man who had just climbed out of a plas­tic bag, choked fatally by a burger served by a twat who looked like MC Ham­mer, crossed my mind briefly.

I looked at Brigid and she was hav­ing the same, pos­si­bly the worst high-end food in Bangkok, moment as I was and strug­gling to con­sume the flavour­less play-dough tex­tured lump.  And, worse, the pat­tie was an odd colour. What was it? Who knows? We gave up.

The Ger­mans next to us seemed all good though. Hap­pily, they’d found mean­ing in the show and were still clap­ping furi­ously. Across the way another Euro­pean cou­ple — Eng­lish we thought — had set up a video cam­era on a stand and were cap­tur­ing the whole evening. I won­dered how the neigh­bours and fam­ily in Scun­thorpe would deal with a two hour movie that included two New Zealan­ders in the back­ground clasp­ing at their throats and throw­ing down Ger­man lager in an attempt to gather another breath.

Or would it, as with almost every video shot on hol­i­day any­where, sim­ply lan­guish in a box for a few years, or on a hard drive, unwatched and for­got­ten until even­tu­ally dumped.

For­get was what I wanted to do with the rest of the meal. How­ever, Ham­mer insisted we have the pud­ding. I opted for one of those choco­late thingys with the hot melted mid­dle bit that just about every­one every­where did in the mid ‘00s. Brigid chose the sticky rice and mango. This is Thai­land — even the soi dogs can knock up a pass­able ren­di­tion of the national dessert if pushed.

Really, we should have left when we could. The actors returned dressed as mon­keys and then began to belch squawky noises to sub-Hendrix elec­tric gui­tar riffs — very Thai. Not.

You really for­get what peo­ple will do to enter­tain tourists.

And the pud­ding arrived. My dry brown furry lump had a slightly softer brown lump in the mid­dle and Brigid’s was an impreg­nable block of seem­ingly long-coagulated white and orange, parts of which per­haps used to be rice in a for­mer life.

MC Ham­mer tossed a cus­tomer com­ments ques­tion­naire onto our table. We really couldn’t find words. ‘Unique’ was the only word we could find.

I looked — the mod­els seemed to be enjoy­ing the faux-Hendrix. They were hot for the impend­ing salsa.

We left.

Briefly, we men­tioned to each other that the food on the River­boat, which we had dreaded, was in another league.

We worked hard to find words to best describe Bed and only came up with the obvi­ous ones: twee, facile, insub­stan­tial, over­priced, tacky and so on. Brigid per­haps caught it best when she said it felt like the sort of joint a hair­dresser would open.

Then again, some of my best friends are hairdressers.…

Would I go again? Bed, uh, no. At least not to eat — it was awful beyond awful on every level. The Love­boat, maybe not because I’ve done it now, but there are worst ways to spend $40 on fairly rea­son­able food, take in one of the world’s great rivers — quite gob-smacking at night — tem­pered by some voyeuris­tic humour.

And, hell, it was almost free. I am ungrateful.

This is how this post began, some ten days back before I found myself dis­tracted by life:
——

So here I am, a week into  Auck­land town and I’m still rather won­der­ing where I am. I wan­dered up and down Queen Street this morn­ing — begin­ning at 8am (the hour wasn’t inten­tional — I mis­read,  or, rather, lazily didn’t bother to check an appoint­ment and found myself in an empty ball­room). It’s an odd, quite lonely place at that time of the morn­ing, with no-one con­vers­ing or inter­act­ing — aside from the odd order for hot cof­fee — as every­one, head down, pushes towards offices or shops. I was rather out of step as I lazily gaited down­town, through the ice-cold extreme beauty of early morn­ing Albert Park to the CBD. I was killing time but my unhur­ried time was some­what unique…

—–

I’d for­got­ten I’d scrib­bled that until last night and decided to leave it unedited as a pre­cur­sor to my trip to New Zealand travelogue.

And a trav­el­ogue it is — I’m a tourist. I came to New Zealand this time, it’s true, on a mis­sion which was very much not that of a tourist or an off-shorer (more of that in another more timely post soon as I gather my thoughts and allies) but day to day, after 11 months away, I’m a tourist.

I write this at 40,000 feet, or what­ever height air­craft really fly at, hav­ing left Auckland’s odd lit­tle air­port (did it really get an award for retail design? Really?) a few moments ago. I feel torn. I’m fly­ing home to Bangkok town, a won­der­ful, vibrant, huge buzzing mon­ster of a city that I love and love liv­ing in, and I can’t wait to see and hold Brigid after ten days apart (although an hour each day on Skype tem­pers the pain – I guess when tech­nol­ogy advances to a tac­tile level where I can rub the dogs dig­i­tally on the chest and they wag their dis­tant tails the long­ings may abate a lit­tle more).

But, I’m leav­ing home. I went up the esca­la­tor at the air­port, wav­ing to my par­ents, strug­gling awfully with the ever­p­re­sent thought that I hope this is not the last time I see my elderly dad who is now a bet­ter friend than he has ever been. I waited until I turned the cor­ner, beyond their sight, and stopped to gather myself before going through immigration.

And friends. Every one, every day, I felt like grab­bing, like hug­ging. I love talk­ing to you, I love talk­ing non­sense with you. I miss you so much. All of you. I’m so privileged.

Two days in a row, the two before I left, Peter dropped every­thing to spend an hour, just sit­ting sip­ping cof­fee and talk­ing non­sense. I love you matey. I love you all.

And I love Blake and San­dra for mak­ing me laugh like a silly teenager every day and being absolutely incred­i­ble hosts. And for tak­ing me on a tour.

I’m not a tourist but I was a tourist. It felt odd. Every­day it felt odd. The street was odd and alien; the way you talk and inter­act was alien; the shops were alien; the sig­nage was alien; the media was alien; and – the thing I liked least — the faux Ponsonby/Parnell small-town sophis­ti­ca­tion and need to aspire to sophis­ti­ca­tion was utterly alien.

Again, I find the casual and accepted racism in the edu­cated and should know bet­ter classes alien. Worse: it hor­ri­fies. The adver­tis­ing imagery is over­whelm­ingly Anglo-Saxon too — like it used to be (and may still be) in Australia.

The cost of every­thing – the out­ra­geous cost of every­thing (can any­one tell me why a 17” Mac­book Pro is $1000 more in NZ than any­where in Asia) – was very alien. Hell, Duty Free in the air­port charges more than the stan­dard street prices off­shore. I don’t like being gouged, and it didn’t used to be that way. What changed?

I went places.

I went to Bar­rio. Roger Perry’s fab­u­lous neig­bour­hood bar in Pon­sonby hosts the sort of music you’d put on the stereo at home after tum­bling in at the end a stress­ful day. It has warmth, humour and – in the win­ter – a big roar­ing fire. And it has Roger. Cool as..

I lis­tened to 95bFM. (Inof­fen­sively) way slicker than it has been in years, it was awash with new – at least to me – New Zealand bands and New Zealand songs and clearly nobody asks — or both­ers much of the time to men­tion -  if they are from New Zealand any­more because, rather sim­ply, it no longer mat­ters. That war is clearly won, and Manu Tay­lor, the sta­tion man­ager, said when we had brekky together the other day, that ‘it’s 1981 again’ – imply­ing that we are on the cusp of a explo­sive golden age of New Zealand musi­cal cre­ativ­ity, the dif­fer­ence being that this time there is an estab­lished indus­trial back­bone to sup­port it.

Per­haps so, but this time 1981 has been bought to you by an unin­ter­rupted cul­tural frenzy that now stretches back years, rather than a reac­tion to a vac­uum as it was in the punk and post punk era. There is a dif­fer­ence. We have a legacy, now we just need to doc­u­ment it.

I went to Tabac. Tabac, owned by my old busi­ness part­ner and friend, Tom Samp­son, and adroitly man­aged on a shoe­string by the iconic and – if you under­stand the his­tory of the cock­tail in Auck­land – leg­endary Kevin the Hat,  is home to many of the more inter­est­ing bands in Auck­land. The night I went I was offered a free ticket to The Chills at The Kings Arms but declined – I pre­ferred, buzzing off the noise I’d been hear­ing on bFM, to hang around for the trio of new bands play­ing and being pro­moted by the Rekkit Crew, fronted, par­tially, by Dylan Cherry, the son of Workshop’s Chris and Helen Cherry and some­one I’d known since he was knee high.

‘How good were Yolanda!’ Dylan msgd me a few days later, after I apol­o­gized for, some­what under the weather, telling him as he stood on the door that ‘last time I saw you, you were this high….’

And they were.

As was Jesse Shee­han, the head­liner. Both blis­ter­ingly so.…

Although wary of being the old guy at the end of the bar, I was very tempted to change my flight just so I could do another Fri­day Rekkit at Tabac.

I went to Hanoi. And it was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. The place was fab­u­lous. The staff were won­der­ful, they were turn­ing away dozens, so the for­mula is work­ing. The food was mono­chrome. It had no bite, no edge, no unex­pected dimen­sions. We asked for chilies to see if they would help. They came out in a small dish. They had no bite either. We can’t get the hot ones in New Zealand the wait­ress said. The Thai place – Zap – in the next street seems to have no issue doing so I thought.

I guessed the for­mula – for that mar­ket demo­graphic (the Pons ‘sophis­ti­cates’ as above) – doesn’t include too much chal­leng­ing of the din­ers’ palates. It gets good reviews in the right places.

Most high end food in New Zealand – the pricey stuff at the chic city and Pon­sonby places is mono­chrome – at least in my expe­ri­ence, which I admit is not uni­ver­sal, how­ever nor is it lim­ited. We sim­ply don’t do the ab-fab or sil­ver ser­vice well at all and never have, but most espe­cially when we try to do eth­nic blends like mod­ern Thai or Viet­namese, sub-Sydney Chic style as seems to be the cur­rent flavour. The foun­da­tion of the cuisines is often ripped out of it – the heat and spice pro­vides much of the sup­port that the other flavours are built on and if we extract that and other essen­tials there is no solid place to start. Ho hum.

That said, and I say this on loop, we do eth­nic hole in the wall and mid-level really, really well and I was taken – by Blake & San­dra – on a gourmet tour of a few of the small places.

We went to KK.

I love KK. I’ve (well, Brigid and I) have been to KK, in Green­lane per­haps 60 times over the years. The mas­sive num­ber of glazed-with-hunger wait­ing patrons queued out­side every time we arrive per­haps means that I’m not alone in in think­ing that it may the best Malaysian food you will find almost any­where. That includes Malaysia. In many, many trips to that coun­try, and many many researched expe­di­tions to find food, we’ve yet tto find a place that offers food like KK, either the breadth of menu, or the qual­ity of the food. All for silly prices. It has bite.

We went to Sri Puteri’s. In Pan­mure, where much of Auck­land never treads ¹. Shoe­box sized, with spot­less formica tables, its Mamak (Tamil) menu was a long way from KK’s more Melayu styles. We ordered so much that I found myself gorg­ing on the spicy reheated lamb curry the next day. Fab, and thoughts of the mouth-watering small South Indian places in Penang which we fre­quented after escap­ing the hor­ri­ble tourist traps on Gur­ney Drive and the repeat­edly unap­petis­ing hawker markets.

We went to Lit­tle India in Kings­land. I know the hip­sters go on about Satya, but the tex­tures at Lit­tle India are — to my taste at least — far more com­plex, lay­ered, and inter­est­ing than it’s oft touted groovier coun­ter­part ² despite the almost classroom-like ambi­ence of the restaurant’s large room. Satya always feels, like so many name restau­rants, to have adapted their food to soothe the masses. That word comes to mind again — Lit­tle India’s food has bite. Satya has queues — what do they care what I think?

We went to New Flavour. There are so many cheap but over-lit Chi­nese (am I alone in being offended by the New Zealand domes­tic use of the word ‘Asian’ to describe Chi­nese folk in New Zealand — I guess I am — it’s a big place, Asia), Thai, Indian, Cam­bo­dian and other East­ern regional cafes along Domin­ion Rd, it’s pretty much impos­si­ble to know where to start with­out expert advice. I had such advice and we joined the queue for a table at this wee diner that has all the ambi­ence of the inside of an over­crowded ship­ping con­tainer with flood lights on.

The deep fried squid was greasy and a mis­take but that was the only one. The var­i­ous vari­eties of Shang­hai styled dumplings (hand-made by an old lady in the cor­ner) we gorged our­selves on were bet­ter than any I’ve eaten in main­land China, and the so-called Omelette, which was more like a flat fried bread, stuffed with var­i­ous things (I liked the red bean, San­dra went for the spring-onion, Blake ate both) was won­der­ful. How­ever, the dish that really nailed it was the Tofu and Cucum­ber — long shred­ded strips — salad, the likes of which I’d never had before. We were reluc­tant to pass over the table but the grow­ing queue was look­ing increas­ingly tetchy. I’m not sure why — it’s open until 4am.

It’s inter­est­ing how big parts of the cre­ative soul of Auck­land City seems to be slip­ping fur­ther and fur­ther away from the tra­di­tional core. Places like Domin­ion Rd and parts west are increas­ingly entic­ing and whilst Pon­sonby, or some of it, seems increas­ingly soul­less. It goes around I guess.

We went to San­tos — like Bar­rio it still has soul, and is in Pon­sonby. What a won­der­ful insti­tu­tion. As Glenn made Blake, Peter and myself some of their reli­able reli­ably great cof­fee, he espoused the global finan­cial crises, rugby, and South Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, all with suf­fi­cient depth that he wasn’t just another bar­rista talk­ing shite on Pon­sonby Road. A cafe with bite. And history.

And Auckland’s best eggs benedict.

We went to Grand Har­bour. It may have the best Dim Sim on Planet Earth but we’re not allowed to talk about them at the moment as they’re the only New Zealand joint on the Shark Fin wall of shame.

We went to Rus­sell & Fiona’s. It was his (Russell’s) birth­day and he and Fiona served up a feast of mid-winter New Zealand soul-food that went bliss­fully with the con­ver­sa­tion and the whisky. The birth­day boy was sit­ting on the sofa grin­ning widely to a sound­track of Donna Sum­mer when we took our leave at 3am.

We went to Mex­i­can Spe­cial­i­ties. Why I love Auck­land, part 1153: tucked away in the face­less sub­ur­ban wash that is the space south of St Johns Rd, and north of Marua Rd, sits this unas­sum­ing Mex­i­can shop which becomes a cafe three lunchtimes a week, and, for the rest of the week is just (not just — it’s a big plus in a city where Mex­i­can food has for­ever been the unin­spir­ing slush served up by the likes of The Mex­i­can Cafe) a retailer sell­ing gen­uine and qual­ity Mex­i­can sauces, shells and, I assume there is a mar­ket for these, reli­gious artefacts.

The food, on those three days, is won­der­ful, and, as far as I’m able to judge given my lim­ited expo­sure in the Amer­i­cas, as close to the real thing as you’ll find beyond those shores. And silly cheap. There are, of course, queues.

I met Blair Parkes. I’ve long been a big fan, and we’ve con­versed dig­i­tally for years, but I finally was able to meet him, at the Great Blend where he seemed to me to be the star (although I doubt the word would sit eas­ily with him) of the evening, with his brick­face font and his mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion. I felt hum­bled and at a loss for words as he explained qui­etly how his life in Christchurch had evolved over the past year or so, and the trauma and loss, both per­sonal and in a wider sense, that he had had forced on him and his world. I was also hum­bled by his tal­ent. I’m always hum­bled by great talent.

Finally, but of course not least, I said good­bye to Minka. That I was in town for her funeral was a (and I want to use the word for­tu­nate but of course it’s wrong and I can’t) tim­ing that I was grate­ful for. She was a good friend, although not a very close friend as our friend­ship was, over the years spo­radic (we had been talk­ing via Face­book over the past few months and did so quite often — I was also thrilled that a photo I had taken of her was included amongst those shown dur­ing the service).

And 40 — I still can’t work out how that hap­pens — ratio­nal thoughts are over­whelmed with the awful injus­tice and ‘why?’ But the song of choice at the ser­vice, the com­plete, quite raunchy 1969 take of Zep’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ played loudly was Minka’s final good­bye. As it began, that riff, the whole of St Matthews smiled then laughed. Once last time she’d man­aged to lift a whole room by her pres­ence, just as she did so many times over the too few years. Bye Minka.

 

 

I was pass­ing time, chat­ting rather aim­lessly, a day or two back with a friend who’s lived in BKK for over thirty years.

We were talk­ing music mostly, the sort you find on 12” vinyl, some­thing I’ve been buy­ing quite a bit of recently, but slipped into cul­ture and life in this city in general.

You know, he said, Bangkok only has one real culture.

For­get the tem­ples, for­get every­thing, Bangkok’s true cul­tural pin­na­cle is what you eat. It’s the prepa­ra­tion and con­sump­tion of food.

And, yeah of course it is.

It’s been a point of some bemuse­ment for some time how skinny, small framed Thai peo­ple can eat so much in one sit­ting, because they very much do and I’ve sat in local restau­rants try­ing not to look, but find­ing myself unable to stop gaz­ing at Thai cou­ples, often under 5′, lit­tle more than skin and bones, con­sum­ing 5 or 6 dishes, at least two of which are deep fried, with no obvi­ous effect or effort.

I so much as think about a leg of fried chicken and I need to put another notch in the belt.

So, yes, he’s right.

And it’s the one thing that absolutely no city on this planet can trounce it on, at least the ones I’ve spent time in.

I’ve trav­elled a bit over the years, eaten both high and low and just about every­thing in between in many of the great food towns. There are pred­i­ca­ble highs (NYC, Hong Kong and Mel­bourne), there are the regarded but in my admit­tedly lim­ited expe­ri­ence, frankly over­rated (Penang, Sin­ga­pore, Paris, Syd­ney), the great undis­cov­ered (I’m going to put my hand up for Welling­ton, although they won’t admit to the tag, and Jakarta, once you leave the street level) and an over­whelm­ing mass of, yep, ok towns. All rather point­less and swing­ing gen­er­al­i­sa­tions of course, but more or less towns where you can, if you have the suit­ably honed instincts that Brigid and I like to flat­ter our­selves with, almost ran­domly choose an eat­ing house and find your­self eat­ing some­thing which in the ter­mi­nol­ogy of my younger years, has the poten­tial to blow yer mind.

Bangkok sits above them all.

I made a point of veer­ing well clear of street food in Indonesia..not because some of it didn’t smell and look rather good, but because Indone­sia has at best a pass­ing acquain­tance with hygiene and I watched oth­ers in agony for days after ran­cid but­ter on corn, or water spinach plucked from water which also serves another less appeal­ing house­hold or neig­bour­hood purpose.

But BKK is dif­fer­ent. We eat off the street all the time, and whilst it always pays to be wary of exactly what your stick of mar­i­nated some­thing might actu­ally be, given the amount of scrub­bing of stain­less steel you wit­ness, it’s mostly pretty safe to do so.

Which brings me around to the rather happy sub­stance of this post: 10 places I’d eat in Bangkok if I could.

And given that I’m here it’s more than likely, no?

This list­ing has an under­ly­ing self­ish motive attached though. It’s a lazy way of killing off those inter­minable ques­tions, the sort that we seem to get daily. By which, I mean the folks that wan­der through this city, assume that we are on per­ma­nent hol­i­day and exist only to guide or enter­tain them (and before any­one gets para­noid this only applies to a very slen­der few of those we see).

That said, though, Bali was much worse.

There, all sorts of peo­ple would turn up on your doorstep, peo­ple you may have met once or twice, if at all, and ask to be dri­ven and enter­tained. We used to to be fairly gen­er­ous about it but you soon hit a wall, when you end up pay­ing for petrol and there seems to be some sort of expec­ta­tion that, as the hos­pitable local, you have an oblig­a­tion to buy them a meal or two.

One girl, whom we knew mod­er­ately, we offered a bed to (it was the tale end of a busi­ness deal..all good we thought). At the air­port, as she put her bags in the car, she informed us, as an aside, that her sis­ter was arriv­ing tomorrow..but not to worry as they’d share a bed. The day after she arrived, the surly sis­ter came to us, plonked down the tin and said with some demand and men­ace: “you’re out of coffee”.

We invited a cou­ple to stay with us for two nights just after we moved to Bangkok.

Sure, we’ll bring wine and more.

They arrived, com­pletely empty handed (aside from a bot­tle of Bailey’s which they hid in their room and took unfin­ished when they left) announced that they were extend­ing the visit to 9 nights and, over the next week and a bit, seemed to always be short of change when out, bought no water, cof­fee or any­thing else for the house, and left again. We’ve heard noth­ing since…

Cheers guys, it was a thor­ough plea­sure being walked all over.

As bad are the ones who email, or mes­sage on Face­book ask­ing for rec­om­men­da­tions on accom­mo­da­tion. After hav­ing spent some hours list­ing, not­ing, rec­om­mend­ing and gen­er­ally being as gen­er­ously help­ful as you can, you send it off with a smile.

You hear noth­ing until you see the pho­tos of the hol­i­day on their F/b page, which show them at the places you rec­om­mended, y’know, just down the road from where you live. New Zealan­ders are very good at this par­a­sitic behav­iour (not all, mind, many are very gra­cious and gen­er­ous, but there is a cer­tain sort..)

So, with that in mind, and indeed because I’ve been bone lazy blog­wise as I swaned around Sin­ga­pore last week, I decided that this was timely.

So, don­ning the tour guide hat….a few BKK must eats:

Khua Kling Pak Sod

10/4 Sukhumvit Soi 40, 02–391-1855, 08–6307-1850.

Glo­ri­ous South­ern Thai. Much of the food we know as Thai in the West­ern world, or any­where out­side Thai­land, is north­ern or Isaan (North East­ern) food. The South­ern Thai food, from the areas below BKK is quite dif­fer­ent. Where the North­ern Thai is influ­enced heav­ily by south­ern Chi­nese and other South East Asian cuisines, South­ern Thai has more of Indian and Mus­lim feel (although this place serves icy Singha, uses pork and is very much not halal), espe­cially in the dry cur­ries and heavy coconut flavours.

And it’s hot.

Mind­bend­ingly so.

The spices and heat of North and Cen­tral Thai­land, which in them­selves often defeat non-Thai palates, fade when put next to the dry beef curry smoth­ered in whole bird­s­eye chilies. Or the Chicken in a yel­low curry that has a so much fire it almost walks to the table unaided.

Maybe I’ve been in this part of the world too long, but the pain is a big part of what pulls me through the door.

Moghul Room

1/16 Sukhumvit Soi 11, 02 253 4465

Bangkok has, as you’d expect given the num­ber of Indian res­i­dents and vis­i­tors, a huge num­ber of Indian restau­rants. There are some that are truly awful, and a cou­ple of oft highly rated ones that are really just drea­rily bor­ing (although in the case of Mrs. Balbir’s the staff are quite wonderful).

I love the lit­tle Formica tabled places in the Lit­tle India precinct of Chi­na­town, but it’s a trek at times.

Then there is Rang Mahal. It’s appro­pri­ate that the word Mahal is used..in Bahasa Indone­sia it means expen­sive, and yes it is, but the food and, more, the view is quite something..as long as you don’t mind sit­ting next to some appallingly dressed loud­mouth sip­ping their cock­tail from a plas­tic Tuk-Tuk call­ing the whanu back home in Scun­thorpe (best town name ever though) on speaker phone, or some some bloke from Mum­bai loudly ring­ing home to tell every­one and where he is, and let­ting us know exactly how impor­tant a prop­erty devel­oper he is back home. You get that in a mid range tack-fest of a hotel (which is the Rem­brandt sadly).

It’s a barrier.

And then there is the won­der­ful Moghul. Tucked away in the largely avoid­able lower Sois of Sukhumvit (unless you crave lady­boys, fat old men with their 16 year old true loves, Russ­ian hook­ers and over­flow­ing Aus­tralian themed pubs..oh god, why???), sit­u­ated per­haps a lit­tle too close to the infa­mous bar, Cheap Char­lies, for my tastes, and often overlooked.

The Moghul Room, unless I’m miss­ing one, which, given the way we hunt our spices, I doubt, is Bangkok’s best Indian restau­rant, hav­ing sat on the site for some 30 years. Depth of flavour, with what Brigid claims is the finest Saag Gosht on the planet, and with­out the often heard ding of the microwave which plagues so many Indian restau­rants the world over.

And it’s gonna cost you less than US$30 for two.

Al Fer­doss

Lit­tle Ara­bia, Sukhumvit Soi 3/1

Actu­ally Lebanese I’m told and with­out the glit­ter and chrome overkill (they still have it though, so don’t fret) of the close to 100 (I counted them because Brigid said I was mad) other Mid-East eater­ies in one of my favourite parts of this never-ending town.

Yep, the food here is fantastic..fresh and silly cheap. We love the sal­ads and the humus is creamy and like noth­ing else I’ve tasted, but best of all is the naan, which, if you ask as it’s not listed on the large menu this way, they will smother in crushed gar­lic as it comes out of the oven. I crave this badly some days.

And, yes, it’s halal, but they’re happy to serve you a beer in a plain mug (indeed, half the old Arab guys seem to do the same as they puff on their hookahs).

And you can watch the world go by outside…Arab cou­ples, often in the city as med­ical tourists, Africans, the odd Euro­pean, and, best of all, watch the funny flus­tered lit­tle chubby guy from the restau­rant across the lane as he chain-smokes, wrig­gles his false teeth and repeat­edly shouts out a phrase which I though was some sort of Ara­bic greet­ing but after a while worked out it was a heav­ily accented Weeel­come Sir!

He’s my hero right now..I’m fas­ci­nated by him. I’m odd.

Pla Dib

1/1 Areesam­pan Soi 7 Rama 6 Sam­sen­nai Phay­athai Soi Aree, 02–2798185

Yeah, yeah, I’ve men­tioned it before (as I have Al Fer­doss, but like I said, there is an ulte­rior motive bring­ing all this into one, easy to push off a pesky vis­i­tor, list).

Off the beaten track (and if, for you, BKK is just about the odd tem­ple & palace, a mar­ket or two and ping-pong balls, this list will likely con­fuse you any­way), in a ‘burb called Ari which is just north of where most tourist maps end, it’s still rel­a­tively easy to get to: take the BTS to Ari sta­tion (2 stops up from Vic­tory) and wan­der into Soi Ari. Jump in a Tuk tuk (one of the only times I’d rec­om­mend using one of these, but this is out­side nor­mal tourist hell, and mostly these ones serve locals..the cor­rect fare is about B20) and hand him a bit of paper with this:

??????? : ?????? 1/1 ???????????????????? 7 (?????????????????????)
????????? 6 ???????????? ???????? ????????

Easy, huh?

It’s worth it.

Pla Dib is a tres-groovy, indoor / out­door Thai / Japan­ese fusion eatery, over­flow­ing with the very beau­ti­ful young things of BKK, (although you find the odd expat at the bar throw­ing back the Bel­gian beers) with a DJ play­ing, not too obtru­sively, soul of sorts. The food..yes, well the Salmon sashimi with a Larb dress­ing is incred­i­ble, the rest is just mouth water­ing and if you can eat fully seeded pick­led habanera that is served with the var­i­ous dishes, I’m impressed (I can, hon­estly, but it hurts a lit­tle lot), and this is worth the trek.

Ital­ian

Bangkok, for want of a bet­ter word, is awash in Ital­ian food (some 350 restau­rants they say), much of it rather good, although we’ve found a shocker or two, best for­got­ten. Why eat Ital­ian in BKK?..because, after a day or three many crave the odd west­ern dish, and because it’s rather good. I’m gonna men­tion three:

Bella Napoli

3/3 Sukhumvit Soi 31 02 712‑5422

Widely regarded as the best pizza in town, pizza being mostly what they do, and often impos­si­ble to get into with­out a reser­va­tion (which they won’t take in the week­end). Enjoy the Pizza tower, or the superb Diavola (which just needs a sprin­kle of the all-table placed chili flakes), and the well priced Pinot Gri­gio on the wine list makes it seem even bet­ter. They do a range of pasta too, cooked then baked in a dish under pizza pas­try, but if it’s pasta you need:

La Buca

220/4 Sukhumvit Soi 1 02 253 3190

…has some­thing of a rep­u­ta­tion as arguably (and when there are that many Ital­ian restau­rants in a city that’s all you can say) the best pasta in town. I’m not going to argue. Mr. Oreste, the ani­mated host / chef / owner (who’s been known to burst dra­mat­i­cally mid-restaurant into O Sole Mio, or other tunes you may have heard in The God­fa­ther on occasion..many occa­sions..) is famous city­wide, and re-writes the exten­sive menu almost daily, which can be frus­trat­ing when you return crav­ing that spe­cial can­nel­loni from last week and it’s gone. But he explains it all and obvi­ously cre­ates with such pas­sion (lesser souls per­haps might be termed a con­trol freak) that it’s part of the joy of the place, which looks and tastes like some­thing you’d find in rural North­ern Italy.

Il Tartufo

Sukhumvit 51, Bangkok 02 2593569

Best described as seri­ous Ital­ian food. The chef, Flavio Man­zoni, has a rep­u­ta­tion sec­ond to none in Bangkok, and was in Florida cook­ing for the stars, or so the hype goes, before he was in the city, but the prices are not crazy (they can be, it’s your call). And in a city where 5 star can com­mand thou­sands, that’s something.

Imported meats (and truf­fles on almost every dish) mean that work­ing out exactly what not to eat is a big part of the visit. The staff are superb, atten­tive but not pushy (how I hate the well mean­ing restau­rant owner who spends a large part of your meal time lean­ing over try­ing to be the atten­tive host) and as gen­er­ous with the extras as Ital­ian eater­ies should be (Auckland’s few decent Ital­ian places should take note..you don’t charge for bread, and small liquor after­wards is appreciated).

The Chatu­jak Week­end Markets

Yep, hot, sticky, almost over­whelm­ing as the day pro­gresses, but aside from the fact that you can buy almost any­thing you want or don’t want (what colour snake do you want to go with that new hang­ing vicious pink poly­styrene can­de­labra), at over 15,000 stalls, there is the food. We’ve been known to go for just that. Brigid swears by the green curry just to the north­west of the MRT exit (Kam­phaeng Sta­tion, which takes you out in the mid­dle of the mar­ket, NOT Chatu­jak sta­tion) which, inci­den­tally, is the best way to get in, avoid­ing the the BTS bun­fight at Mo Chit, but I pre­fer the sal­ads and gai thaawt (Thai fried chicken..ok?) in the lit­tle, over­crowded, place on Soi 17 in Sec­tion 9 next to Viva cof­fee (but just get a map..the Nancy Chan­dler is best for the mar­ket and very handy for BKK as a whole, bear­ing in mind it’s a lit­tle bit old lady in it’s tastes at times).

Out­side the gates Isaan side­walk eater­ies abound, with moun­tains of green spices. But I’m a sucker for the two Indian dudes serv­ing roti of any flavour you may desire (I like the ones stuffed with banana), with pulled tea, just by said sta­tion. Oh, and the incred­i­ble ice cream made from pure baby coconut milk served in a shell close by….

And It’s all, unlike Indone­sia, done in a won­der­ful 100% smoke free atmos­phere (one of the joys of BKK after Bali..there’s an aura of sophis­ti­ca­tion in not hav­ing spend half one’s day breath­ing sec­ond hand kretek smoke).

Sukhumvit Soi 38

Most tourists never leave the nar­row con­fines of the assigned tourist zones. That means they miss the bulk of the city, includ­ing many of the more inter­est­ing bits, and rarely move up Sukhumvit Rd beyond Soi Asoke (Sukhumvit 21), or, at a pinch, the big Empo­rium mall. So they miss the upper Sukhumvit sois with their, lit­er­ally, hun­dreds of restau­rants, includ­ing Japanese-mini towns, they miss the design fest of the beau­ti­ful young things (the monied Thai) and their Thong Lor / Eka­mai dis­tricts, and, most impor­tantly, they miss the lit­tle places where Thai peo­ple eat and menus have no Eng­lish trans­la­tions (you may, if you are lucky, find a pic­ture book version).

At the top of Soi 38, lit­er­ally under­neath the Thong Lor BTS sta­tion (see..easy, huh?) sits a mini mecca of late night stalls that sell just about every­thing that’s ever appeared on a Thai menu, all at crazy prices, and all until at least 5am. The drink stall sells beers, and those glo­ri­ous blended fruit drinks that Thai­land seems to do so much bet­ter than any­where else.

But, I’m not going to rec­om­mend you eat here…go back over the BTS walk­way and wan­der back towards the city a few metres (you will still be under the train sta­tion) until you see a brown enclosed diner (with a few tables outside..the other night two Euro­pean guys and a Thai guy were sit­ting there clearly dis­cussing how much of sub­stance X they could get into one of the Don­ald Duck stat­uettes they were study­ing…I’ll work out how many we need by tomor­row said one guy..). Inside it has pic­tures of the odd famous Thai per­son who’s eaten there (they say many do, but I’m obliv­i­ous), lots of bits of paper on the wall, all in Thai script (say­ing what?).

The catch is, it has no name in Eng­lish. We asked and they gave us this:

Does that help? I guess not, but, hell, you’re in Thai­land, move out­side your com­fort zone. The menu ain’t in Eng­lish either..at all..but there are nice pic­tures. And the food (insist on Thai spicy..go on..) is glo­ri­ous, with a Chi­nese lean, the dishes with the red chili paste being par­tic­u­larly fine.

And it’s famous for it’s very fresh seafood, at, once again, less than you’d pay for a long black in Wangaratta.

And if that’s too up-market for you, get a Klong Boat (B12) to Charn Issara (they fin­ish about 8pm) and walk over the bridge to Soi 63 (Eka­mai). Cross the foot­bridge over the main road and wan­der down Soi 30. On the left are a series of restaurants..hole in the wall places..it’s the last one you want. What’s it called, once again, who knows, and although the faded menus say some­thing like… nah, for­get it, you’re not going to make the trek. But the point I’m try­ing to make is that the city is teem­ing with these sorts of incred­i­ble lit­tle places, any­one of which serves vastly bet­ter Thai food than the likes of the much touted Basil, or the other five star hotel joints at a frac­tion of the price.

And if you need to be picked up at the air­port, or a bed for a week…