Blog: Thai Food

While our first full day in Southeast Asia, in Ayutthaya, was one of the best days of the trip, our second was one of the worst. The activities changed from interesting, pretty places filled with Thai people who were fascinating to watch, to dull, overly commercial places filled with Western tourists.

We first got a glimpse of this at the end of the day in Ayutthaya, when our tour guide suggested that we should really see the mining center. Though tired, we agreed, and pulled into another gated compound with a parking lot packed with tour buses. Upon entering, we discovered that this "mining center" was actually a short guided show about Thailand's gem industry followed by a large shopping floor full of expensive jewelry (though much cheaper than at home). Since we didn't come to Thailand to buy that, we quickly left and returned to the hotel.

After getting a very early start the next day, our tour guide stopped at a coconut farm which wasn't listed on our original itinerary. The "coconut farm" worked exactly like the "mining center": a parking lot full of tour buses, a few constructed attractions about coconuts like a tree tourists could climb and a demonstration of making coconut milk or other coconut products, and finally and most importantly, a coconut product bazaar. We didn't stay long here either.

The centerpiece of the day was a visit to the Damnoen Saduak floating market, something described by multiple travel agents as a must-see. I don't see why. We reached the market by another long-tail boat, but instead of a peaceful ride up a river filled with Thai people eating and playing on the riverbanks, this ride zoomed around narrow canals, often through extremely wavy water, in a long and noisy procession of tourist boat after tourist boat past more modern and less attractive houses without many people outside. We turned right so many times in a row that I'm sure we were traveling in a circuitous route.

We finally arrived at the market, which is just a large open-air building along the canal full of silk bolts and tourist kitsch. The market did hold some interest in the creative ways vendors positioned themselves; while the center of the market is a simple floor with tables, along the canal's edge a two-level deck allows vendors in boats to pull up alongside and jockey for position, and to reach the balcony above, additional vendors stand on top of one-story high wooden superstructures where they laid out their goods, like pictures or scarves, and stand straddling a long drop with one foot on a very small wooden platform and the other on the outside of the balcony. Some vendors are only accessible by boat, which are available for rent.

Unlike in the West, Thai vendors do not sit quietly while people peruse their goods. They continually call out to passersby. The moment you so much as pause at a stall, the vendor will start moving the goods around, picking things up, unfolding them, showing or handing them to you. Ignoring this behavior does not make it stop. Sometimes they will proactively announce a price and then unceasingly ask you what price you will pay in an attempt to haggle; walking away at any time brings a long stream of offers shouted in your wake. We personally found this very annoying, making it difficult to think and even more difficult to discuss between ourselves whether we liked something, since the vendor would continually interrupt.

To leave the market and reach the parking lot where our car was waiting, we had to walk down a narrow corridor filled with vendors on both sides. The goods in this area were actually somewhat nicer than those in the main market area, but the vendors even more aggressive. Some of them grabbed at our hands or sleeves as we walked by, and others even jumped right in our path so we couldn't help but run into them.

We were scheduled to attend a cultural show that afternoon with demonstrations of Thai folk dancing, Thai boxing, sword fighting, etc. Based on the rest of the day's activities we suspected this might be extremely touristy and fake as well, but we never got to find out, since several hours remained until the show would begin, and the guide had planned to take us to the "handcrafts market." By this time we knew the "handcrafts market" would be just like the "mining center" and "coconut farm," and opted to skip it and the show.

Of course, this being Bangkok, we ended up spending the afternoon around shopping anyway, at the Panthip Plaza mall, five large floors of nothing but electronics shops. I needed an external hard drive since I knew my camera memory card wouldn't last the whole trip, and this was the place to get it. Printer ink stores, camera stores, iPod stores, and refurbished computer stores packed next to one another and then repeated. The vendors here were less aggressive, making for a less unpleasant shopping experience.

But the best part of the mall was the food court. One challenge we faced in Bangkok was finding good Thai food. The eateries around our hotel all catered to tourists, mostly international chains (Starbucks, McDonalds) or British pubs (for the Europeans to get drunk and watch football). We met up with Mark and Vamshe, also in Bangkok at the same time, for dinner the previous night at a place that was decent. But the fact is that Thai people don't go out to eat as much as Americans do (for that matter, mid-twentieth-century Americans didn't go out to eat as much as we do today either), and so you can't find the diversity of restaurants common in major U.S. cities.

One place the Thai do eat, however, is at the mall. Even Lonely Planet recommends eating at the mall food court. The food is safer to eat than on the street, but just as cheap. And it's authentic. They don't tone down the spiciness for white people the way restaurants do, because the food, like in a U.S. food court, is already prepared and sitting there in a tray behind the counter. To speed up the process and avoid forcing each vendor to handle money, they employ a clever system: there is one desk where you can exchange a real bill for a set of coupons that look like Monopoly money, and you buy food with the coupons. For about one dollar U.S., we could buy a plate full of rice and excellent, spicy curry.

Update: This page gives a more positive review of the Damnoen Saduak floating market, and in particular recommends arriving early when the Thai are there instead of the tourists. It also has some fantastic pictures.